Danny Schechter

I will be coming back to the LSE with a bit more life experience than when I left in l968. I went on into a career in journalism, in print, radio, television, independent production and filmmaking. I have written six books, made 15 films, and think about and work on the issues that the seminar is raising every day.

I credit my LSE years to opening my eyes to the diverse currents of the world, thanks in part to my interactions with student body from all around the world, and thanks to the travelling and explorations I did since then taking me to more than 50 countries and many cultures. For the past 17 years I have helped run an independent media company called Globalvision that tries to cover global issues from the inside out and bottom up. That means listening to diverse voices and being exposed to varieties of cultural expression.

Curiously, my principal academic paper back then at the height of the “Swinging London” days was on the counter culture in America and whether cultural change could lead political change. Those are a set of issues I am still dealing with all these years later. I was assessing as an observer and participant on how the generational and political conflicts of that age would or would not change the world.

As I travelled from the 60s to 60, I realize how much the culture shifted and, yet, how hard it was to transform the status quo.

Nevertheless, coming of age in that era led me to informing my own journalism by “tuning in” to what artists are saying and doing it. Usually they live and think in more nuanced and layered ways, linking the personal to the political and vice versa.
Culture and the arts have always been central to my work as a producer, whether in profiling the likes of Tina Turner, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen or the advent or hip hop or running a TV series on human rights with a strong cultural components. I have long been exposed to and become an advocate for world music, theatre, literature, poetry, films etc.

I am also no stranger to the corporate world. I have worked in large companies and now run a smaller on. I need to function as a business man too and have always been interested in the power and responsibility of the corporate order that influences and affects us far more than most governments.

As a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard I sat in on classes at the Harvard Business School and Sloan School at MIT. I attended three annual meetings at the World Economic Forum in Davos and New York and am familiar with the issues the transnational business world is coping with.

We also looked at corporate behaviour in our film Globalisation and Human rights, assessing issues of corporate social responsibility and have worked for transnational companies including Reebok, Associated Press and the Body Shop among others. I have interacted with many top CEOS and tend today to monitor the business press that is often far more detailed and accurate than the general news section.

All of this background is a way of saying that I consider the themes of the seminar timely and important.

Yes, of course, corporations can and must play a role in processes of transformation and backing the arts for them is one way to do it. But beyond that companies themselves can have a broader social and cultural impact by what they do and how they do it, how they connect with and educate their own employees and impact on their own communities.

I have known many enlightened business leaders. I worked closely for example with Dame Anita Roddick as she rolled out the Body Shop to America. I observed up close the difficulty of translating rhetoric into actual policies and practices. I saw how the market logic of business itself often conflicted with the values and branding those companies took pride in.

I have also been struck by how motivated many corporations are to fund the arts or sponsor film festivals and associate with cultural figures whose work gives their lives more meaning.
We are living in very unbrave times when scrutiny by regulators, law suits by share holders and bullying by expose hungry scandal sheets result in many businesses exhibiting intense caution and reluctance to engage in anything with a whiff of controversy and edge. They pay lip service to the cause of free expression but are afraid to practice.

That said, there are ways in which corporate support of culture can win friends, influence people and help promote more of an empathetic connection between West and East, North and South.

Cultural nationalism is a driving force in the world. You see how sports competitions bring it out, often resulting in violence and conflict. Media outlets often promote it by demonizing the other as in Rupert Murdoch’s NY Post calling the French “cheese eating surrender monkeys” in the run-up to the war. Stereotyping can exacerbate conflict as in so much of the reporting of the Arab world and Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It promotes negative attitudes as well as pumps up jingoistic thinking.

At the same time cultural internationalism through global events like the Olympics, Eurovision song contests, and global TV specials can and do bring people together and show models of cooperation or at least harmonious competition.

Global media outlets are for the most part corporations, run along corporate lines. They are the transmitters of culture and its prime distorter. They are our political church as well

They must be encouraged to connect to the world in a different way and to act more socially responsibly. A new global media and democracy movement is emerging to encourage them to do that. Journalists and activists are joining hands to promote more cultural and viewpoint diversity on the air.

How can we persuade business to take the lead in its interest in this area? How do we persuade the public that preserving our cultural environment-what we see, read and know-is as important as defending the national environment.

These are issues I work with every day.  These are the issues I hope to raise at the Seminar.

Danny Schechter, New York, June 9th 2005