2.4: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MONUSCO
VIDEO UNIT:
These items are based
on written recommendations developed with my MDP coach after the MDP IN 2011. I
submitted most of them to former Director PID George Ola-Davies, and they were
all ignored. However, I am convinced that they all remain viable and relevant.
- KENNEDY SOP FOR VIDEO UNIT REGION EAST SHOULD BE
RE-INSTITUTED
- DIRECTOR PID SHOULD HAVE MONTHLY EDITORIAL MEETINGS
WITH CHIEF, VIDEO
- SHARING OF REPORTERS WITH RADIO OKAPI SHOULD BE ENABLED
- FUNDS FOR A DEDICATED LINE FOR FTP SHOULD BE RELEASED
BY PID
- VIDEO CHIEF SHOULD BE IN LOOP FOR ALL VIDEO RECRUITMENT
2.5 RECOMMENDATIONS FOR DPKO/DFS AND
OTHER MISSIONS:
THE MEDIUM IS THE
MESSAGE :
While most pundits and media experts
recognize we live in a Digital Age, and are in the midst of a Digital
Revolution which is changing our lives in more ways than we can be aware of,
the United Nations remains mired in the Age of Print, almost a century behind
the modern world.
Since the
UN is, as noted elsewhere, a political organization, this emphasis on print and
words is understandable. After all, nations have gone to war over differing
interpretations of words in treaties. However, this focus on words makes the UN
often blind to the power of images, and keeps the UN way behind the curve when
it comes to contemporary multimedia communications. In DPKO missions I am
familiar with , the Spokesperson sometimes doubles as Director. P.I.D. and
this has resulted in a PID stunted by a
regressive emphasis on what I call the UN damage-control school of Public
Information. The main tenet of the damage-control school is that all
criticisms , no matter how inane, must be rebutted,; corollary #2 is that the worst thing one can do is to make a
mistake, and that, therefore, all texts need to be thoroughly vetted and
revised, as often as needed.
In terms of
video, this means the safest way to deal with any subject is to: a) Have a
thoroughly vetted narration; or b): to show a VIP soundbite, since the VIP can
then take the blame if something goes wrong – and he or she will be happy to be
seen on camera, which is money in the bank for the Director, P.I.D.
However, regardless of
political leanings, successful professional practitioners of propaganda and
mass marketing from Josef Goebbels to Gene Lakoff are in complete agreement
that images are far more powerful than words, and the billions upon billions of
dollars spent on corporate branding and
political campaigns are tangible proof: a picture is worth a thousand words, and that therefore images, not words, are the way
to people’s hearts, and that, above all, one should never be boring.
In direct
contrast, the deadly secret of the UN damage -control school of Public
Information is that being boring is not necessarily such a bad thing, just so
long as the boss is happy. Indeed, if the program is boring, fewer people will
watch it and there is less of a chance something can go wrong. And, as I experienced first hand working with
SG Kurt Waldheim, who is going to tell the
boss he is boring? \
People who understand
communications are first and foremost good listeners and good managers, ready
to understand their intended audience and to seek ways to touch their hearts.
Directors of P.I.D,
first and foremost, need to be acquainted with modern communications theory.
It also helps if they
have some knowledge of media production management, as well as experience in
managing the creative talent actually doing the work on the ground.
Since good spokespersons are primarily
performers who can deftly articulate the party Line, they are rarely also good
listeners or innovative managers. Accordingly, the Spokesperson and the
Director PID should be different people, if at all possible, since there are
very few individuals possessing both the ability to be a good performer and a
good listener.
PART III: PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS
Personally, as a film and video
producer with several decades of international experience both inside and
outside the United Nations system, I found my experience as Chief, Video Unit
to be both rewarding and fulfilling. To be sure, there were challenges, but
this is normal in every professional situation. What was most meaningful to me
was that I was given the opportunity to do some quality work – work that I am
proud of, and that should be useful to my colleagues in future peacekeeping
missions.
In this regard, the genesis of our
signature program, MONUC REALITES,
is a good example. When we created MONUC REALITES in 2008, we were under
intense indirect pressure from Kevin Kennedy to create something modern and
up-to-date that would promote the mission mandate to the Congolese population.
We knew that we had to produce something radically different from LA SEMAINE EN BREF, but we had to
navigate our way through a series of false starts before we got it right.
For example, SRSG Doss was in love
with speed, and wanted everything to be as real-time as possible.
He was oblivious to the fact that we
were in a country where everything ran late, and where the technical
infrastructure was a few decades behind the Western world. For example, shortly
after he arrived, he demanded a live telecast of his first Town Hall meeting
broadcast to all the sectors – an order so far-fetched that we could only shake
our heads in amazement. Eventually, CITS , afraid to tell him that what he was
asking was completely impossible, foolishly tried to compromise with a live
audio transmission to the sectors that was a complete disaster . The feedback
from the speakers was so loud that every word was unintelligible across the
country, the sole exception being our Video audio feed coming from our
ace sound engineer Georges
Dominique’s lapel microphone.
So, when it came to our new program,
SRSG Doss initially wanted a daily video response to some item in the DRC news
that had irked him, and, incredibly enough, he wanted that response embedded in
the local DRC news shows. This proved to be a non-starter when the Congolese TV
stations simply refused to allow it. This was a blessing, because we longed to
do a real program, rather knee-jerk reactions. It was also my feeling that many
of the wild accusations about us in the DRC media were best ignored, and the
dignifying them with a response would give them more credibility than they
deserved
Both my senior video producer Carlo
Ontal and I agreed that a pro-active approach showing Congolese inter-acting
with MONUC staff in the field would be far more interesting television, and far
more effective.
Fortunately, Kevin Kennedy had the
same mind-set, though he also wanted a news segment with up-to-date MONUC news
from the weekly press conference and other sources.
After several demos,
we managed to create a video magazine format that combined both a news segment
and a feature story – with the news story the lead, but a vignette intro at the
top as a tease for the feature story. The thinking behind this was simple. We expected
the audience to be intrigued by the feature story, but we also wanted them to
watch the news items, so they had to see the news before they could see the
feature story.
I first learned this trick years ago
when I was in India studying the Indian film industry. The Films Divison of the
Indian government was the world’s largest producer of informational films at
the time, and they forced all commercial movie theatres to show (and pay for!) their films as shorts prior to
the main feature.
The Indian Institute of Mass
Communications did studies on the Films Division products, and, much to their
dismay, they found that it was difficult indeed to get people to watch the
films unless they were sandwiched between popular commercial features.
We then had to find a way to
generate feature stories on a regular basis so we would never run dry.
The newly created Video Unit Region
East ,led by producer Carlo Ontal, and editor Titus Nyukuri, was given the task
of shooting feature stories around the East, while Kinshasa-based director Alan
Brain would shoot material around the West. Every month, Carlo would come up
with story ideas that we would fine tune
in conference calls with Kevin Kennedy, and then he would go on the road with
Titus and our reporter Horeb Bulambo and shoot 3 or 4 stories per trip. Titus
would do a rough cut in the field, and then send the stories to Kinshasa by
hand, as described previously.
Meanwhile, our national staff
cameraman Serge Kasanga and Daniel Wangisha would cover news stories in the
field and in Goma and Kinshasa as needed. Back in Kinshasa, every Monday, head
writer Ado Abdou would finish a script and send it to me. I would do a rewrite,
and send to the Director for approval, and then send it to the Presenter on
Tuesday night. We would then shoot the presentation on Wednesday, and editors
Meriton Ahmeti and Kevin Jordan would finish the program on Thursday afternoon
so I could then submit it for final approval by the Director, so we could
distribute to the TV stations by the weekend.
With this workflow, we were able to
produce over 120 programs between 2008- 2010, barely ever missing a week, and
maintaining a consistency of quality. In this regard, special credit must go to
our brilliant graphic designer Meriton Ahmeti, who gave the show a production
value that was unlike anything the Congolese had ever seen, and therefore
aroused great visual interest. The
Congolese TV stations paid us the supreme compliment of showing the program in
prime time without charging an extra fee, and we received direct accolades from
both Information Minister Lambert Mende and First Lady Olive Lembe Kabila, and
we never had a complaint of any kind from our target audience, the Congolese .
Our only detractors consisted of the
Spokesperson and his cronies, for reasons known only to them.
As far as I am concerned, MONUC REALITES was a mission well
accomplished, and I am very proud to have been part of this team effort. It is
my sincere hope that this program serves as a point of departure for future video
programs by other DPKO missions. For the
immediate future, I shall be writing a doctoral thesis on digital documentary
for Sweden’s University of Lund, and my old school, Fashion Institute of
Technology in New York, has offered a position in 2013 in their newly created
Film Department as a Professor of Documentary Film.
I feel indeed
fortunate to have been given the opportunity to work on Peacekeeping missions,
and I am open to the possibility of a consultancy in the future., though
preferably not with MONUSCO, for reasons
which will become evident in Part IV,
Come what may, I shall always be more than happy to share my experiences
and whatever I have learned with DPKO colleagues in the future. For me, this has been both an honor and a
privilege.
I
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