TABLE OF
CONTENTS
PARTICIPANTS
JOIN THE
ROUNDTABLE
|
(Un)Covering Tibet:
A roundtable discussion
July 7, 2001, is World Tibet Day, created three years ago to bring attention to the political, economic and cultural struggles of the Tibetan people. It's a media event designed to help publicize a very different story than the one told in
China's state-controlled media.
When the Chinese People's Liberation Army invaded Tibet in the winter of 1949-50, only a handful of Tibetans had ever seen a newspaper, telephone, radio, film, airplane or ship. According to Topden Tsering, the first Tibetan-language newspaper was launched in 1904 by a Moravian missionary in neighboring Ladakh, and it gained credibility among its few Tibetan readers only after its dire predictions of military aggression were fulfilled with the arrival of a British expeditionary force later that year.
The first Tibetan newspaper to have any significant readership was the Tibet Mirror, which came out of Kalimpong in 1925 and was launched by legendary publisher-editor Gyen Tharchin, who made a point of sending a copy to the 13th Dalai Lama. Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, inherited his predecessor's subscription to the paper and the worldly problems it reflected, but not until 1962, when he and thousands of his followers had settled into exile in India, did the first official Tibetan newspaper, Rangwan, or Freedom, see the light. The publisher of the Tibet Mirror, which folded in 1964, noted the ironic timing: "When there was freedom, there was no Freedom. When there is no freedom, the Freedom has appeared." (See Frontline's Chronology of Tibetan history.)
These days radio is the number-one news source inside Tibet and the Internet the source for news outside, say the participants in MediaChannel's Tibet Roundtable. As journalists of Tibet and activists for Tibetan rights, they are well acquainted with both the risks and the rewards of the nonviolent tradition of "speaking truth to power." Working in a variety of media and languages, they have long struggled to get views and information in and out of Tibet and into media around the world, and sometimes they've made news themselves. We have invited them to tell us how they do what they do, what they're up against, and what they suggest others do to access and improve current coverage of "The Roof of The World."
In this week also marked by the U.S.'s Independence Day, this roundtable speaks to the power of truth and freedom in all that makes life worth celebrating.
Please join the conversation by sharing your perspectives in The Forum.
— Shebar Windstone (shebar@inch.com), Tibet Roundtable moderator
|
