AMMAN: Rouman Haddad could sum up the content of most children's television shows in three words cards and fighting.
"There's no dialogue," he said, specifically referring to Pokemon-inspired cartoons. "We used to learn the Arabic language from these programmes and now we don't learn anything."
The former journalist, who has found a new cause in promoting media awareness among Jordan's youth, was one of many media policy experts who gathered at Al Isra University on Wednesday to discuss the troubling state of children's media in the Kingdom.
Among the problems cited was a dearth of high-quality educational programmes for children and a proliferation of targeted advertisements and foreign cartoons that don't provide children with enough exposure to Jordanian culture the result of a confluence of strict bottom lines and limited government regulation, participants said.
This is a big concern in Jordan, where more than 40 per cent of the population is under 18 years old.
"You have a lot of competing interests pulling at the producers programming that will sell versus programming that has merit," said Sam Compton, country director of the International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), an NGO that works with media groups in Jordan which organised the conference.
"Funding is always a problem," according to Angela Campbell, a professor of media law at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. "The larger the audience you have, the more you can spread the costs, but high-quality children's programming doesn't necessarily attract a large audience."
According to a study done last year by the Arab Advisors Group, children's programming constitutes the smallest segment of satellite programming, the vehicle by which most Jordanians get their television. Advertising funds the bulk of the programming, and that can lead to problems.
According to Campbell, food companies are the number one advertisers, and mostly they are hawking sugary cereals or fast food. That has led to childhood obesity rates that are on target to match Western levels. In 2006, 10 per cent of children under 18 were obese.
Reliance on advertising revenues also leads networks to favour cheaper foreign cartoons.
The problem with the Japanese imports is not just the lack of educational value and the heavy emphasis on violence, but that they are Japanese rather than Jordanian. The influx of foreign cartoons is fast divorcing children from their cultural heritage, participants said.
"There is no programming to raise the interest of the Arab child," said Saqr Humoud, general manager at Media Marketing and Production Est., a company that dubs foreign productions into Arabic for networks.
Because it's much cheaper to buy and dub foreign products than to produce them here, there has not been much demand for home-grown shows, he said. A lot of his programmes come from Japan and France. "Mostly there's an interest in dubbing imports, but their context is not beneficial for the child."
Local programmes are few and far between. The most notable success has been "Hikyat Simsim," an Arabic version of "Sesame Street" produced by Jordan Pioneers that launched a Jordanian version in 2003. It is now in its third season.
Local animation company Rubicon has also been working on the much-publicised "Ben and Izzy" cartoon, which will feature a Jordanian and an American main character.
Aroub Soubh, a senior producer at ATV, said the network hopes that ultimately 80 per cent of its shows will be locally produced.
Going further than focusing on Jordanian culture, Haddad said that, because children are such a large segment of the population, it is important to focus on the issues that the children themselves find relevant. "No one knows about their problems," he said.
To help remedy the problem, he initiated a programme at three high schools in Irbid, Amman and Karak that put students in charge of putting together their own newspaper.
"The problem was that the students were scared," he said. "They wanted us to speak and them to listen."
Eight weeks of coaxing drew them out of their shells, however, and once their curiosity was piqued there was no dearth of news to uncover. They wrote articles about children injured while playing, poorly maintained school facilities and transportation issues, since many lived far away from the school.
"They became more interested in newspapers and talked more about things they read and saw on TV... We taught them how to think and not what to think," he said.
IREX recently approved him for a grant to duplicate the programme at two private schools in Zarqa.
Giving children total control over choosing their media can be dangerous, however, according to Sakher Khasawneh, a professor of media law at Al Isra, particularly when dealing with the Internet.
Today most children are more adept with web technology than their parents, making it difficult to limit their access to pornography and violent sites. There are programmes available to block certain sites, but many adults do not know how to use them.
"How many of us have had to ask our children to help us check our e-mail?" Khasawneh asked.
Total restriction is not the answer either, there has to be some balance because "no violence would be unrealistic," according to Soubh.
Haddad agreed. "We don't want [the child] to be surprised at the age of 18 by finding out that there is killing," he said.
There are multiple ways to attack the balance problem, according to Campbell. More government regulation could help, but perhaps the best course of action is to leave things in the status quo. As it stands, a lot of burden falls on the parents, she said, and they "are the best judge of what is best for their children."
By Jennifer Blecher
© Jordan Times 2007
