View previous stories
	The Post-2015 Goals: People Around the World Talk Back by Barbara Crossette Pass Blue   January 2015   Advocates offering some alternative ideas and a few dissenting views on the Sustainable Development Goals on track to be adopted by the United Nations at a special session later this year are convening on Jan. 26 in New York to air opinions from all major developing regions on this critical new proposed set of policies.   Regions Refocus 2015, the title of the Jan. 26 meeting and the report now being published, is the result of nine regional workshops from July 2014 to January 2015 involving policy makers and civil society activists. The workshops — in Southern Africa, West Africa, the Pacific, South Asia, the Caribbean, the Arab states, Latin America (with two) and European institutions and partners — revealed striking differences and some similarities among regional attitudes on development priorities.   In the report that presents the outcomes of these workshops, as weighed against the Sustainable Development Goals now being finalized, there was wide support among regions for making national governments more effective, responsible and accountable in, for example, recovering lost revenues from tax evasion, capital flight, illicit transfer of funds and too-easy terms for foreign investors. Latin America held a separate workshop on these issues, titled “Hidden Money, Hidden Resources: Financing Development With Transparency.”   Debt relief was a general topic of discussion, and featured widespread wariness about public-private partnerships, especially in crucial public services like health and education, an increasing trend advocated in the UN system and among donor governments. There was also opposition to international trade agreements, based on fears that these would inevitably benefit the global North more than the developing counties. African workshops stressed these issues emphatically.   Workshops also devoted attention to social policies affecting health, education and women’s rights, though the subtitle message of the overall report, “Fostering Regional and Feminist Solidarities for Justice,” emerged in a few cases more as an add-on than as a major theme. Notable was the strong support in several regions for more explicitly stated rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — those under the LGBT umbrella — which the Sustainable Development Goals avoid, ignoring worldwide movements for gay rights and against rising discrimination, criminalizing and persecution in a number of countries.   The Regions Refocus 2015 initiative, organized almost entirely by nongovernment organizations, is housed at the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation in New York. It was supported by the Ford Foundation, where the launch of its report will take place, and by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research (Unitar), with help from numerous international and national foundations and nonprofit groups.   Highlights from the regional reports reveal a growing sense that diverse areas of the world want to focus on their own relevant priorities, with regional nations working together more closely to advance their policies, including bids to have more voice as regions in international organizations, especially the UN system. This was a particular concern of Caribbean nations, where some elected officials were included in the workshop mix, along with academic experts on development issues.   “A significant thread in the workshop discussions focused on the decline of Caribbean participation, both governmental and of civil society, in intergovernmental spaces over the past several decades,” the Caribbean workshop found.   The Caribbean regional report was very focused and strong on women, broadened to “gender” to be more inclusive. “Gender justice, economic justice, and a human rights perspective are three critical principles to advance,” participants agreed, particularly in the current environment of austerity. The leading partners in the Caribbean discussions were the Nita Barrow unit of the Institute for Gender and Development Studies at the University of the West Indies, at Cave Hill in Barbados; the gender justice division of the Caribbean Community (Caricom); and the gender and economic section of the Caribbean Development Bank.   The Pacific region was also focused closely on women/gender components in development strategy, as the title of its workshop indicates: “Pacific Partnerships on Gender, Climate Change and Sustainable Development.” UN Women, the UN agency, was among the leading partners in this workshop. Like the Caribbean and other island regions threatened by rising seas, the Pacific workshop heard from numerous speakers engaged on that issue, including the safeguarding of women’s health and reproductive rights.   “As women are fourteen times more likely than men to die during disasters, participants articulated the rationale for including a gender perspective in disaster risk reduction and climate change policy that acknowledges the particular vulnerabilities and contributions of women and girls,” the Pacific report said. The region also gave explicit support to gender identity rights.   Most outspoken on the issue of gender identity was the workshop report from South Asia — India and its neighbors — where LGBT rights are nonexistent or have suffered recent setbacks. The leading nongovernment organization in the workshop was the New Delhi-based YP Foundation, a youth-run and youth-led organization working through Indian state partners on gender and sexuality, among other social and cultural projects. The workshop strongly backed effective sexuality education, which much of the region lacks and adolescents need.   “A major thread of the workshop focused on the need to redefine sexuality at national levels, within South Asia as a whole, and through the global development space,” the South Asia report said.   In addition to its workshop on transparency in financing for development, the Latin American regions held a second workshop on “Education to Guarantee Rights: For a World of Dignity and Education for All.” In a controversial statement, this report, again focusing on regional specificity, said that “The group disputed the narrative that Millennium Development Goal (MDG) #2 — achieve universal primary education — has been accomplished, stressing that while global trends may indicate success, states are facing obstacles in its implementation at the national level.”   Among the concerns in the region were social and economic inequalities and the encroachment of the private sector in education. “Inequalities were identified as the major impediment to the realization of human rights in the region, which is the most unequal in the world,” the report said, noting that education is the most important vehicle to end inequalities in Latin America, but donor financing often skews the agenda “since donors are not financing lifelong learning but only ‘read, write, count’ initiatives,” the report said.   In its summary of the messages gleaned from the nine reports, the editors mentioned the role of the UN, saying: “All of the meetings emphasize the need for increased policy coherence of development-related systems, guided by the UN’s rights-based normative framework and oversight. The Latin America feminist caucus calls for reform of the international financial architecture “towards development, equity, and human rights for all” — a recommendation that echoed throughout the workshops.   http://www.daghammarskjold.se/regions-refocus-2015-report/ http://passblue.com/2015/01/25/the-post-2015-goals-people-around-the-world-talk-back/ http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/01/opinion-brazil-can-help-steer-sdgs-towards-ambitious-targets/   * Barbara Crossette is a board member of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs. Previously, Crossette was the UN bureau chief for The New York Times from 1994 to 2001 and before that its chief correspondent in Southeast Asia and South Asia.
	Lapdogs vs. Watchdogs: State Advertising and Media by Open Society,Center for Public Integrity, agencies USA   Lapdogs vs. Watchdogs: State Advertising and Media, by Mark Thompson & Marius Dragomir.   Several years ago, the government in Macedonia, in power for more than eight years now, spent close to €600,000 on a campaign urging citizens to be more optimistic and respect good values. This was a curious initiative in one of Europe’s poorest countries, where almost a third of the people are unemployed, and the same proportion live under the poverty line.   This campaign was only one in a bevy of advertising contracts totaling €20 million that the government gave to media companies over five years. It is a high figure for a country of two million inhabitants, where wages average €340 a month, and even less for journalists.   This pattern of state subvention is far from unique to Macedonia. Governments around the world know that the digital revolution and the financial crisis have hit media revenues hard, so that state advertising can keep many outlets afloat. But, of course, in most cases, they are looking to buy much more than advertising space. They are paying for support.   States spend advertising money in almost half of the 56 countries surveyed in the Mapping Digital Media research coordinated by the Open Society Program on Independent Journalism. And in most of them, analysts recognize that state advertising is manipulating the media on their behalf. Exceptions include the UK, Uruguay, Japan, and South Africa.   “Of all the means that states have to support media, state advertising is arguably the least transparent and thus the most problematic,” wrote Martijn de Waal in an overview of trends in the media economy. “Across the globe, this resource is misused by states to support friendly media and discriminate against critical journalism.”   State advertising cash is used in two ways that serve the same goal. It either rewards supportive or non-critical media outlets, or it subsidizes critical yet ailing media companies that the government wants to silence. The impact of state advertising on the editorial line is not always easily detectable, but testimony abounds from journalists at government-funded media about prohibited investigations or attacks on rival politicians.   In most Western markets, state advertising is dwarfed by the total private ad spending. However, it may make its real impact at the local level. In Spain, the state spent a mere €80 million on ads in 2010, according to the latest available data. That was roughly 2 percent of the total ad market. However, this doesn’t include ad funding doled out by municipalities where the money is used to reward loyal media.   In most of the non-Western world, many media outlets would not survive without state advertising. In Pakistan, estimates put state ad spending near PKR 5 billion (US$50 million), which is almost a fifth of the entire ad expenditure in the country. In Colombia, local media depend on state advertising for more than half of their budgets.   Predictably, state advertising spend grows before elections as parties use their resources to bankroll electoral campaigns. Also, following elections, governments redistribute state ad spending to match their affinities. After the 2012 elections in Slovakia, the government of Robert Fico increased the ad budgets for the friendly TA3 all-news television and daily Pravda while slashing the spending allocated to the critical Sme daily.   Advertising money is sometimes channeled by governments through state-owned companies. In recent years, several state-controlled companies in Slovenia have moved their ad contracts away from the critical media. In Serbia, where state ad spending can account for up to 40 percent of the overall ad market, the state-owned telecommunications giant Telekom Srbija spends at least €10 million on advertising yearly. The most favored media outlets are those owned by the state. Politika daily, half-owned by the state, gobbles up almost two-thirds of the total state ad spend, according to a study by the World Association of Newspapers (WAN).   State ad contracting often operates through preferred ad agencies. In Hungary, for example, the state-controlled Hungarian Development Bank awarded the ad agency Bell & Partner some US$1.8 million for purchasing ads in 2013. The agency received the contract through a “negotiated tender” where it was the sole bidder, according to WAN.   In these countries, as in many others, the Mapping Digital Media researchers found signs of a tacit industry agreement: media companies which are affected don’t lodge complaints, either because they fear government retaliation in other forms or simply because they themselves could one day benefit.   Sullen resignation to the reality of state advertising is yielding to debate about what can be done. Latin America leads the way in developing a regional standard. In 2011, the Special Rapporteur for Freedom of Expression at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights, Catalina Botero, launched a set of principles on the regulation of government advertising, calling for fair and open criteria in disbursing state ad money based on market considerations. Peru recently introduced new rules on state advertising, requiring state authorities to publish their reasons for investing in certain media outlets and the exact figures.   In Europe, by contrast, little has yet been done. The Council of Europe has not tackled the problem head-on, although it obviously merits a recommendation. The European Commission is very active in opposing market-distorting state aid practices, yet it hasn’t ventured far into investigating state advertising deals. It has been left to the Commission’s High-Level Group on Media Freedom and Pluralism to note—in its non-binding report [PDF]—the alleged “interference by political authorities in the work of journalists … by restricting access to public advertising.” The High-Level Group recommended transparent and equitable distribution of state advertising, “reflecting not only numbers of readers but actively supporting responsible journalism and pluralism.”   Pressure to make state advertising allocation more open and transparent is bound to grow as more media outlets clamor for state funds. But this harmful practice won’t be stopped until citizens realize how their tax money is being spent to mislead them with slanted information.   http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/lapdogs-vs-watchdogs-state-advertising-and-media   Who needs lobbyists? See what big business spends to win American minds. (Center for Public Integrity)   Its not just lobbying. When Washington, D.C.’s biggest trade associations want to wield influence, they often put far more of their money into advertising and public relations, according to a new Center for Public Integrity investigation.   Take, for example, the American Petroleum Institute. The oil and gas industry trade group spent more than $7 million lobbying federal officials in 2012. But that sum was dwarfed by the $85.5 million it paid to four public relations and advertising firms to, in effect, lobby the American public — including $51.9 million just to global PR giant Edelman.   From 2008 through 2012, annual tax filings show, the API paid Edelman a staggering $327.4 million for advertising and public relations services, more than any other contractor.   It’s been well-publicized how much industry spends on lobbying the government, but little is known about how much money goes toward influencing the public. In an effort to find out more, Center for Public Integrity reporters examined the tax returns for trade associations that spent more than $1 million on lobbying in 2012.   The IRS requires the groups to report their top five contractors. Of $3.4 billion in contracts reported by the 144 trade groups from 2008 through 2012, more than $1.2 billion, or 37 percent, went toward advertising, public relations and marketing services, more than any other category.   The second-highest total, $682.2 million, or 20 percent of the total, was directed toward legal, lobbying and government affairs.   By industry sector, the biggest clients of PR, marketing and ad services were energy and natural resources associations.   * Access the report via the link below: http://www.publicintegrity.org/2015/01/15/16596/who-needs-lobbyists-see-what-big-business-spends-win-american-minds http://www.equaltimes.org/pr-firms-at-the-service-of-human#.VTSZqPCpWzk http://influenceexplorer.com/fixed-fortunes/ http://www.brookings.edu/events/2015/02/09-economic-agenda-america-sanders http://ourfuture.org/20150318/how-corporations-run-congress-a-talk-with-ryan-grim Visit the related web page
	View more stories