This House believes community radio is good for democracy

The events of the Arab Spring (and previous events such as the revolutions of 1989) have shown that effective means of communicating are vital. In a country where people have heard only one perspective, anything that can break the monopoly is to be welcomed. As Orwell put it, ‎'In an age of universal deceit, to tell the truth is a subversive act'.

Community radio can both encourage an initial outpouring of democracy and, just as importantly, ensure that a diversity of opinions means that one autocratic regime is not just replaced by another.

In almost all other forms of mass communication, genuinely democratic voices are easily swamped by those with either the power or the money to drown out the competition[i]. As the focus of community radio is public service, rather than profit, responsible to – and frequently produced by – their listener base there do not have commercial advertisers’ aversion to upsetting authority – either political or cultural. As a result they are free to eschew the bland lowest common denominator approach that is so typical of commercial radio.

[i] AMARC (World Association of Community Radio) booklet. What is Community Radio? 1998.

Community radio can indeed do the many wondrous things that Prop seems to trust it to do. It can also do more or less anything else. If proposition is trying to demonstrate that community radio, per se, supports democracy, then it needs to demonstrate how it does so more than, say, libraries or coffee shop discussion groups. It may be a public service that is responsible to the community but that does not mean that it cannot be infiltrated and controlled by the state like any other service.

Community radio relies on the power of its ideas and the thirst for those ideas among its audience. It accepts the notion that it is the exchange of information and views, freely given and received, that is more important than the ideas themselves.

It doesn’t require massive budgets and radio waves can be received on equipment that costs pennies; more importantly it can be shared.

For all of its pretensions of accessibility the devices used to access the Internet tend to be expensive and they also tend not to be shared – unlike radios[i].

To give some context to this, even paying Western prices, a small radio station can be started for as little as $10,000 with monthly costs of $1,000[ii]. Some of that, of course, relates to government issued licences, clearly this does not apply if the station is planning to be ignored by the authorities. These costs can be further reduced when the founders have a pre-existing knowledge of radio engineering or work with a partner organisation such as the BBC World Service or the various NGOs who specialise in the field[iii].

[i] Plunkett, John, Community radio: A rare success story. The Guardian. 9 March 2009.

[ii] Prometheus Radio Project.

[iii] Wikipedia. Community Radio.

While it is inexpensive to set up and run this is relatively expensive for the community compared to commercial radio, which is free to the user and perfectly capable of promoting the ideas of the free market which have had a proven benefit to democratic structures the world over.

In addition to which, realistically, democratic participation will end up involving larger national bodies such as trades union, political parties and civil society organisations who need to operate on a nationwide basis but also have larger budgets.

Autocracy has, at its root, the premise that only one perspective, or group of perspectives is legitimate. Certain assumptions are unquestionable, certain rules inviolable and, more often than not, certain voices unchallengeable.

It’s all too easy for that state of affairs to be normalised. Community radio offers another voice. More to the point it offers many.

As well as the value of the messages themselves, the very fact that they are there and broadcast is a powerful statement against autocratic assumptions. The process of establishing and running a community radio station is, in and of itself, a powerful fillip for community cohesion.

Giving voices to communities supports them as groups in their own right; cohesive, engaged and worthy of respect. In doing so it can provide a focus which increases the homogeneity of those communities without requiring the approval of a central structure of control[i]. In addition to well known examples such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, radio stations across the Middle East And, especially, Africa have been key movers in the shift to democracy[ii].

[i]  Siddharth. Riding the radio wave; Community radio in South-East Asia. Culture360.org 18 February 2010.

[ii] Buckley, Steve, President, World Association for Community Radio Broadcasters. Community Broadcasting: good practice in policy, law and regulation. UNESCO. 2008.

Once again, Proposition is conflating things that tend to go along with community development and those that cause it. The fact that vibrant and active communities, duly engaged in wider society, frequently set up institutions such as community radio in no way demonstrates that it encourages civic participation.

The events of the Arab Spring (and previous events such as the revolutions of 1989) have shown that effective means of communicating are vital. In a country where people have heard only one perspective, anything that can break the monopoly is to be welcomed. As Orwell put it, ‎'In an age of universal deceit, to tell the truth is a subversive act'.

Community radio can both encourage an initial outpouring of democracy and, just as importantly, ensure that a diversity of opinions means that one autocratic regime is not just replaced by another.

In almost all other forms of mass communication, genuinely democratic voices are easily swamped by those with either the power or the money to drown out the competition[i]. As the focus of community radio is public service, rather than profit, responsible to – and frequently produced by – their listener base there do not have commercial advertisers’ aversion to upsetting authority – either political or cultural. As a result they are free to eschew the bland lowest common denominator approach that is so typical of commercial radio.

[i] AMARC (World Association of Community Radio) booklet. What is Community Radio? 1998.

Community radio can indeed do the many wondrous things that Prop seems to trust it to do. It can also do more or less anything else. If proposition is trying to demonstrate that community radio, per se, supports democracy, then it needs to demonstrate how it does so more than, say, libraries or coffee shop discussion groups. It may be a public service that is responsible to the community but that does not mean that it cannot be infiltrated and controlled by the state like any other service.

Community radio relies on the power of its ideas and the thirst for those ideas among its audience. It accepts the notion that it is the exchange of information and views, freely given and received, that is more important than the ideas themselves.

It doesn’t require massive budgets and radio waves can be received on equipment that costs pennies; more importantly it can be shared.

For all of its pretensions of accessibility the devices used to access the Internet tend to be expensive and they also tend not to be shared – unlike radios[i].

To give some context to this, even paying Western prices, a small radio station can be started for as little as $10,000 with monthly costs of $1,000[ii]. Some of that, of course, relates to government issued licences, clearly this does not apply if the station is planning to be ignored by the authorities. These costs can be further reduced when the founders have a pre-existing knowledge of radio engineering or work with a partner organisation such as the BBC World Service or the various NGOs who specialise in the field[iii].

[i] Plunkett, John, Community radio: A rare success story. The Guardian. 9 March 2009.

[ii] Prometheus Radio Project.

[iii] Wikipedia. Community Radio.

While it is inexpensive to set up and run this is relatively expensive for the community compared to commercial radio, which is free to the user and perfectly capable of promoting the ideas of the free market which have had a proven benefit to democratic structures the world over.

In addition to which, realistically, democratic participation will end up involving larger national bodies such as trades union, political parties and civil society organisations who need to operate on a nationwide basis but also have larger budgets.

Autocracy has, at its root, the premise that only one perspective, or group of perspectives is legitimate. Certain assumptions are unquestionable, certain rules inviolable and, more often than not, certain voices unchallengeable.

It’s all too easy for that state of affairs to be normalised. Community radio offers another voice. More to the point it offers many.

As well as the value of the messages themselves, the very fact that they are there and broadcast is a powerful statement against autocratic assumptions. The process of establishing and running a community radio station is, in and of itself, a powerful fillip for community cohesion.

Giving voices to communities supports them as groups in their own right; cohesive, engaged and worthy of respect. In doing so it can provide a focus which increases the homogeneity of those communities without requiring the approval of a central structure of control[i]. In addition to well known examples such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, radio stations across the Middle East And, especially, Africa have been key movers in the shift to democracy[ii].

[i]  Siddharth. Riding the radio wave; Community radio in South-East Asia. Culture360.org 18 February 2010.

[ii] Buckley, Steve, President, World Association for Community Radio Broadcasters. Community Broadcasting: good practice in policy, law and regulation. UNESCO. 2008.

Once again, Proposition is conflating things that tend to go along with community development and those that cause it. The fact that vibrant and active communities, duly engaged in wider society, frequently set up institutions such as community radio in no way demonstrates that it encourages civic participation.

Experience suggests that the airwaves, unregulated, tend to attract pedagogues seeking followers more than democrats seeking the views of others. Particularly in areas of high sectarian divisions, technologies that propagate the views of every mullah with a mic are unlikely to help democracy in the middle east. Indeed the experience with the nearest equivalent in the US, talk radio, shows how fantastically divisive it can be.[i]

Community radio in areas that do not have a history of plurality and diversity of opinion would be likely to see the spread of radio stations pandering to the specific views of every shard and splinter of opinion, reinforcing that particular set of beliefs while ignoring all others – it is difficult to imagine a more toxic – and less democratic – option to encourage in the Arab world[ii].

The difficulty, as shown in the reference given in the previous paragraph, is that exactly the same ease of access applies to fanatics as to democrats – who may, frequently, be the same people. In the instance of Rwanda, extremists inciting violence (almost entirely Hutus) had acquired small scale radio equipment. The government couldn’t afford the jamming equipment (the US jamming flights would cost $8500 per hour) and sought assistance from the Americans. The UN objected as such actions were clearly sectarian. However, the wide use of Radio – initially funded by the West – which, in part at least had lead to the genocide then left a toxic legacy of fanatics dominating the airwaves, those involved were eventually convicted in 2003.[iii]

[i] Noriega, Chin A, and Iribarren, Francisco Javier, ‘Quantifying Hate Speech on Commercial Talk Radio’, Chicano Studies Research Center, November 2011.

[ii] Wisner, Frank G., ‘Memorandum for deputy assistant to the president for national security affairs, national security council, Department of Defense, 5 May 1994.

[iii] Smith, Russell, ‘The impact of hate media in Rwanda’, BBC News, 3 December 2003.

Dale, Alexander C., ‘Countering hate messages that lead to violence: The United Nations’s chapter VII authority to use radio jamming to halt incendiary broadcasts’, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, Vol 11. 2001.

Opposition is letting state-sanctioned media off the hook fantastically lightly. Just staying within the Arab world, the number of broadcasters that sully the name of journalism by acting as apologists for butchers and torturers is astonishing. One example of this – selected utterly at random from an embarrassment of riches – was the state media’s declaration of historic victories by both Milosovich and Saddam Hussein after both had received drubbings from Western allies[i]. There is at least a chance that a broadcaster won’t be just a voice for the state if it isn’t funded or run by the president or one of his closest allies or appointees.

[i]  Ash, Timothy Garton, Facts are Subversive. The Strange Toppling of Slobodan Milošević. Atlantic Books. 2009. This account is one of many, many others that highlight the importance of the control of media centres in democratic shift. However, it highlights the Serbian state media’s proclamation of Milošević’s ‘victories’ against the west but also the impact of this when, fallowing the dictator’s fall, it was the seizure of the state TV and Radio stations, rather than parliament or the presidential palace, that denoted victory.

Proposition is right to point out the role that has traditionally been filled by relatively small scale radio – providing a relatively cheap method of getting in touch with anybody willing to listen. However, that has, effectively, been rendered redundant by Internet technology. The power of Facebook, Youtube and other sites to disseminate ideas and information as well as phone texting has not only matched that role but surpassed it.

With no capital costs in an era of internet cafes and omnipresent cell phones, the free exchange of information through digital and portable technology has met exactly the needs and concerns Proposition highlights.[i]

Suggesting that community radio will somehow supplement or enhance that process it taking a step backwards; support for the relatively monolithic radio model runs all of the risks of empowering extremists already mentioned without even equalling the benefits of texting and social media[ii].

[i] Helling, Alex, ‘This House would use foreign aid funds to research and distribute software that allows bloggers and journalists in non democratic countries to evade censorship and conceal their online activities’, freespeechdebate.idebate.org, 18 May 2012.

[ii] Hood, Michael, NPR CEO: Internet will replace broadcast radio in 5-10 years. Blatherwatch, 3 June 2010.

For all of its potential, the idea that the Internet is a worldwide force is something of a Western conceit. That fact is doubly the case when discussing the social media sites that Op seems to think are such a panacea. These sites – and the Internet in general – are overwhelmingly white, Western and wealthy.

To associate a medium with a particular virtue is missing the point. Radio has been used for atrocity and tyranny (Rwanda would be an obvious example) just as much as the promotion and development of democracy. Equally the suggestion that community radio has a more significant role to play in this regard as opposed to, say, the BBC world Service, is ignoring the facts.

Particular media cannot be said to support democratic renewal any more than particular languages can. Equally, the revolutions of 1989 demonstrated the reality that taking control of the national radio station is, in some situations, more important than seizing the Presidential Palace. Neither the ‘community’ element nor the ‘radio’ aspect are innately democratic.

Different media have, undeniably, produced different types of social change – but they all have possibilities for democratic progress[i].

[i]  Sedra, Mark, Revolution 2.0: democracy promotion in the age of social media. The Globe and Mail. 2 February 2011.

It is a platform, but it’s a platform with history – one that has allowed small or marginalised groups to have a voice. Of course a radio station won’t build democratic strength on its own but it is an important tool in normalising the concept that the voices of those communities have both worth and power.