Introduction

By W. Jayaweera, Asia and Pacific Desk, Communication Division,
J. Bentley, Regional Communication Adviser.

The region, with its countries ranging from vibrant economies to less developed countries, has been affected recently with a remarkable development in cross border media proliferation, particularly in satellite television broadcasting. This wider development has influenced a process of media expansion, restructuring, privatisation and commercialisation. As a consequence, however, there is a tendency to treat media content as a commodity rather than as a democratic expression of the societies concerns. Thus the need for the information sources to orient themselves towards the local communication demands and to provide increased access to a variety of information relevant to communities has become a major concern. Priorities for media development, therefore, largely depend on country specific factors, rather than on the impression reflected in the region wide developments. The major concerns in communication development across many countries in Asia may be summarised as follows: o In the countries with vast rural hinterlands and isolated island communities, the radio still plays a major role, and in terms of penetration and availability, it surpasses all other media. However, radios in most cases, are either run as state owned and/or commercial entities and are less oriented towards pressing communication needs of the rural and isolated communities. o There is a need to reposition the public service broadcasting systems in order to ensure unhindered editorial autonomy. Furthermore adequate public funds are necessary in order for these to function as a credible alternative source of information. o Lack of suitable national policies and legal provisions to licence independent small community broadcasting stations is a major problem when supporting community initiatives for media access. This deficiency reflects the absence of appropriate national communication and information policies for development. o There is also an increasing tendency for the concentration of media ownership. This might lead to undermine the pluralism of the information sources. The effects of ownership concentration may not help much to address the multifarious communication needs of the recipients. o Communication development facilitated by new communication technologies remains rather limited to urban and affluent societies. This excludes many communities from benefiting from the new technological developments. o In some countries the inadequate pluralism and independence in the collection, production and dissemination of information have affected the development of independent media. o Training of communication professionals continues to be a high priority. However, the lack of vernacular language material is a major problem in extending the training opportunities to those who are engaged in the communication fields of vernacular media. Based on the new communication strategy adopted by the 25th General Conference, UNESCO continued its assistance to a number of communication development projects identified by the local media organisations. Also through a number of regional projects, UNESCO has increased its collaboration with the professional regional organisations, particularly in the area of communication training, to facilitate networking among various journalism and communication training institutes of the region to share and build resources and expertise. The experience of the Tambuli community radio project in the Philippines, which received the IPDC prize for Rural Communication, has led UNESCO to promote community-owned and community-operated radio stations, particularly because of its proven role in ensuring democratic participation for good governance and mobilising community efforts for development. A number of external and internal evaluations across many UNESCO supported communication projects indicate that, as much as the national situation would permit, they have significantly contributed to developing human resources and equipping professionals in the communication fields. UNESCO efforts continue to resonate the need to promote free and pluralistic media as an integral part of developing healthy democracies in Asia . As for extra-budgetary informatics activities in Asia (France is the main donor), they are oriented towards developing informatics infrastructure for the use of training institutions, paying special attention to applications in the fields of business.