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Tobacco kills Don't be duped
United Nations Foundation
A Tobacco Free World Media Initiative
Introduction
Aims
Partners
Summary
This media advocacy initiative aims to strengthen the ability of broadcast and newspaper journalists and other health communicators, at country and Regional level to sift facts from fiction about tobacco use, its spread and promotion. The initiative will make the case for health, enhance population health literacy, promote healthy choices and behaviours, and most importantly, influence public policy so that robust tobacco control measures and strict regulation of the tobacco industry become a reality.
The World Health Organisation is negotiating the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the world’s first global past devoted entirely to health. The media campaign will unfold against this background activating all those constituencies whose input is critical to robust tobacco control at the national and international level.
Freedom of information issues, especially the public’s right to know about the health consequences of tobacco use on the one hand, and the tobacco industry’s practices on the other, will be emphasised. The Tobacco Free Media initiative will seek to house tobacco control issues where they belong – at the top end of national and international political agendas and at the centre of public health debates in countries. In doing so, the initiative will seek a new language, a new idiom and a new sense of purpose and direction for tobacco control .
The initiative will have a special focus on women, children and adolescents who are being increasingly targeted by the tobacco industry’s sales pitch and marketing strategies. The project will draw on data and country experience from the Youth and Tobacco project and use that learning to craft messages and build networks. The organisations involved in the Youth research project will be directly engaged in the Tobacco Free World communication network.
The basic rationale behind this initiative is that developing World Health Communications
Networks in the target countries will result in a significant and sustainable contribution to public health infrastructures. Communication, particularly popular communication, is often ignored and remains a weak area for public health advocates. Lack of skills (for example, government spokespeople and NGO advocates do not generally have the marketing and advertising savvy so effectively used by the tobacco industry) and poor channels of communication between information sources and media and private and public sectors make a bad situation worse. Potentially synergistic partners that could stand together at the frontline of health communications mistrust each other. The government thinks the media is only interested in scandal, the media thinks everything official is corrupt and bad. The tobacco industry exploits these weaknesses and has managed to replace the iron curtain with a ‘’tobacco curtain.’’ What is going on in the west (European Union legislation, Minnesota Case, advertising bans, etc) is not known in Sri Lanka or Mexico. On the other hand unregulated marketing to youth and women in developing and developed countries in transition (cigarette discos, golden cigarette contests, etc) which are systematically denied in the west have not been sufficiently exposed.
Experience to date especially shows that national and regional health and environment communication networks brought together around a single public health issue can be the nucleus of a self sustaining force for better coverage and communication on a broad range of public health issues.
Public health infrastructures will be further enhanced by developing the communication skills of key actors in each of the target countries. Competency building activities include: training, tools and products (e.g. hands-on workshops, local language radio series, public service announcement (PSA’s) and documentary production support, audio and print press briefings, artwork and posters, information sheets, and the creation of an accessible audio and video library) for the actors on a national and local level; facilitated problem-solving between communicator groups (health communication audits, opinion surveys, focussed encounters); and opportunities for local, national, regional and global connectivity. Tobacco Free World satellite television broadcast feeds will incorporate local stories from target countries in each of the six Regions of WHO, package them appropriately (undubbed formats with scripts) and distribute them globally by satellite and hard copy.
The initiative will seek to unlock value at every step. Leadership is key. The initiative aims to engage and support nationally based social entrepreneurs and change agents from the media, NGO community, health professions or private sector in each of the target countries. Project resources will be leveraged through strategic partnerships and matching grant support. This initiative goes beyond the WHO and will engage and become available to the entire UN family, international health institutions and bilateral aid agencies.
In these ways the Tobacco Free World media initiative will knit together issues of awareness, action, assistance and alliances in its bid to construct a strategic broad-based international tobacco control platform.
The political, social and economic commitment and will to circumscribe if not altogether prevent the tobacco industry’s domination of the "health information marketplace" and its devastating effects on global health depends greatly on the effective development of a new health communication platform. This platform must be based on evidence. It must be ethical and credible. It must be able to package accurate, relevant, and impartial information in ways which ignite people’s righteous anger at being lied to, manipulated, and exploited by tobacco interests and spark the creation of a popular tobacco free world global movement. Tobacco, especially the industry’s marketing and promotion practices affords a strong case for informed social outrage.
In developing this proposal, the WHO’s Tobacco Free Initiative (TFI) brought together journalists, lawyers, NGO’s and politicians from all over the world for a week of reflection and debate around tobacco control issues. An early conclusion from that Media Advocacy Workshop held in Geneva was that while it was not possible to stay ahead of the industry on the resource curve, with a little imagination, sustained networking and capacity building, TFI could stay ahead on the information curve. During that week, the Director General of the WHO Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland said documentary evidence from the Minnesota Court Case, hidden from the public eye for 40 years, would be a critical tool for the organisation as it prepares its global tobacco control initiative and that media advocacy would play a key role in disseminating this evidence and in crafting and carrying forth WHO’s initiative.
The media project addresses this call and provides a systematic and strategic approach to building local, national, regional, and global media advocacy capacities aimed at shaping political agendas and influencing population health behaviours, choices and perceptions.
The initiative draws on the experience and resources of many organizations, sectors, and actors, both public and private, in building this new Tobacco Free World health communication platform. It draws, in particular on the developmental experience of the:
European Health Communication Network;
United Nations Radio;
Associated Press Television News;
PhoenixTelevision International;
BBC World Service Radio Education;
Radio France International;
International Press Institute;
PANOS (Nepal and London);
Globalink;
INGCAT;
Infact;
Action on Smoking and Health (United-Kingdom)
This Tobacco Free World media advocacy project aims to:
This Media project will build on the evidence base and country experience of the WHO/UNICEF "Building alliances and taking action for a generation of tobacco-free children and youth" Project. Ongoing linkages involving key project staff and networks will aim to ensure that wheels are not reinvented and that project synergies are identified and exploited. A central aim of the media project will be to utilise the Youth’s project’s health promotion learning in developing policy advocacy communication strategies.
The core leadership of the media project will be the country based communicator/change agents. These change agents will selected based on the leadership criteria described above. This leadership cadre will be supported by their national networks in the first instance . These networks will include representatives of all actor groups ( NGOs, government, private sector, experts, and media). National network partners will all have an interest in tobacco control, have demonstrated that interest with visible action, have their own networks and be positioned to influence policy in their own areas of focus. Outstanding nationally based advertising agencies and media groups, when identified, will be further engaged by the project in inter-country work.
The national networks will be supported by a strategic mix of intercountry partners. In addition to those listed below, the accompanying document lists the partners and their specific roles.
BBC WS radio has over 45 local language bureaus and has consistently been voted the "most trusted voice in international radio broadcasting." BBC will develop local language broadcast series in collaboration with national networks in all target countries. BBC has specific capacities in media impact evaluation which will be utilized by the project. These will be built into the campaign alongwith WHO’s Health Promotion Unit which brings the evaluation component into the Campaign.
Phoenix Television International
PTI staff have been working with WHO in the production and distribution of video news releases and public service announcements. PTI will collect stories from local broadcasters, package them centrally and arrange for global distribution through Reuters television and the European Broadcast Union.
International Press Institute- The IPI defends, celebrates, reflects and explores international media and freedom of expression in an honest and thought provoking manner that both informs and inspires the global journalism community. Membership in this NGO includes media executives and editors . IPI will co-host global gatherings of key network participants. The next meeting will be in Copenhagen in December 1999.
Globalink links some 1500 activists and experts worldwide on a daily basis to exchange views and news. Based in Geneva, Globalink is already a partner with the Tobacco Free Initiative and is assisting the project in its bid to raise the level of activity on the web.
Action on Smoking and Health (United-Kingdom)
The project will work with the London office of Action on Smoking and Health (ASH), one of the most respected tobacco control NGO. ASH has chapters in many countries. ASH is also part of an emerging strategic component of TFI.
The Paris-based International Non Governmental Coalition Against Tobacco (INGCAT) is a Paris-based group that brings together 1000 NGOs from all over the world. INGCAT is working with WHO-TFI.
India’s largest English daily with 17 editions in the country will campaign for tobacco control in India and the region. One of the change agents is a staff member of the group and will serve on the national network.
RFI is a key player in the project as a major source of information delivery to the Francophone world, especially French-speaking Africa. A special media-NGO plan is being designed to identify key opinion leaders in Franco-phone Africa
UN Radio and Television will be utilised as both a production, packaging and distribution partner. BBC productions , for example, which will be made available for rebroadcasting free of charge, will be distributed through UN radio.
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