THE EYES OF THE WORLD’S MEDIA IN LATIN AMERICA

During the past month, I have seen an increasing number of Latin American stories in the headlines of the international media. What I mean by international media is not only the Western Hemisphere and Spanish speaking press, but also British Media, and other countries like Germany, France, China and Middle East region. The most notable was when three Latin American stories captured the attention of the whole world in one week:  The police uprising or intended coup in Ecuador, The Peruvian writer Mario Vargas LLosa awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize of literature, and the historic rescue of the Chilean miners. The eyes of the world and international media are turning to Latin America: a situation that was not happening two years ago.

Latin American news was not frequently part of the top stories of British Media such as BBC News, ITV News, The Telegraph and The Guardian Newspaper. Their international news coverage was basically limited to inform about the British Commonwealth countries that were formerly part of “the Pink Empire”. Despite of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia you could hardly find information about other Latin American countries. The only source of information was BBC Mundo (www.bbcmundo.com) whose target is the Spanish speaking audience and has no broadcasting platform.

In 2008, I was concerned about this news gap, so I started a research which ended after 8 months.  I had the opportunity to interview important people of the Global Media Industry, including BBC Director-General Mark Thompson. He admitted the lack of stories coming from Latin America, but he justified it saying that the demanding short time of the daily news programs hinder the diffusion of Latin American stories. Thompson asked his colleague BBC News Director, Helen Boaden, to help him answer my question and she specified that BBC really have no bureaux, but works with stringers or freelancers in Latin America. (http://blogs.journalism.co.uk/editors/2009/06/22/where-does-the-bbc-have-bureaux-and-why/) Most of the News Directors, Corporate Executives and International Journalists I interviewed mentioned the same issues regarding time and budget; however, the interest in Latin America was flourishing like leaves on a tree.

During the past year, I could notice a reduction in the news gap.  Nowadays, you could see more Latin American stories broadcasted to the English speaking audience and also Latin American news sections in the British Media. Just to put two examples: BBC News and The Guardian Newspaper. 

BBC’s website created a section called “News: Latin America & Caribbean”: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world/latin_america/ where you have a brief profile of all the Latin countries.   Even more, last Sunday's (24 Oct. 2010) top story of BBC News homepage was the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/); and you could even find, in its Latin America Section, the chronicle of an Ecuadorean winning the siesta contest in Spain. 

On the other hand, The Guardian Newspaper has currently a Latin American Correspondent, Rory Carroll, who is travelling around the Continent to cover the Latin news to send them to the other side of the World. The www.guardian.co.uk has daily Latin American stories and as part of its tops news too. For instance, the Cholera Outbreak in Haiti was also one of the headlines of The Guardian’s homepage. In addition, this British Newspaper developed a page of news specifically related to each country of Latin America, For example, Ecuador: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/ecuador

In fact, the annual UK TV Exports Survey revealed that the sales of British Television programs to Latin America went up to 17% last year (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2010/oct/04/export-television-shows-rises). Moreover, this vision is expanding to the Middle East networks, which are permanently covering Latin American news and monitoring Latin America market.

For instance, AL-Jazeera (http://english.aljazeera.net/news/americas/) has also a section named “Americas” were 25% of its content are Latin American stories.  I also know that there are some other Middle East media companies interested to open bureaux and TV Stations in Latin America to target Spanish speaking audiences. 

In conclusion, the transformation is just starting. The international media firms are facing a transition of deep globalization which involves a change of format and content development.  The export of products and services are growing within the worldwide media industry whose eyes are now in Latin America.