World

Trailblazers where to varying extents the viewer wasoffered a range of information about thehistory/politics/living conditions of the countriescovered. Interestingly the two most informativetravelogues covered firstly Bhutan which did not appearin any other section of our overall sample, and Peru inSouth America which rarely featured on terrestrialtelevision.South America was again covered in the documentaryPinochet and Allende: Anatomy of a Coup. This informed theviewer of the global context of the events surroundingthe coup, rather than simply reinforcing images of thisdeveloping country as being volatile and chaotic.Interviews with former members of the United Statesgovernment clearly indicated that America’s fear ofdemocratic socialist revolution in South America led to asystematic campaign by the CIA and right-wingEuropean elements to destroy Allende’s government.The second of Discovery’s historical documentariesin the sample, Time Travellers included a frank discussionof the exploitative elements of colonialism. Some of theholiday programmes on terrestrial television in thisstudy demonstrated an unquestioning acceptance ofcolonial history in developing countries, and in somecases they portrayed this as beneficial to western visitors.But in contrast, Time Travellers demonstrated thedeliberate concealment and distortion by westerncolonialists of the fact that the impressive Africancivilisation of Great Zimbabwe came into being nearly amillennium ago. It informed viewers that as recently asthe 1970’s the Rhodesian government continued topublish misinformation in an attempt to justify theirassumption of superiority over black Africans. When thenarrative reached the point where black majority rule wasachieved in 1980, the white archaeologist handed over toblack Zimbabwean archaeologists, one of whomcommented on the ‘backward views’ which people hadhad towards African civilisation. The truth of thisstatement was well evidenced in the documentary and itwas exceptional to hear an alternative case so clearly put.DFID – July 2000 121