Guy Burgess
Co-Director of the University of Colorado Conflict Research Consortium and the Beyond Intractability Project
Interviewed by Julian Portilla, 2003
This rough transcript provides a text alternative to audio. We apologize for occasional errors and unintelligible sections (which are marked with ???).
Search for Common Ground has done some very interesting things. They've figured out that costs of mass media productions in third-world countries is miniscule, especially given the new technologies, compared to what you'd expect to spend to make it into the mass TV market in the United States. They've done some fascinating things where they have radio soap operas where they feature characters on both sides of an ethnic divide that once a week or once every however long for a half-hour or an hour they get involved in some sort of interesting fight. It might be humorous and they eventually work it out somehow, and with good writing that could play out very nicely. There are tricks like that, and to really make that fly in a high-value media market is going to be sort of a trick, especially given that there are enormous profits to be made in the production of television and movies that sort of build off of existing tensions and hatreds. But there are other possibilities.
