opinion

Small screen, big challenges
by Raúl Leis R.

A recent national poll found that children and adolescents spend between three and four hours per day in front of a television, and that adults over 46 spend even more time than they do, with the difference being that the latter are persons of an age where they should have formed values. It would be interesting to know with more precision the programs that children and adolescents in Panama watch or prefer, as in the USA it is calculated that children between three and 12 years spend six hours per day in front of a television on average, and by way of the programs they watch by the time they are 13 years old they have seen some 14,000 people die on the small screen. By age 18 a youngster has spent 15,000 hours in front of a television and absorbed a total of about 21,000 crimes --- murders, rapes, robberies and other abuses.

Among the advertising spots into which the most has been invested and which have the greatest impact, the top 10 contain three negative elements from the public health perspective: alcohol products (beer), the publicity for which aims at the youth market; the casinos, which promote gambling and also associated it with alcohol consumption and other practices; and fast food, which is widely criticized as junk food for being inappropriate for healthy diets. The question is: How is this permitted?

One interesting and positive element is the impact of the nationally produced programs (humor, dances, news) and those which involve national sports teams, which equal or surpass the canned telenovelas and major market films. It possibly has to do with a public that's looking to recognize itself on the screen in the process of building an identity, but one would have to ask about the need to improve the quality of the programs, and to stimulate the reception of the educational channels (FETV-5 and SERTV-11).

Four-member families on the average possess two television sets, which marks the increasing impact of TV, especially the diversification of consumption. Now the whole family doesn't watch the same set, which used to be the only moment in which the family would get together in many households.

The fault isn't the knife but the assassin, Eduardo Galeano says about the communications media, arguing that the medium is not so questionable as are those who determine the messages that are transmitted by the newspaper, the magazine, the television or the radio. It's necessary to recognize the enormous responsibility of the advertisers who sponsor these messages, the communicators who manage the media and the public who receives the messages --- the latter often trapped among passivity, indifference and conformism.

Only a coalition of the best forces can help us improve the presentations of the media in order to wed entertainment and information with orientation and conscience. This requires on the one hand stimuli and positive reinforcement, and when necessary citizen pressure to oblige advertisers and communicators to promote a leap in quality of television and radio programming as well as in the written media. On the other hand it's urgent to promote education and criticism of the communications media, which allows a greater capacity among the viewers, listeners and readers to discern among the messages and ever more transform themselves from passive receptors into active perceptors.