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Media urged to help bridge digital divide as World TV Forum opens at UN

-- As the annual United Nations World Television Forum opened today at UN Headquarters in New York, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the attending leaders of the audio-visual media to become "an agent for change and a partner for progress" in helping to bridge the digital divide separating the developed and developing countries.

"(R)adio and TV are, in a sense, the advance guard of the knowledge revolution," the Secretary-General told the participants of the Forum, which brought together top media executives and experts from around the world. "One of the things you can do is to inform people around the world about the Internet and its possibilities, and to help create the demand for the next stage."

Opening the two-day conference, held under the theme, "TV@Globe//adding values in the digital era," Mr. Annan noted that, paradoxically, in our own age of globalization, it sometimes seemed "as if only knowledge is not being globalized," while the knowledge gap between the North and South kept widening. New information technology, which had already brought extraordinary benefits to the developed world, could improve the chances for poor countries to "leapfrog" some of the long and painful stages in development, he stressed.

Noting that the effort to bridge the digital divide required concerted measures from a whole range of actors, the Secretary-General recalled his initiative to establish a UN Digital Task Force, which would bring together governments, multilateral development institutions, private industry and foundations, to spearhead a strategy for information technology development.

Echoing the Secretary-General's views on the unique reach and influence of the media, General Assembly President Harri Holkeri of Finland told industry leaders that the information and technology revolution offered unprecedented possibilities for development and prosperity. At the same time, he encouraged participants to explore ways in which the television industry could help ensure that technology did not speed further divergence between the world's rich and poor. His own country, Mr. Holkeri noted, had more Internet hosts than all of Africa; similarly, despite the ubiquitous cell phone, half the world's population had yet to use a telephone.

The Forum's primary goal is to address the fundamental challenges facing television in the digital age, including its role in bridging the divide that separates the digital "haves" from the "have nots." Its agenda also includes discussions on such issues as bandwidth, digital content and innovative television programming.

According to UN officials, the Forum is the direct result of the deepening partnership between the UN and the television industry. The five media partners in the conference -- Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) and Mediaset Group of Italy, the World Broadcasting Union, NHK of Japan, and EUTELSAT of France -- represent more than 100 broadcasting organizations.

For more information go to:
http://www.un.org/tvforum/main.html