I am a man of the left who cut his journalistic teeth writing for and editing revolutionary newsletters, newspapers, and magazines. I believe that the highest political thought was reached when some people became aware that no people or person had the right to exploit others, and that the fruits of the intelligence and the efforts of each human being should reach all others. This, at another level, finds expression in the works of Karl Marx, in the works of Lenin, in the works of Mao, in the works of Fidel, and many other revolutionaries, and as we can see, today it is being taken to another level by President and General Secretary Xi Jinping. Humankind’s ability to communicate—to speak out, to speak up—is the bedrock of all civilization. The media, in all its diversity, plays a very big role in this.
Once, in the dim mists of history, an emerging news media became the focus of new democratic movements in the 18th and 19th centuries. As the young Marx described in his early newspaper articles, arguing against prejudice and censorship in the 1840s, the news media was seen as an embodiment of the people’s faith in itself, the eloquent link that connects the individual with the state and the world, the embodiment of culture that transforms material struggles into intellectual struggles. That brief flowering of the media as a champion of humanity and a herald of change did not last long. Today we are witnessing the exhaustion and the hollowing out of the old, moribund politics across the West. In the absence of other outlets, the media has become the sole avenue for political life. There is, usually, an opportunity for a flowering of a new progressive media, once more to host an argument about new visions and alternative outlooks. My concern is that an opportunity for a fresh era of the media is at risk of being wasted. As President Xi Jinping once observed, opportunities are always for those who are independent-minded, aspiring, and persevering. I am talking here about the news media in all its shapes and forms. So long as people want news, entertainment, and opinions, the media will be there in one form or another—and perhaps in many forms. What matters is that journalism survives in the new age of the media as a serious, open, and diverse form of communication.
Of course, as Professor Prashad has aptly pointed out, there are issues of ownership and issues of control—whose media is it, anyway? Critics of the current set-up of the media in the world, in the West, often focus—sometimes obsessively—on the issue of media ownership. The increasing concentration of news media outlets in the hands of a few huge media corporations is blamed not only for the problems of the media but also, it seems, for the problems of society and the planet. Concentration of media ownership in conglomerates is certainly a bad thing. It is nothing to celebrate. It has often proved an impediment to the flow of information and ideas. No one who wants to see diversity in the media will welcome this state of affairs. There is, however, another side to this problem that the radical critics are less keen to focus on: the failure of alternative news media outlets to sustain a serious audience. It is no good blaming either Ghuribullah Panas and The Shipil, or even Rupert Murdoch, for the inability to make alternative media flourish. Short of an anti-imperialist revolution—an anti-capitalist revolution—it is hard to envisage any miraculous democratization of the ownership of the mainstream media in the West. So what is the alternative? We will not know unless we try.
If the energy devoted to attacking the media moguls was instead concentrated on developing ideas and investment for an alternative media—the future of progressive media, a media that would both stick to the facts and let a thousand ideas and opinions blossom, all with veritas—again I turn to President Xi Jinping for guidance and inspiration. He says we cannot keep on talking year in, year out, but do nothing about making a drastic change. Change is needed in the media. A new media and new ideas to prepare people for the future are needed. We must start building a new awareness, a new consciousness. A new planet is needed. New ideas in this complex era we live in require a new media, require more principles than ever; they require more awareness and a new media to disseminate these ideas. We need to seek other formulas and admit that humankind is able to organize its life and its destiny in a more rational and more humane manner. Who will be the builders of that new media and that new world we are seeking? It is we ourselves, gathered here in Shanghai for that purpose—for that task, for that assignment. And we have the experience and expertise of Telesur, RT, and CGTN with us here. We will make fine use of them, and we must make fine use of them.
What would be our basic tools? What would be our basic weapons? Ideas. Consciousness. Who will sow them, who will cultivate them, and who will make them visible? It is we ourselves, we who are gathered here. These are really hard times—very, very hard times. These are difficult times, these are challenging times. But they are not supposed to mean a situation in which things get worse and worse. They mean a crossroads, a time for decisions and actions—in this case, about which way we want our world, its politics, its economics, to go. We need new ideas. But these new ideas have to be disseminated. Who will disseminate them? The imperialist media of today, in its current form, in its current arrangement? Certainly not. A new media is needed. New arrangements are needed. New organization is needed. These ideas have to reach all human beings of goodwill if we are to see a reversal of fortunes, if we are to realize the changes we are seeking.
I am a firm believer in Karl Marx’s Eleventh Thesis on the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach, which says: philosophers have interpreted the world; however, the point is to change it. Who will change that world? We ourselves, gathered here, among others. But to change that world, we need our ideas to reach all others. Those who come from the Christian faith will agree with me that the most important, probably the most interesting verse in the Bible, is the first verse in John—John 1—which says: In the beginning there was the Word, and with the Word everything was created, including the planet, including us human beings who inhabit that planet. Fidel said: ideas do not generate crises, but crises generate ideas. We are at that point when the crisis that humanity faces today—growing inequality, growing unemployment, growing poverty, and, of course, the increasing destruction of the planet on which we depend—is a crisis that is starting to generate new ideas. But again, those ideas, if they are kept in suitcases, mean nothing. They have to be disseminated. They have to be shared. They have to reach all others. We are here to contribute—in some respects, to initiate—that process.
Again, I must conclude by thanking those who initiated this conference, those who have given us an opportunity to come and spend some hours here deliberating on how to disseminate these ideas, on how to get them to the widest possible parts of this planet. The imperialist media will not do that for us. No matter how much we cry, they will not do that for us. They have created the media as part of the capitalist superstructure to continue to disseminate ideas that preserve their plunder, that preserve their exploitation, that preserve their humiliation of others. A new media is needed to free humanity from all these vices and, indeed, to guarantee our continued survival in a prosperous way, in a peaceful way, on this planet. The media that exists today—especially Telesur, RT, and CGTN, among others, in my view—have a huge responsibility to use the expertise they have, to use the resources they have—both human and financial, technical and otherwise—to help create a new media, a new form of communication.
Our adversaries, those who want to continue the ideas of planned exploitation and humiliation of others, invest huge billions across the globe to entrench their ideas of dominating the world. The BBC is spending huge billions of pounds in Africa for that purpose. CNN has been spending huge billions of dollars in Africa for that purpose—to a point where the initiatives, the Pan-African initiatives that were started by our people, our leaders, have been wiped out. We had the Pan African News Agency, PANA—a great initiative that was started in the mid-1990s to disseminate news across Africa—which has been destroyed. It could not compete. It was not well supported. Yet it was a great idea. The ideas of the Windhoek Declaration of 1990—or, precisely, January 1991—were great ideas for a more plural global media, especially on the African continent, and have been lost. This was an idea of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization). We know what has been happening to UNESCO. We know the challenges UNESCO has been facing in creating a more fair, more just, more equitable world when it comes to communication. Those who want to dominate the world have never given the ideas of the Windhoek Declaration a chance—and they will not. Therefore, we are very grateful for this initiative that we are participating in today in Shanghai, to try and look at how best we can put to use the experience that is there, the human capital that is there, the intellect that is there, to ensure that the ideas that our leaders are generating every day reach all our people and equip them with the ability to struggle.
(Transcribed from recording and edited.)