Images & Voices of Hope Inaugural Meeting
UNDiplomatic Times, July 1999
The impact of public images and messages on society was the topic
that drew some 200 people to the Fashion Institute of Technology in
New York on 8 June. The invited participants -- academics and
artist, film-makers, journalists from television, print and new
media, photographers, writers, foundation executives -- were
launching a "national conversation" on that topic.
Very little of the discussion was organized. Other than opening
remarks by the conveners (Judy Rogers of the Brahma Kumaris and
Visions of a Better World Foundation, and by David Cooperrider, a
professor on organizational change at Case Western Reserve
University), discussions were mainly at the level of individuals.
Participants were grouped at round tables, and at each table,
people were paired for intense one on one conversations. Each person
reported to the table on his/her partner, and the table coordinator
reported to the larger group on common elements in the thinking of
people and significant insights and comments. Partway through the
afternoon, Dadi Prakashmani of the Brahma Kumaris (an international
non-governmental organization in consultative status with ECOSOC,
founded in repartition India by a retired diamond merchant), spoke
briefly of her own vision of the century to come. She foresaw a period
of great peach and harmony. Few others were so optimistic, although
everyone, with one exception, affirmed the importance of having
positive images in the mass media. The one exception was Richard
Kilberg of the Fred Friendly Seminars, who presented himself as a skeptic
and said that nothing anyone could do would have any impact on the
images in the mass media. That was vigorously contested by several
others, including John Pavlik of Columbia University's Center for
New Media. He saw a generational difference in attitudes between the
old and new media. Peter Max, the graphic artist spoke of
the need to give high visibility to good things and suggested the
need for a "group of seers" to offer mass media a
long-term perspective Author Jane Middleton-Moz spoke of the need to
return to a "front-porch community." Perhaps the most
poignant statement was from Clark Peters, a black man, who said that
about a decade ago, fatigued with roles of "pimps and drug
dealers" he had decided not to accept demeaning roles. He had
not worked since then. The conversation will continue in cities
across the United States.
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