Citizens' Media Watch (Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social) - Peru

September 2008

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Citizens' Media Watch (Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social) - Peru

Country

Peru

Region

Global, Latin America

Programme Summary

Founded in 2001, Citizens' Media Watch is a non-profit institutional platform that brings together eleven civil society organisations in an effort to monitor the quality of mass media in Peru. It consists of the Nacional Association of Advertisers (ANDA), UNICEF, communication faculties of several different universities and a web of interested specialists and opinion leaders. There is also a group of volunteers from seven cities: Lima, Arequipa, Cusco, Puno, Iquitos, Trujillo, and Chimbote; and it relies on the participation of citizens all around the country.

Principal objectives of Citizens' Media Watch are to: mobilise civil society institutions to work towards better quality mass media content; make visible citizens' opinions regarding the media; educate and mobilise citizens to achieve the right to voice their opinions; and influence the authorities, entrepreneurs, and media themselves to see their responsibility in communicating with Peruvian audiences.

The executive secretary of Citizens' Media Watch is Calandria Social Communicators Association, which has 21 years of experience in the communication and development area, including projects investigating media, publishing books and producing audiovisual materials.

Communication Strategies

Regulation

Citizens' Media Watch has presented a Citizen Law Proposal which defends children's rights and protects children in the media, among other things. This proposal has been created by politicians, journalists, entrepreneurs and experts; it has been discussed over two years with 12,000 citizens and supported by 85,000 signatures and thousands of institutional supporting letters. Currently, it is under discussion in the Republic Congress.

Participation

Children and teens have participated in two consults (opinion polls) - one in 2001 and the other between 2003 and 2004 - in seven cities of the country through their local Citizens' Media Watch. They have gathered opinions from nealy 350 children and 350 teens in the first consult and more than 2,000 in the second one. In addition, they have completed 15 children and teen 'judgements', which consisted in a participatory process concerning television programming. In the first 'judgement', children and teen discussions were motivated by an audiovisual programme and in the second one, they prepared their verdicts and demands for a better programing on public channels. Those child and teen 'judgements' were realized in November 2003 in the four areas of Lima city and in the urban and rural areas of Cusco.

Research and publications

Besides the consults and the judgements of children and teens, which have been a participatory process that gave Citizens' Media Watch useful information about their perception of television programming, the Media Watch has also done research on programming where they have analysed the variations in television programming not only under a quantitative point of view but also under a qualitative one. In this way, they have watched the volume and variety of programs offered for children and teens and also they have analysed the quality of their contents.

Consults, judgements, and programme research have been published in the following books:

Seducidos por la tele. Huellas educativas de la televisión en padre y niños. (Seduced by TV. Educative traces of televisión on parents and children) Asociación de Comunicadores Sociales calandria Coedición: CEAAL y Save the Children, Lima, Perú. Lima, 1995.
Los Niños Te Ven...y qué ven?. Una televisión violenta que divierte y desencanta (Children watch you...and what do they watch?. A violent television that enjoy and dissapoint). Una publicación de la Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social, editada gracias a la contribución de UNICEF y la Comisión nacional de los Derechos de los Niños, las Niñas y los Adolescentes. Lima, 2002.

Los Niños Te Ven...y proponen una nueva ética (Children watch you...and they propose a new ethics). (Still unpublished)

On the experience of 'Children watch you...and what do they watch?', children and teens looked for broadcasters for delivering the book as a symbolic gesture of participation and direct commmunication between them and television producers.

Ethics Semaphore

With the objective of watching over and monitoring quality TV programmes and child rights issues, the Citizens' Media Watch collaborates with the Ethics Committee of the National Association of Advertisers (ANDA), which is in charge of the Ethics Semaphore.

Next projects and actions

Currently, they are preparing a few projects:

they aim to organise the 1st TV Projects for Kids Contest, to promoting entertainment programme production with educative content for children and teens - the prize will be the production and diffusion of the winning project on a public TV channel
they aim to form a news agency in favor of children and teenagers
they will continue to develop a project in schools in order for children and teenagers to learn their rights on communication and can establish a mechanism and network that supports them in extending their demands to the mass media
they hope to have related work with Parents Associations on education for communication
and they will organise events for reflecting on the role of television and social responsibility and for capacity building on production criteria for media, and discussion meetings with advertisers and broadcasters for positive communication and thinking on Peruvian childhood issues.

Development Issues

Media Monitoring, Regulation, Children, Gender, Citizenship.

Key Points

Citizens' Media Watch claims that it is currently the only institution in Peru dedicated exclusively to monitoring media for a better quality and offering mechanisms for citizen participation. Through Media Watch, citizens can express their opinion about media and they can also advocate for respect of their communication rights.

The Law Proposal of the Citizens' Media Watch is the first in Peru and Latin America´s history that is presented as a CITIZENSHIP proposal.

Partners

Citizens' Media Watch has the financial support of the British Council, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) and UNICEF.

Contact

Citizens' Media Watch
Veeduría Ciudadana de la Comunicación Social
Cahuide 752
Jesús María - Lima 11, Perú
Tel.: 051 - 01 - 2656525
veeduriaciudadana@terra.com.pe
Citizen's Media Watch site (in Spanish)

Citizens' Media Watch has the financial support of the British Council, the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)

Poll