Journalists engaged in discussions at the Caracas WSF call for breaking down the hegemony of the major media conglomerates and advocate democratising communication by giving a boost to alternative media. The deliberations about "another possible world" have been the common thread running through the World Social Forums, and this time centred on the role of the media and how the agents of alternative communication should confront the current world map of information, dominated as it is by big trasnational companies.

The director of the Cuban agency Prensa Latina, Frank Alvarez stressed that just five big conglomerates control more than 60 percent of the circulation of information at the global level, and that his agency is one of the few international alternative media that escape global hegemony. "When you look for monopolies in the [Latin American] region, you find them here also: Televisa in Mexico, Cisneros in Venezuela -- which is why we are talking about media monopolies not only of international scope, but also regional and local," he said. "Although they compete amongst themselves, all rely on mixed operations, on joint investments," he added.

Alvarez cited the example of the fusion of America Online and Time Warner. "The former contributed 163 million dollars, and the latter 137 million, to obtain the profits after working like a machine over the conscience of millions of human beings, and end all different mode of thinking so that we consume the lifestyles that they produce." He said it is urgent to return journalism to its social function, breaking away from private control and profits "that see information as mere merchandise."

Networks: Action!

The organizers of the debate underscored, in constrast, that democratisation of the media is on the rise, and could take root through campaigns promoted by the alternative media. It doesn't mean starting from zero: there is the precedent of the first Social Forum of the Americas in 2004 in Ecuador, where eight continental communications networks -- ADITAL, ALER, AMARC, APC, ALAI, OCLACC and WACC -- approved joint action plans to build a movement and to involve various people and institutions interested in making communications rights a reality in Latin America. "Now we are trying to finalise what was agreed through a campaign that will have diverse modalities, in function of the needs that arise in each of the regions, without any international bureaucracy," said Fernando Rojas, of the continental information network. He cited experts in stating that recuperating the Latin American traditions and introspection are key components to building truly alternative media and educating a critical citizenry. "It means the possibility of training peoples, giving them power they don't have today, and the possibility that they themselves guide their fate, that it isn't imposed upon them," Rojas said.

Telesur Is a Start

Uruguayan Aram Aharonian, director of Telesur, said the new multinational channel "emerges as an alternative to the accumulation of information, advertising and mass culture that is sent to us in the same package each day by 3,500 cable channels from the North, and that are also repeated by our television and radio stations and commercial press in each one of our countries."

He insisted on the necessity of "breaking from the conviction that anything alternative has to be marginal. "To be truly alternative we have to be massive -- reach everyone. We can't content ourselves with our message reaching 3 or 5 percent of the population, with a similar effort to what we would make to reach a greater percentage." Aharonian stressed the notion of quality: "To be truly alternative we must have a communications approach of the same quality and with much better content than that of the media we are challenging and to which we claim to be alternat