Brian Ashley, director of AIDC raised the critical point that it was not just community media sector that was unsustainable but that the global world economy was unsustainable in his presentation on the global/national socio-economic context. He pointed out that the current economic crisis was one of the most profound crises and yet was not discussed much or receiving much media coverage. Despite being second in scale to the crisis of the 1920’s and combined with climate change challenges, it was not been covered as the crisis it is. He argued that given the estimation that millions of people have been displaced and that there are about 50 million new migrants as a result of climate change – this economic and climate change – combined with the food and energy crisis – is a crisis of civilization.
He showed that South Africa has seen the doubling of unemployment, deepening of poverty and the worsening of inequality as a result of the type of economic policies that the country has been pursuing since democracy and that South Africa has now overtaken Brazil as the most unequal country in the world.
He gave a brief explanation of how the economic integration of the world into a global economy led to this problem. As a result of economic integration, the financial crisis that started in the United States of America soon engulfed the world and no part of the world has been unaffected. One of the root causes was that the US was a consumer of products produced increasingly in the East (there has been a shift in production from the West to the East, especially China despite consumption still being located predominantly in the West); consequently the US has only been able to finance its consumption by borrowing thereby creating unstable financial systems.
In South Africa, around 500 000 jobs have been lost [as of the end of October 2009 this had reached 1 million jobs], thousands of companies are bankrupt and many people are being forced into the margins as a result of dependency on those who have lost jobs. He also cautioned that while there may be some signs of economic recovery, these would be short-lived these because the structural imbalances that led to the crisis were not resolved. And these structural imbalances were unlikely to receive any attention in the near future given the failure of the recent G20 Summit to agree on anything of substance related to the root causes of the global economic architecture.
He emphasised the critical role community media organizations – an important component of alternative media - can play an important role in the way forward by telling a different story to the mainstream media as well facilitating dialogue. For example, the story of the 500 000 job losses was only reported on the last time the statistics were released and mainstream media and the public broadcaster are not conveying any sense of an economic crisis and this was something community media should pick up on given that the effects of these job losses were being felt in the very communities in which these stations are located in. The role of community television and print in telling a different story was also highlighted.
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