Onward and Upward

Wednesday I began the day with “Delivering the Fist of Irony: Current Affairs and Humor,” which included an investigation of corruption in FIFA (the governing body of world soccer) by the venerable BBC investigative reporter Andrew Jennings. He takes a funny approach that at one point has him setting up cardboard cutouts of FIFA directors on a soccer field, but of course he’s deadly serious and has been reporting on this issue for years. For me – someone with little interest in sports and even less knowledge of the inner workings of world soccer – the approach worked, but there was no consensus on this point and the producer took quite a bit of heat. He was up to it, though. That’s the thing about these audience debates at INPUT – most producers can handle the critiques pretty well.

The last program in the irony session was Shukree Hassan Tilghman’s “More Than a Month,” which proposes the elimination of Black History Month. We (the U.S. pre-selection team) weren’t sure how the program would go over with an international audience who had probably never heard of Black History Month, but it was a big hit. I think Shukreet’s humorous approach not only makes the serious issues in his doc easier for an American audience to understand – humor bridges some international boundaries as well.

In the afternoon I went to the session on cross media products for children, which featured a really well organized presentation by Sylvia Lovato of PBS. She navigated the unique landscape of PBS Kids masterfully and talked about some of the challenges facing producers with the advent of touch screens. Kids love them and demand them but the bulk of the animations created for the Web use programs incompatible with touch screens – so what does a cash-strapped organization do when faced with the need to redo so much of its code?

I wrapped up the day at the session called “Our Problems are Your Problems: Mass Media and Minority Issues.” The 3 programs in this session looked at stories of the mistreatment of minorities in India, Australia and New Zealand. This is painful territory no matter where in the world you are but it makes me thankful to have public media that’s willing to take it on.

In the evening our hosts put on a fabulous mid-week party at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. With the waning “super moon” shining over the bay and delicious, free-flowing Australian wine, I think we were all caught in the spell of this beautiful country. 

U.S. delegates Angela Tucker and Sharat Raju at the Midweek Party