Christina Meetoo

On Media, Society and Mauritius

Press

Launching of African Media Barometer for Mauritius

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Tomorrow, the African Media Barometer for Mauritius will be launched at 10 a.m. in Lecture Theatre 2 of the University of Mauritius.

Mr Dalichau, Representative of the FES (Frierich Ebert Stiftung Foundation), will launch the report in the presence of the media. I will present key findings of the report and a journalist, Sunil Gopal, will speak about his experience.

The African Media Barometer is a qualitative tool for assessing the media on the African continent. It has been conducted for the first time in Mauritius in 2008.

I will write more about the findings after the launch.

My trip to Madagascar

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radiomadagascar
I was in Madagascar for three days last week upon an invitation of the FES (Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung Foundation) to make a presentation on Freedom of Expression and of the Press at a workshop and to meet with local journalists. It was an eye-opening experience to witness all the difficulties faced by the local population and the journalists as well as other actors of civil society.

The political situation was very unstable and there were many crowd manifestations in town on the ‘Place du 1er Mai’ with some violent confrontations with the police resulting in many deaths, injured and arrests. Luckily, we were away from the hotel (which is just a few minutes walk from the hotspot) during the protests (which only take place between 11 a.m. and 4 p.m. according to a local friend). But, I did see the pictures and reports in the local press which were quite alarming.

The workshop which targeted potential young leaders in Madagascar went on well with a wide variety of participants (from ministries, courts of justice, NGOs, private sector and the press). There were even mothers with their babies as the FES favours a gender approach and thus hosts the women participants and a nurse for their babies to allow them to attend the working sessions.

Malagasy Journalists under pressure
The next day, we also met with some local journalists to discuss about press freedom in Mauritius and Madagascar. Many could not attend due to the political crisis, some had even been called by the Ministry for some explanations about their coverage of the protests. Journalists work under a lot of pressure and have very small salaries and virtually no safety net. One leading blogger journalist even said she had been interrogated once by the police for being suspected of allegiance to an ex-vice PM. Yet, paradoxically, though our press looks freer than theirs, they have lots of private TV stations whereas we have none. They have an ‘Ordre des Journalistes’ which we do not have. It would seem they have the proper framework but application is lacking and political tensions override the democratic system.

Before the workshop, we visited the remains of Radio Madagascar and TVM, which were both burned down by rioters in January. Radio Madagascar is not functioning any more as it is completely devastated but TVM is operating a minimum service with equipment recuperated from the presidential palace and personal equipment brought in by the journalists themselves. They had apparently just received state-of-the-art equipment a few months ago, which had been funded by a German organisation, all of which have vanished into black fumes.

Overall, it was a very enriching experience despite the crisis. It was sad to see the poor people living and working on the streets in very extreme conditions which make our island look like a very very modern country. But, at the same time, one could sense that there is enormous potential for development. It will all depend on how the political decision makers sort out their problems and decide or not to help their people and lift the country out of poverty…

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You can see more pics of the trip on Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/noulakaz/sets/72157617434114366/

Radio One show on political communication

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I was at Radio One this morning and was Finlay Salesse’s guest on a show about the political communication of local parties, especially in the context of Labour Day meetings.

We talked about the techniques and strategies used by our politicians to communicate with their audiences, their posters, their communication advisers, their websites, their willingness (or lack thereof) to participate in live debates on private radios, etc. and compared the Mauritian style of political communication with that of more advanced countries.

In sum, my main point was that our local politicians are completely archaic in their approach to communication. I tend to think that they need to rely on basic and superficial means that are loud, aggressive and even vulgar in order to mask the vacuum in terms of ideas and messages.

Treating us like dumb
Labour Day meetings are a complete waste of time, energy and resources. They don’t serve any constructive purpose and in fact, they do not contribute to the enlightenment of the masses, rather they treat ordinary citizens like dumb children who need to be cajoled, policed but never addressed in an intelligent manner. It is true that our voters do act in an immature way but do our decision-makers provide possibilities for acting differently? Do they treat the electorate as intelligent and capable of making their own judgements based on facts, ideas and more importantly to question the super-leaders?

Even within the parties themselves, there is not much space for democracy. There might be temporary attempts at intelligent debates but it is not part of the DNA of our local political scene too accustomed to low-level arguments and the notion that super-leaders are ‘ene tigin pli tipti ki bon dié’. Our parties are run like archaic, medieval structures and even would-be ‘ténors’ within them toe the line for fear of losing their chances of climbing the hierarchy and get that so desirable possibility to be a candidate and later grab a ministry.

Young people are fed up with this situation and rightly so. It’s not the crowds of people in rallies/meetings that reflect what the masses think. Just like polls are not fool-proof. The grassroots are bored and tired. The only thing they can actually do is choose parties (not even candidates — as goes the local saying, ‘prend ene pié banane, peine li couleur parti ki pé gagner, li pou éli’) which are the least worst according to their personal judgement. A sad situation indeed for our democracry…

The Mediacom Studio is alive

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I am pleased to announce that the Communication Studies Unit is now equipped with a multimedia studio which I have set up with (a lot of) help from Avinash. The studio has been baptised Mediacom Studio and even has a website which we have launched yesterday at www.mediacomstudio.com

The facility has been created thanks to funding from the UNESCO-IPDC which approved my project last year. Avinash has been the mastermind behind the technical setup and has spent a lot of time selecting and fine-tuning our equipment list. We had a lot of constraints such as limited availability of certain items and also the dollar exchange rate which shrunk our budget. But, we managed to have a nice setup nevertheless with:

– Apple iMacs complete with the iLife and iWork suites
– Panasonic HD camcorders with tripods and a lighting kit
– Olympus audio recorders with tie-clip microphones
– Philips LCD TV, DVD player and an Apple TV
– a gigabit local network

The idea is to provide more hands-on practical training to our Communication and Journalism students, to give them the opportunity to come up with professional products and showcase them on the website.

Local media on the web

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There have been a few developments lately in the local mediascape related to the web (at last!) that are worthy of attention. Starting with the Défi Media Group which has launched its website for the first time at the following address: http://www.defimedia.info
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This was long overdue as oddly enough, none of the print media titles it owns (Le Défi Plus, L’Hebdo, News on Sunday, etc.) had a website up to now. However, I really appreciate that the group has decided to frogleap directly into the web 2.0 world as its website does not merely display articles which have appeared in the print version. It is a platform that allows for rating of articles, comments from readers, social bookmarking as well as user-generated content in a blog section, RSS and even Radio Plus podcasts (which I haven’t yet tested though). So one can say that the Défi Media Group is the first major local media player to exploit Internet 2.0!

Another media player which has also decided to spend some effort on its website is Radio One at http://www.r1.mu
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Though the website is richer in information compared with the previous one, I personally think it is still unsatisfactory. It still looks very much like a first generation website with no user comments, no RSS, no user-generated content, etc. And I can’t seem to be able to listen to the podcasts (Microsoft plug-ins?). And the readability is not fantastic as the design is not very neat and clear (compared with that of the Défi website for instance).

Ironically, whereas Le Défi does not seem to have widely publicised its own initiative (which would deserve much more public attention), Radio One has been actively promoting its website through print and radio ads.

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Incidentally, I want to put a special mention for an overseas initiative by Anne Robert, a Mauritian expat in Canada who was head of the Radio One station for some time. Her website Global Mauritian provides an interesting platform for incisive opinion articles with reader comments enabled.

Note about my blog:
Since I felt a bit bored by the look of my blog lately, I’ve decided to change its theme as you may have noticed. Not too happy about this one either, but well, we’ll see when I have more time to tinker with it…