Funferal

Community radio roundup

India’s new community radio policy is continuing to get lots of coverage, with some reports beginning to look forward to its practical impacts. India eNews has a feature piece about a station about 100 km from Hyderabad which hopes to finally launch a station, having previously played their content at community meetings:

After waiting for nearly a decade, the village is all set to start broadcasting from what could be arguably India’s first full-fledged community radio station.

Others are also looking forward to being among the first licensed under the policy. Long waits for licenses are, unfortunately, not uncommon in community radio – the resilience and patience of community groups is often astounding – but we are seeing welcome developments in many countries. The UK, for instance, now has a much more friendly environment for community radio, and a new government report recognizes the social benefits of community radio, particularly the new generation of smaller stations:

Small-scale stations, which number around 100 to date but will eventually total 200, helped tackle social exclusion and gave a voice to people who had been ignored by mainstream media and the education system, the survey concluded.

Unsurprisingly, for anyone familiar with the field, the report also finds that financial pressures are a major issue for at least some community stations. (Personally I’m surprised that it’s not for most/all stations, though OfCom funding must be of some assistance.) The commercial sector, of course, sees the community sector as something to be squashed and is trotting out the usual lines:

Some commercial radio companies have been critical of the new breed of community stations, claiming they are under-regulated and distort the advertising market.

In some parts of the world, of course, critical statements from the commercial sector is the least community radio activists have to worry about, and that was demonstrated clearly yesterday in the Philippines, where community radio activist Antony Licyayo was assassinated:

Antony and the Kaguimungan (a local peasant alliance) are among the producers of Radyo Cagayano, a community radio in Baggao, Cagayan Valley. Radyo Cagayano has been a strong and a very vocal advocate on peasant issues in this town. Last July, eight armed men in ski masks entered the station and burnt it down after hogtying the staff. On November 11, then-Kaguimungan peasant leader Joey Javier was murdered in Baggao municipality.

The Philippines, under the Arroyo regime, has become one of the most dangerous places in the world for journalists to operate. According to an AMARC statement in response to the Licyayo killing:

The death toll of journalists and other members of the media under the Arroyo regime is now at 43. This excludes numerous libel suits, acts of intimidation, threats and harassment directed toward other media in the country. AMARC holds the Arroyo government culpable for these grave and mounting violations of human rights perpetrated against the media and other progressive individuals and organizations. Despite international clamor for the Arroyo regime to seriously endeavor to stop the killings and the grave abuse of human rights in the Philippines, the violations still escalate.

The CPJ indicates that 4 journalists were killed in 2005 in the Philippines in the course of their work.