Communication sector for freedom

In a city noted for its parochialism, it is no wonder that the latest international conference to be held in Manila – the 25th AMIC International Conference Sept. 27-29 – came and went generally unnoticed.

Among Asia’s capital cities, Metro Manila has a reputation of being the most parochial as shown by the daily headlines of its major newspapers and broadcasts compared to those of Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Hong Kong, or Kuala Lumpur, for example. Most of Manila news is local – extrajudicial killings, crimes, politics, sex, celebrities.

We therefore were pleasantly surprised to find out that the secretary-general of the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre (AMIC), Ramon G. Tuazon, is a Filipino.

Tuazon shared with us that 604 delegates came to the conference from all over the world, a record high, he said. Most AMIC conferences held in other countries in the past drew an average of 200 delegates. Of this number, 70 were foreign participants coming from 17 countries. The biggest foreign delegations came from India and Indonesia. A total of 136 papers were presented.

For this conference, AMIC reached out to the younger generation, and invited 254 graduate and undergraduate students from 11 schools within and outside the Philippines.

The current chairperson of the six-man AMIC Board of Directors, incidentally, is also a Filipino, Dr. Crispin C. Maslog. So an all-Filipino tandem is now running this 47-year-old regional organization, which has members in 27 countries mostly in Asia-Australia region. 

Dr. Maslog, a founding member of AMIC way back in 1970, told this columnist in an interview that he is personally excited to have AMIC located in Manila now. He remembers being with the late Dr. Gloria Feliciano at the initial conference in Singapore to lobby for AMIC to be based in Manila at the start, but failed.

“Now AMIC is finally here in Manila, and we can accomplish greater things for the development of Asian media and media education and research in the coming years,” he said. The new AMIC offices are located at Philippine Women’s University on Taft Ave., Manila.

Vice President Leni Robredo and UNESCO Assistant Secretary-General for Communication and Information Frank LaRue gave video messages to the conference. Ombudsman Conchita Carpio Morales delivered the well received main keynote address to the conference. 

The only organization of its kind in Asia, AMIC is an international non-governmental organization (NGO) recognized by the United Nations and committed to communication media development in the Asia-Pacific region.

It was first registered as a non-profit charity in Singapore to promote “an ethical and socially responsible communication sector committed to the tenets of freedom and democracy in a socio-culturally diverse region.” It transferred its operation to Manila in 2015.

AMIC’s main mission is to nurture and promote communication media research, capacity building, knowledge management and dialogue among academic, industry, government, and civil society.

These are done through programs that include the annual conference, the premier communication event in the region, research projects as well as books and publications, including the Asian Communication Journal and Media Asia, both published by leading publisher Taylor and Francis. 

About a dozen communication icons, media educators and scholars from the US, Europe and Asia converged at Miriam College for the three-day conference on the theme, “Rethinking Communication in a Resurgent Asia.”

Two of these icons – a communication theorist and a practitioner – were given the prestigious Asia Communication Award by AMIC. The first icon, Shelton Gunarate, former Sri Lankan journalist and professor emeritus of University Moorhead (MSUM), received the AMIC Asia Communication Award for 2016 in recognition of his “ground-breaking scholarship and intellectual contribution to Asian media and communication.” He has proposed an Asian theory of communication that breaks away from the Western models.

The second icon, Wijayananda Jayaweera, a Sri Lankan broadcaster who spent a lifetime developing broadcasting in Asia up to the end of his distinguished career as UNESCO Director of Communication and the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), was given the AMIC Asia Communication Award for 2017 in the field of institution building.

A third icon, Dasho Kinley Dorji from Bhutan, delivered a keynote address at the conference. He was former secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications in Bhutan and managing director and editor in chief of Kuensel, Bhutan’s national newspaper. He talked about Gross National Happiness (GNH) as an alternative model for human development.

The other icons who delivered impressive papers at the conference included:

– John Lent, an AMIC Asia communication awardee, pioneered in the study of mass communication and popular culture, comic art, and animation, in Asia (since 1964) and Caribbean (since 1968). He has authored or edited 82 books, published and edited International Journal of Comic Art (1999- ), Asian Cinema (1994-2012), and Berita (1975-2001).

– Ronny Adhikarya has spent 40 years in international development assistance work, serving the World Bank, United Nations, and other international organizations. He was also associated with Stanford University and East-West Center and worked with learning institutions worldwide, including the World Bank where he directed the Knowledge Utilization through Learning Technologies (KULT) Program. Originally from Indonesia, Dr. Adhikarya since 1972 has undertaken professional assignments in 46 countries, and travelled to 89 countries.

– Ang Peng Hwa is a lawyer and professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information of Nanyang Technological University. He is director of NTU’s Singapore Internet Research Centre. He authored “Ordering Chaos: Regulating the Internet (Thomson, 2005),’ which argues that the internet can be, is being, and should be regulated. 

– Frank LaRue, UNESCO assistant director-general for communication and information, could not make it personally, but he delivered a video address. A Guatemalan human rights lawyer, he was UN special rapporteur for the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression from 2008 to 2014. During his tenure, he wrote and presented 10 landmark reports on the state of freedom of expression to the UN Human Rights Council and UN General Assembly.

– Lars Bestle is head of International Media Support's (IMS) programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America. He is a media and development specialist with more than 15 years of experience in international development work specializing in independent media, democratization and good governance.

– Franz Josef Eilers, SVD is a Titus Brandsma Leadership in Social Communication Awardee in recognition of his work in social communication. Fr. Eilers has taught in different universities, including the Pontifical Gregorian and Salesian Universities in Rome. He founded the very first academic journal for Christian Communication titled “Communicatio Socialis.” He initiated a graduate program in social and pastoral communication (MAT-SPC) at the University of Santo Tomas. He was executive secretary for social communication of the Federation of Asian Bishops’ Conferences (FABC-OSC

– Dr. Binod Agrawal, an Asia communication awardee, is one of India’s pioneers in holistic study and qualitative research and quantitative survey in development and communication. Dr. Agrawal was professor of eminence and director general of TALEEM Research Foundation, Ahmedabad (2008-2015) which he founded as director (1995-2008).

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