From: imran@panix.com (Imran Anwar)
Subject: Interesting NY Times Article About TV as a tool in social reform
Organization: IMRAN: Information & Media Resources, Affiliations, Networks
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 05:06:55 GMT

This is the text of an article that appeared in the New York
Times that will be of interest to readers of this newsgroup. 
These are problems that all of our countries have in common.  It
would be interesting to see what your opinion is on the approach
mentioned in this story.  

It was accompanied by a photograph that is being posted
separately as a small B/W GIF file.  That shows a scene from a TV
show like those mentioned in this story.

Regards

Imran Anwar
---

WITH HINT OF SCANDAL, 
NEW SOCIAL VALUES ARE SOLD


  A 13-year-old bride in India refuses to consummate her
marriage, saying she wants to become a lawyer before she has
children.   A Filipino man crouches over the grave of his wife,
who died delivering their 13th child, and apologizes for not
helping to plan their family better.   

A Pakistani doctor tells a woman who has had four daughters
that she will be committing suicide if she continues to try to
bear a son.   The stories are melodramatic -- not surprising,
since they are all from the plot lines of popular soap operas,
made and aired in recent years in third world countries around
the globe. 

The shows were produced in part through a New York City-based
organization that tries to promote family planning with a
multimedia approach.   Population Communications International
is housed in a small office on 44th Street across First Avenue
from the United Nations. Its five staff members negotiate with
government officials, religious leaders and television
producers to create dramas in countries overwhelmed by
population growth, and its activities now cover 10 nations.   

David Poindexter, the organization's executive director, has
traveled the globe for the last 10 years, working in countries
like Brazil, Kenya, India, Pakistan and China to spread the idea of
socially responsible television and radio programs.   

The premise is simple: People will not use family-planning
clinics simply because they are built; people's attitudes  toward 
family planning must change. And the most effective way to help
change those attitudes is through the media: newspapers, radio
and, primarily, television. "If a big company like McDonald's was
going into a third world country, they would saturate the air
waves or the television or whatever was out there, until all you
heard about was McDonald's hamburgers," Mr. Poindexter said. "If
we want to sell this family-planning idea, we have to push the
education and the motivation of the product and the why of the
product. That's what we are about." Sonny Fox, a Hollywood
television producer and president of Population
Communications' board, said television is the key to the
organization's vision.   

      "If you wanted to change attitudes, it used to be the printed
word that was most effective," Mr. Fox said. "Today that has
passed to television. Television is the world's most powerful
medium for change today."

     Mr. Poindexter originally lobbied American television
producers to include family planning in their television shows.
His most notable success was in the late 1970's, persuading the
creators of "All in the Family" to have Mike get a vasectomy.

 A Mexican Pioneer hoping to expand his work to other
countries, Mr. Poindexter was inspired by the work of Miguel
Sabido, a sociologist who developed commercial soap operas in
Mexico in the 1970's and early 1980's that stressed adult
literacy, family planning, sexual education and the role of
women in society.

 Instead of beginning with a broad outline, as American soap-
opera producers do, Mr. Sabido began by outlining broad values --
a code of "goods" that he wanted to stress on his programs.

     After consulting with government and Catholic Church
leaders to win their endorsement, he created characters --
good, bad and in-between - and dialogue. Using extensive
research about cultural values and existing clinics in Mexico, he
planned the plot of the soap operas, each of which ran for six to
eight months. In the end, the good characters are rewarded, the
bad punished and those wavering between, with whom the
audience is expected to identify, are won over to the good side.    
The process sounds clinical, but the results were not.     

In "Accompaname" ("Come With Me' '), the soap opera that
concentrated on family planning, a woman almost hits her son,
then realizes that she is overburdened with children. She
announces to her husband that from then on, she and their
daughters will sleep in one room and he and the boys can sleep
in the other.     

"I refuse!" she shouts at her husband. "1 won't keep having
children!"     After Mr. Sabido's first series on literacy, featured
on Mexico's most popular national television channel, one
million of the estimated 10 million adults who cannot read or
write signed up for the Government's literacy classes. In the
year after "Accompaname," 562,464 people began using
contraceptive programs, a 32.5 percent increase over the
previous year.     

"All programs should have a social responsibility," Mr. Sabido
said in an interview. "All producers should face the fact that
they are changing the lives of 'the people who are watching their
programs."     Convinced by the visceral effect of the programs
and the statistical evidence Mr. Sabido produced, Mr. Poindexter
began promoting Mr. Sabido's ideas in other developing
countries.     

Sometimes, he is approached by governments who want to
control their population growth. He has also been approached by
television producers who want to create shows as popular as
those that Mr. Sabido developed. The group's million-dollar
annual budget is financed by private individuals, foundation
Newsgroups: soc.culture.pakistan