Page 460 - Cultures and Organizations

Intercultural Encounters 425

Spreading Multicultural Understanding:
The Role of the Media

Media representatives—journalists, reporters, and radio and TV produc-
ers—play a uniquely important role in creating multicultural understand-
ing (or misunderstanding). The battle for survival in a multicultural world
will, to a large extent, be fought in the media. Media representatives are
human, which means they have cultural values of their own. With regard
to other cultures, their position is ambiguous: on the one hand, they cater
to a public, and their success depends on the extent to which they write or
speak what the public wants to read or hear; on the other hand, they are in
a position to direct people’s attention—to create an image of reality that
to many people becomes reality itself. A member of the public has to be
pretty sophisticated to critically scrutinize the beliefs about other cultures

reflected in television shows, radio programs, and newspapers.
The consciousness that people in other parts of one’s society (not to
mention people in other societies entirely) think, feel, and act on the basis
of other but not necessarily evil value assumptions may or may not be

recognized by media representatives and reflected in their productions.
The simple act of informing the public about such cultural divides can help
to avoid serious misunderstandings. Doubtless, there exist reporters who
want only simple, black-and-white messages, as well as those with a vested
interest in showing who are the good guys and who the bad ones. For those
with higher ambitions, however, there still is considerable untapped poten-
tial for spreading understanding about differences in cultural values and
practices. For example, using the television eye to compare similar aspects
of daily behavior in different countries can be extremely powerful and is
too seldom done. 54

A problem particular to small countries such as the Netherlands is that
both TV and newspapers buy content from larger countries and dissemi-
nate it locally without stressing the different cultural contexts in which
these materials were produced. An example is the use of newspaper articles
reporting on survey research about trends in society. The material in ques-
tion is most frequently from the United States, and the implicit assumption
of the editor responsible is that the conclusions are valid for the Nether-
lands as well. If one realizes the large distance between the two societies
on the masculinity-femininity dimension (Chapter 5), which affects many