The Red and Black

Issue date: 3/20/08 Section: News

Media Credit: JAKE DANIELS Elfriede Fürsich, an associate professor of communication at Boston College, talks about representation and globalization in media Wednesday. [Click to enlarge]

Local nonprofit media organizations can open students' eyes to the world around them with cross-cultural coverage, which is traditionally ignored by the mainstream media, a Boston College journalism professor said Wednesday.

With government grants, developing media organizations worldwide can paint a more accurate picture for consumers, Elfriede Fürsich, author of the 2008 United Nations World Report on Cultural Diversity, said.

"The media business model is breaking down as we know it," she said. "And that's just the phase when new ideas are possible."

Communities around the world are testing the industry's waters, she said, regardless of its current volatility.

She said many Americans would be surprised to find out how much foreign content exists.

"We don't watch what the rest of the world watches," Fürsich said.

Carolina Acosta-Alzuru, a University associate professor of mass communication from Venezuela, said, "I find it unbelievable. My students won't watch movies if they have subtitles."

Fürsich pointed out problems she found with the mainstream media's cultural coverage, including stereotypes, cultural alienation and indexing, reporting through corporate think tanks rather than native voices.

She said these problems are deep-seated, and there is no sense in wasting time groveling over them.

"The media needs to move forward as enablers of cultural diversity," she said. "Strong solutions will be local and flexible."

Censorship and regulation would be detrimental to this process, Fürsich said.

Jay Hamilton, an associate professor of advertising at the University, said regulation limits the media's opportunities for growth and change.

"Regulation fixes media, makes it stationary," he said. "It leaves a lot of people out of the equation."

Fürsich's report will be published later this year and distributed to UN countries for their media policy consideration.

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