Media and Power, with Moisés Naím

Power is easier than ever to obtain, more difficult to manage, and easier to lose: This is one of the main premises presented by Moisés Naim, ex-executive director of the World Bank and director of the TV program Efecto Naím, in the session “Media and power”, organized by the Catalan Audio-visual Cluster and the Catalan Audio-visual Council (CAC) in La Pedrera of Barcelona.

Political, economic, and business power becomes increasingly more dissoluble. According to Naim, this can be seen in examples such as the emergence of Trump in the Republican Party, or the rise of Podemos in the Spanish political landscape, in defiance of the historical dominance of the PSOE. It can also be seen in the fierce competition within the hotel industry offered by young companies such as AirBNB, or in the audiovisual field, the nightmare that the platform Netflix represents for the big companies such as HBO or CBS.

This dynamic is also affecting the mass media and new media forms, such as the Internet. In fact, the Venezuelan essayist remarked, in a context where the dynamics of power is changing more than ever, the struggle for the control of information is central. Naím gave many examples of the “cyber battle” that the political powers, and business powers as well, are fighting in the field of communication.

The session brought together a hundred people, and was opened by the President of the CAC, Roger Loppacher, and moderated by Xavier Guitart, president of the Cluster.

Watch the VIDEO of the session.