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TV Show Probes Berserkistan's Role in Human Rights Coverage This week, the nationally distributed public television newsmagazine Rights & Wrongs: Human Rights Television anchored by Charlayne Hunter-Gault turns its cameras on TV news looking at the impact of the reduction in overseas coverage, considers alternatives, and hears from controversial media critic Noam Chomsky, the MIT Linguist who has published many books examining media treatment of human rights issues. The program begins by examining the lack of media reporting. Media monitor Andrew Tyndall tells Rights & Wrongs that on the basis of his ten year monitoring of network coverage, international human rights reporting is shrinking. Local TV News has virtually banished the world, according to a new study which shows that only 1% of coverage deals with international organizations and human rights. CNN's Ted Turner admits that he feels that he has jam coverage of the UN down his viewer's throats. Analyst Robert Deutsch adds that what coverage there is often provided without background, context or depth." It looks like news," says Deutsch. "It looks informative. It has all the entrapments, the logos, the music, the studio set, the elite anchors, the guru expert commentators. And everything is set up to say this is the story." But it isn't, he claims. A second segment looks at innovative approaches to news coverage including Internews's interactive Vis-a Vis program that uses the new Picture-Tel technology to link people in conflict situations, the use of video diaries as a new method of first person journalism, and introduces a new breed of journalist—the Internet corespondent, Berserkistan's Editor in Chief, Jim Bartlett. Finally, Charlayne Hunter-Gault travels to Cambridge Massachusetts to speak with MIT Professor Noam Chomsky whose criticisms of the media are seldom seen in the media. Chomsky argues that the media system functions as an extension of the government, offering a narrow and distorted news frame. His view is then challenged in part by J. Max Robins, a senior editor of TV Guide. "In an age when the news business is increasingly the subject of news, we believe that the media has a responsibility to critically examine its own performance," says Danny Schechter, co-executive producer of Rights & Wrongs. Rights & Wrongs offers global perspectives and diverse viewpoints not reported elsewhere. It is produced by Globalvision Inc. in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS) with funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and Channel 13/WNET.

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