Television: Power and Responsibility

April 2008

When former Vice President Al Gore received the Founder’s Award at our recent International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Gala in New York City, he said something simple, but powerful: “Television has the greatest potential to inform and educate in the history of any medium.”

Because it’s Al Gore, because I had the good fortune to have spent some time with him and listen to his ideas, and because of my own growing enlightenment about the issue, I immediately connected that statement to global warming.

Never has our medium, or any, had a greater responsibility to inform and educate. Never has the media’s responsibility been more complex and contradictory. And never—thanks to the combination of television and the Internet—have we had an opportunity to do more to frame and expand the debate.

When Mr. Gore calls climate change a “true planetary emergency,” he is in good company. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called it “the defining challenge of our age.” He was referring to the Synthesis Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which reviewed the full body of scientific work to date and concluded that things are getting worse than we thought much faster than we thought.

Given the scale and the urgency, the media must take a long look at itself. Are we living up to the responsibility? If history were being written today, the reviews would be mixed: good marks on quantity of coverage, lower ones on depth and perspective.

It’s been a long, hard climb for Al Gore and the others who have been warning us of a frightening future. One problem, of course, is “false balancing.” We are the victims of our own good instincts and historic charter. By determinedly playing both sides of the story, we have opened the door to a level of spin, diversion and misinformation usually reserved for times of war. The words “fraud” and “hoax” entered the debate early and stayed through years of inaction as we sorted out the degree of the threat, or if there is a threat at all.

As studies come in and evidence mounts, most have turned away from the arguments that this is all a conspiracy to harm America’s economy and to further the fortunes of environmental groups. Most of America’s largest corporations are urging action—and taking action themselves—to reduce the carbon they put into the environment.

Big complex problems demand big collective solutions. Good intentions, ideas, programming and causes must be scaled up to a mass powerful enough to address global issues.

The International Academy is in a unique position to help create that scale. Look at the schedule for the coming year, and you’ll see events and sessions covering a wide range of pressing issues.

In March, our Board meeting will include a panel of foreign journalists discussing the world’s picks for the next U.S. president. In May, International Academy Day in Rio de Janeiro, hosted by TV Globo, will be opened by Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. One of the key panels will be about how themes of social responsibility are being worked into Latin America’s telenovelas, which have a large impact in a region of the world where the growth of a new middle class is lifting millions out of poverty, but threatening to leave millions more behind.

The convening power of the Emmy is helping us to assemble media executives through our networking events to spotlight regions and issues. Our International Emmy World Television Festival will again convene panels to cover a range of social issues.

Such events and programming can focus, energize and motivate. What they can’t do is create the acceptance of the difference between accountability and responsibility. Accountability is a reaction. Responsibility is a choice.

We’re all accountable—to regulators, to stockholders, to employees and all the other immediate stakeholders of a successful business. But responsibility takes our work to a new arena, where our role as businesses extends further beyond the bottom line than it has ever gone before. In fact, ultimately we are accountable to ourselves.

The fact that Al Gore talked about our “potential” to inform and educate rather than our “ability” points to our challenge. It’s not the talent and resources that are at issue; it’s the shared sense of purpose.

We represent more than 400 of the world’s largest production, distribution and broadcast companies. That kind of power and reach can make a difference. We look forward to working with you to put it to work in support of the people and the markets that are in need and are so important to the future of television around the world.

Bruce Paisner is the president and CEO of the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.