The pros and cons of a TV report
At 8 p.m. on Wednesday sitting in a busy office of the daily newspaper “La República” I turned on my laptop. The young journalist Alfredo Pomareda had encouraged me to show a couple of photos of the building of a hospital in South Peru. No one had any idea of how important this meeting on 11th July 2007 would be.
Two or three weeks later Alfredo flew from Lima to Cusco and travelled by road to Curahuasi. In the hospital’s buildings 100 members of staff were fighting against the ticking of time. On 31st August Peru’s First Lady was coming to attend the hospital’s inauguration and wherever you looked you only saw building sites at various stages. Nevertheless what the journalist saw left a lasting impression on him. So much so that the two middle pages of “La República’s” 31st August edition were entitled “The miracle of Curahuasi” (photo above).
10 years later, just before the 10th anniversary celebrations, Alfredo called me from Lima and updated me what had happened in his life since we last met: “I am now producer of ATV’s television channel and I am sending a TV-crew to attend your celebration!” And his team came along with many other TV-crews that flew in from Lima. But only three months after the event did ATV broadcast their report. Pomareda mistakenly thought that his channel would be the only one who would broadcast this event across the whole of Peru; but his was one of six channels. On the day National TV “Channel 7” sent a crew of 7 who broadcast extensively live from the event. But finally last Saturday ATV broadcast an 11 minute programme about Diospi Suyana at prime time.
A TV report that reaches hundreds of thousands has consequences; unfortunately not all of them are advantageous:
Pro: the message that Diospi Suyana is a work of faith goes across the world.
Con: the queues in front of the hospital are so long that we cannot manage run of people.
Pro: media interest helps Diospi Suyana enormously when we negotiate with public authorities. A TV report opens doors to political decision-makers and facilitates the import of donations in kind to Peru immensely.
Con: we get emails from across the country asking for appointments. They attach their scanned medical records and hope that our doctors will be able to give lengthy replies: a sheer impossibility.
Pro: positive reporting provides quite a good protection from corrupt civil officials.
Con: the TV-reports cause the owners of private clinics to get jealous, since they fear the competition.
The list could be continued at length. But we hope that, whatever happens, God will ensure that everything works out well. /KDJ
