Report (Part 6): Sustainable Development Convention 2002

Syndicated News Service: Human Rights

Time: 31 October 2002, 16:00-17:00 Location: Room C-2 Chair: Johanna Bernstein Presenters/ Participants: Alex Lockwood, OneWorld International Reporter: Danielle Dalsoren (ICVolunteers) Languages: English Key words: Syndicated News Service (SNS), OneWorld, mass media, online media, Internet

Alex Lockwood recently traveled to Pakistan, where he was able to have an enlightening conversation about American agricultural policy with a local Pakistani. Upon returning to the United States, an American exclaimed to him, "my God, you got out of Pakistan alive?!" Mr. Lockwood often encounters such evidence of the lack of understanding that the North has of the South, and he attributes this to the mass media's avoidance of Southern and sustainable development topics. He and his colleagues at OneWorld International have come up with an intriguing way to reverse this trend.

Moderator Johanna Bernstein began by outlining several topics to guide the discussion: 

1. Challenges of distributing news to the South
2. Enhancing the voice of the South in mainstream media
3. The role of mass media
4. The role of the syndication model
5. Presenting the model developed by OneWorld.

She then passed the floor to Alex Lockwood, of OneWorld International, who gave a brief overview of OneWorld International. He explained that OneWorld is an online news service that aims to bring human rights and sustainable development issues into mainstream news media. The want to put a Southern influence in front of Northern audiences, as well as putting more true-to-life Northern news in front of Northern audiences, particularly Americans. They hope to do so by giving civil society and the people they work with a direct voice. Mr. Lockwood emphasized that now is the time to reach Internet audiences, because a consolidation of online media will soon occur. That is, statistics show that people are starting to visit just a few especially important sites per week, rather than surfing many sites. For OneWorld, he continued, the key to gaining audiences will be to build trust as a reliable source for real news, rather than an advocacy organization.

Mr. Lockwood pointed out several advantages of online media. First of all, while people tend to form strong connections with small groups of people, the Internet allows us to form a web of "weak links" between these tightly connected groups. These weak links are the key to sharing knowledge and mobilizing large groups of people. This weak link model is what OneWorld hopes to use to bring about change toward sustainable development. The second advantage of Internet media is that it can provide truly democratic and unbiased news, unlike the mass media monopolies that have strong alliances with the governments of many countries. Online media is also extremely interactive and has greater potential for mobilizing people to act.

OneWorld is also currently working with Lycos, Yahoo, and other major forces on the Internet in order to get them to rethink their news agendas. They are also looking into the possibilities of creating an alternative media syndicate to compete with the mainstream media syndicate.

Interesting Questions
Moderator Johanna Bernstein turned to Peter Hardi, whose presentation on a sustainability indicator "dashboard" directly preceded. She asked him how we might forge better links between solid scientific data, such as dashboard, and media such as OneWorld, in order to give the media reliability which can hold up to scrutiny. Mr. Hardi agreed that qualitative and quantitative information must be linked in order to be effective. He suggested the "box story" template, in which technical information is framed by a personal story. Mr. Hardi also emphasized the power of hyperlinking to scientific documents on the Internet.

Ms. Bernstein also asked Mr. Lockwood what the biggest challenge is for forging partnerships in the South through the OneWorld model. He replied that many times, the people in the North misjudge what people in the South are interested in. He added that, while a broken water pump may be more important news than September 11th to someone in the South, perhaps if Northerners knew to fix more water pumps in the South, that things like September 11th might not happen.

Conclusions
Much of today's mass media in the northern hemisphere ignores the issues of the southern hemisphere and sustainable development. The Internet provides an essential opportunity to bring attention to these issues thanks to its inherent democratic potential. OneWorld International is a shining example of how the Internet can give civil society and the people it serves a direct voice in the media.