I’ll be posting my #SinFiltro (apparently, not #SinFiltros) notes here for those who won’t be watching the show live.
I have now posted my views on the show, in the shape of an open letter to the moderator.
Participants
Moderator: @genarolozano, prof. at ITAM and Ibero
@antonioattolini, ITAM
@astroboydedios, ITAM undergrad, current postgrad at CIDE.
Daniela Higuera, ITESM? but some tweets said she studied at ITAM, so I’m not sure
@gisela_pda, ITAM
@jorgemgalvan, ITAM
Marco Vinicio Bárcena – looks like ITAM, too.
(needless to say, ITESM and ITAM are private universities. I think they all come from social science backgrounds – economics, political science. All of the participants study in Mexico City, and my linguistics teacher would say all their accents fit into the high class dialects. Just sayin’).
Opening words by @genarolozano:
This will be a weekly show. The same students we’ll see today will be participating in the following weeks, unless they themselves quit. There will be an open chair to invite rotating students from other universities. He will moderate the debates.
First topic: the defense of the show and its participants, in the face of all the online criticism they’ve all received
I didn’t write speaker-specific notes throughout the entire debate, but I did write notes on Antonio Attolini’s response in this topic: he was asked if he is #yosoy132, and he said he used to be one, institutionally speaking, until his local assembly expelled him. He added that he said since the beginning that he considers this movement to go beyond the formal institutions, and thus he considers himself #yosoy132 the way he considers all engaged citizens to be. @JorgeMGalvan, who has anti-#yosoy132 sentiments from what I could grasp, said that it was unfair to consider all engaged citizens #yosoy132.
This sparked a debate on #yosoy132 started among participants, but @genarolozano quickly shut it down saying they’re not there to debate 132, but the democratization of media.
So then he posed the second topic: should they be, say, grateful that Televisa opened this space to listen to youth’s voices?
Some say yes, some others say no. No major arguments IMO either way. Twitter only cared about it when @gisela_pda used the wrong word in Spanish for kindness, ‘bonditud‘, to talk about Televisa’s relative “kindness” in allowing it to happen. (Random fact: 40 min after the end of the show, Topsy counts 257 tweets with the word “bonditud” in the last seven days, which certainly wouldn’t be used by anyone who didn’t watch this show)
Third topic: Since someone touched upon the fact that TV can’t be democratized because of its antidemocratic nature, let’s talk about the democratization of media. What is that exactly?
Again, I don’t have speaker-specific notes. All speakers started mentioning what they considered to be the problem that needs to be addressed through the democratization of media. For example, Antonio said that the problem is not the lack plurality in media, since there are hundreds of channels. The problem is the concentration of power in two channels. He asks to open the spectrum. The debate started to go all over the place here.
@genarolozano: Taking the power away from the 10 hands that control 80% of media in Mexico involves State action. What are you suggesting, concretely?
The debate didn’t really touch concrete actions, but it did show some of the speakers’ visions on State obligations. They ranged from Antonio’s hardcore ‘It’s simply a State imperative’ (“though let’s not go all Stalinist”) to @astroboydedios’s more moderate statement saying he didn’t think the national TV law stretches to the extent Antonio thinks it does. Marco Vinici brought the Argentinean media law into the discussion, and, again, things started to go all over the place.
@genarolozano tries to bring it back. So how can they change things institutionally?
One response is that it’s not about institutional change, since media respond to demand. Attolini then says Chavez took the concession away from RCTV, giving a, well, interesting example of how the State can function.
@genarolozano: How do we achieve institutional change?
Daniela Higuera was the first one to answer, saying she frankly thinks it’s not gonna happen, and that we can only demand media are open [about their intentions]. Other participants start talking about the national TV law again, and then @Jorgemgalvan said that we should allude to the pacts of La Moncloa that gave birth to El País, a newspaper that incorporates an ombudsman: a figure that promotes the democratization of media.
@genarolozano: We have had ombudsman figures in Mexico, so let’s discuss that as a means towards the democratization of media.
I don’t have concrete notes from this part, except that the debate went back and forth on the topic of whether the ombudsman was a useful figure or not, and also touched upon the phenomenon of telebancadas (I can’t believe there’s no Global Voices on this… Essentially, it’s a term that’s been thrown around since early in the year to talk about Congresspeople who have ties with Televisa and TV Azteca).
Then @genarolozano spoke again: You haven’t told me how you’ll break the concentration of media power, nor really spoken about the ombudsman.
I’m being unfair again by focusing on what caught my ear(?): Daniela Higuera answered that she didn’t think any of them in the debate was looking for a solution to the concentration, and @gisela_pda said “We need to establish legal schemes through which we can impose sanctions on media spreading false information” (?!?!?!? my emphasis). Someone yelled ‘stalinism!!!’ at her.
@Genarolozano says the show is coming to an end, and requests each participant’s final views on what’s important in the topic of the democratization of media.
@astroboydedios: Increasing internet access in the country, so people can create their own contents (and we can finally substitute María la del barrio with contents of our own making)
Daniela Higuera: That media are open [about their agenda, I think she meant, based on what she said throughout the debate]; that we aren’t thus able just to vote, but to vote based on information; that commissions in the Congress have a filter that prevents things like telebancada from happening, that our representatives tell us how those commissions have been formed.
Marco Vinici: I still think media law in Argentina poses an excellent division of the spectrum. We should press Congress to give reps like Javier Corral the chance to discuss these topics the way we have done so here.
@Antonioattolini: [I honestly didn’t get 90% of what he said, so I’m unfairly focusing on the two bits I did get] Let’s not live in the “we are a fucked up country” scheme; let’s make the commissions-forming process in Congress transparent.
@Gisela_pda: Media should come out of the closet and [make their agenda, I think, again based on what she said earlier] transparent. We have the obligation of adopting veracity as a media criteria, and the State should give economic incentives to achieve such.
@JorgeMGalvan: internet access is a priority. Hopefully, one day Cofetel will be independent and autonomous.
@genarolozano’s final remarks:
Throughout the debates, we will sometimes reach conclusions. Some other times, we won’t.
This show will be aired in accordance with academic semesters. Our last show will be early in December, when it will be time for our participants to study for finals.
Pay attention to our social media dynamics, where we will open opportunities to other university students to debate in this show.
Some extra tidbits that appeared along the way:
@genarolozano referred to the show’s presence on Televisa as an invitation they had received, rather than a space that they had actively sought. When criticism started to rain upon them all in the days leading to the airing of the show, he said that he had filmed a pilot with another TV company and it had never aired, and that YouTube never sent them an invitation.
Speakers interrupted each other a lot, like in most TV debates. Making fun of Gisela’s “bonditud”, of Antonio’s emphatic speaking style, pointing out the radical lefty proposals that were being thrown around. I don’t think the tone was intentionally disrespectful, as much as it was, IMO, an attempt to keep a juvenile vision while discussing ‘grown up’ topics.