Keep on Rockin' in the 3rd World

I had the tables turned on me in my classroom the other day. Actually, that's a pretty frequent occurence as you can see by this photo. My students are debating the finer points of their homework assignment(an assignment they did not do).

But this was different, this time we were teetering on a very fundamental explanation and understanding of journalism, functional democracy and Perú.

It all started with this guy...on the right...Rául Vargas...host of the most popular morning news program in Perú.

In the spirit, thankfully just the spirit, of Howard Stern or Imus in the US, RPP radio has put it´s morning news program on TV. The technology of the host, considered the dean of radio here in Lima, has not caught up with the technology of the radio. He was sleeping on camera during an interview the other day. The kind of sleeping where you doze off and your head lowers until your chin hits your chest, and then you wake up briefly. Pretty entertaining. He ramped it up a notch when he picked his nose and tightened his tie a couple of hundred times all the while harrumphing at various guests.

OK, enough of my condemnation of radio on TV. RPP has a segment it inserts in its morning program called Rotafono. People from around the country can call in and broadcast live a problem they have, a service that they need, a crime that has been committed against them, any variety of need based issues. At first this seemed a bit of a marketing stunt. People like to hear other peoples problems. Then I listened more intently and realized that the radio hosts were actually promising help. A kind of "we´ll see what we can do to help." Red flags were going up all around my apartment. Did this journalist just cross a line that should not be crossed?

It got even more complicated...

Listen to the audio: http://media.odeo.com/0/6/0/rotafono.mp3

Alright, so the kicker...and even if you don´t speak Spanish you might have picked up on this one, the lady gives her phone number over live radio, broadcast to all of Perú.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM

So I went to my class armed with this example of what I thought was the teachable moment.

I assumed they would all agree that journalism outfits have a reponsibility to protect their listeners best interests. Mainly not broadcast personal information to all Peruvians. I also wanted to plant the seed as to whether or not they felt it was the job of journalists and RPP radio to formally aid Peruvians in need. To get them to a hospital, or help them find a way to pay a bill, etc..

Let´s just say the gringo was wrong. I got a unified rejection. In fact the defense of this practice went beyond a debate. Rotafono is the single most important thing in Peruvian media according to some of my students. If RPP radio didn´t help those people, who would? Who would they turn to? As for the telephone number being read out over the air...some students said that allowed other Peruvians to call that person and help them.

So, taking one giant step back, I tried to make heads or tails of this. While I had not slept through journalism 101, apparently I had been sleeping during Understanding Perú 101, I think it´s a correspondence course down at the local CC.

During the 80´s and early 90´s when terrorist attacks happened around and in Lima, RPP served as kind of a warning siren for the public. People knew that to get the latest on a bombing they had to tune in. If they couldn´t find a loved one they had to tune in. This relationship between the public and the media is ingrained in a way that I have no reference to. These are not experiences I have had.

After the debate in my classroom I am entrenched in getting a better beat on society and politics here before I take on journalism again. I am thinking of calling in to Rotafono and explaining that I am a lost gringo who is desperately hoping to understand how things work here. Something tells me I should not give them my number.

PS-while Sherlock Holmes my have tripped up with Rotafono, he certainly did find a clue on another matter. In their morning newscast RPP included, as a news item, the expansion of one of their music radio stations to broadcast around the country. A beauty of a commercial but not news. I won that battle.