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LIBRES 3.1 Feature Article - Part 1 (939 lines)

LIBRES:  Library and Information Science Research
(ISSN:  1058-6768 published monthly)
January 19, 1993

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       The New World Order and the Geopolitics of Information
       by Christopher Brown-Syed

       Introduction

       During the past three decades, it has been suggested that an
imbalance in information production and distribution might underlie
uneven world economic development. Fraught with ideology, the
debate tended to focus upon media ownership and upon the contending
concepts of information as commodity and information as social
good, upon the freedom of information as an individual versus a
collective right. This discussion paper summarizes the debate about
a New World Information and Communications Order (NWICO), and
suggests that the collapse of the Soviet Union might provide an
opportunity to overcome past political differences and to get down
to the real business of assisting developing nations. In this
activity, information technology specialists such as journalists,
librarians, and computer scientists might play key roles.

       The NWICO debate flourished, or perhaps one might more aptly
say, raged, throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s in the halls of
the United Nations, and particularly within Unesco. NWICO
proponents and opponents alike accepted the premise of a link
between economic progress and the availability of information.
However, liberal theorists maintained that national cultures and
sovereignty were not threatened by information concentration, while
structuralist and socialist analysts argued that they were. In
particular, the NWICO proponents, mostly drawn from the ranks of
non-aligned nations, claimed that Western ownership and control of
both the news media and their distribution channels constituted a
form of cultural dominance whose covert goal was capitalist
economic expansion.

       This argument, played out in fora such as the Non-Aligned
Movement and Unesco conferences drew support from the Soviet Union,
and hostility from Western administrations. It was partly due to
fears of the growing "politicization" of Unesco that the United
States and Great Britain withdrew from that organisation in the mid
1980s.

       The NWICO movement began as a protest over the concentration
of print and broadcast media ownership among de facto cartels, and
developed into an argument about the cultural dominance of poor
nations by wealthy ones. However, even before the Soviet collapse,
some NWICO proponents were beginning to suggest that the issue of
news imbalance was a red herring, and that supplying developing
nations with current banking and business information was more
crucial.

       Today, with the Cold War fast fading from public memory, many
of the positions discussed in this article will perhaps seem
archaic and quaint. However, the problem of uneven world
development, far from disappearing with the dissolution of the
Soviet Union, remains with us. Indeed, we in the West are provided
daily with ample evidence that a whole segment of the globe -
Eastern Europe - is almost as badly off as the so-called
"developing" nations. Moreover, the Third World of the 1990s finds
itself with only one ideological  pole toward which to turn, and
with the West as the major viable source of economic assistance.


       Politics aside, it would seem that the basic NWICO assumption
that information plenty is concomitant to and predeterminate of
economic prosperity, remains at least arguable. In hindsight, it
appears that the East-West politicization of the NWICO debate
merely served to distract attention from deep seated problems which
persist and are likely to grow more pernicious in the short term.

       Now that we are freer of the bonds of conflicting East-West
ideologies, perhaps the time has come for technocrats - librarians,
computer programmers, journalists, and communications specialists
to address the problem objectively, and from a holistic,
information science perspective. This effort might consist of
developing better ways of exporting development information from
the rich nations of the North and West, to the poor ones of the
South and East, and of importing knowledge of developing countries
through development education activities.

       For working definitions, let us say that development education
is the activity of acquainting Western populations with the
problems of Third Word and with its various cultures. Development
information is that required for economic growth and the
improvement of social conditions. In order to effect change in the
developed world, this paper contends, it will be necessary to
arrive at a new synthesis, acceptable to both laissez-faire
liberals and to structuralist theoreticians who believe to various
degrees in government involvement with the economy. Most
importantly, since information technology is increasingly becoming
the key to economic prosperity, it behooves us to help redefine the
debate as an information science issue, rather than a media studies
problem.

       Before proceeding, it might prove beneficial to set out some
working definitions. Most importantly, the term "culture" requires
clarification.

       "Culture may be defined as the organisation of shared
       experience which includes values and standards of
       perceiving, judging and acting within a specific social
       milieu at a definite historical state. In other words,
       culture is the complex of material and spiritual goods
       and values created by human activity in the process of
       social development." (Jefkins and Ugboajah, 1986: 151).

       This accepted, information must be seen as a part of culture.
Since the terms "culture" and "cultural products", are most often
used in the narrower sense of fine arts, performing arts, and
especially the operation of the mass media and news, the NWICO
debate tended to focus on the news and the media, and not on other
types of information - scientific, technical, and so forth.

       The year 1980 saw the publication of Anthony Smith's
Geopolitics of Information, and the report of Unesco's MacBride
Commission on world communications problems, Many Voices, One
World. Both works described an emerging model of world
communications problems, and proposed a political framework for
their solution generally referred to as the New World Information
and Communications Order (NWICO). However, neither work could
offered specific agendas or timetables for resolution. Smiths'
scholarly work never set out to do this, while Unesco, as an
organisation operating by consensus, could not impose its political
will upon member nations.
       The NWICO received much attention in the press, due mostly to
the opposition of Western nations to its implications for
journalism. Over the past decade, the defence or refutation of
NWICO claims became a major preoccupation of the literature of the
geopolitics of information.

       Canada's Tom McPhail presented a comprehensive analysis of the
NWICO's major issues and constructs, emphasising the role of Unesco
and the Non-Aligned Movement in NWICO policy formation (McPhail,
1981). Daniel Meyer sought to test the key hypotheses behind the
NWICO analysis of communications structures (Meyer, 1987).  William
Preston, Herbert I. Schiller, and Edward S. Herman provided
definitive analyses of the political aspects of the NWICO,
including its treatment by the media. (Preston et al. 1989).

       Johan Galtung, in various writings, proposed a "structuralist"
model of centre-periphery relations to explain the patterns of
information exchange,  elaborating upon the work of writers such as
Rein Turn (1979). Others such as Jenkins and Ugboajah (1986),
Tunisia's Mustapha Masmoudi, and writers from India, Africa and
South America, described the effects of the current system of
communications infrastructure and information production upon Third
World development.

       In the structuralist model of communications, unprocessed
information flows from underdeveloped nations to the developed
countries of the West or North, much as do the raw materials of
industry. Information users in the developed countries interpret,
process, and act upon this information, redistributing it in turn
to the client states, along with more information about their own
activities, cultures, and politics. Thus, the Third World nations
come to be viewed through the eyes of the information interpreters
of the developed nations, whose organisations control both the
finances and infrastructures of the distribution system, while the
developing nations never quite receive the latest information, nor
the latitude of interpreting it to their own advantage. As well, in
terms of pure volume of information produced and consumed, the
developing nations lag far behind.
                 Because many of these writers argued in particular against de
facto media cartels, because of political problems within Unesco
itself, and because of the East-West rivalries of the times, the
NWICO debate came to be treated as a confrontation between
capitalism and Soviet communism. Opponents charged, with some
justification, that the NWICO proposals were part of a larger
communist agenda.

       Smith's Geopolitics, focused almost exclusively upon the
imbalance  evidenced in the news media. The choice of focus is far
from arbitrary, since Smith viewed this area as the most
contentious.

       "The conflict between North and South over the
       dissemination of news is more intractable than any other
       contemporary debate over the unfair distribution of earth
       resources, for it intrudes into the very culture of
       Western societies." (Smith, 1980: 15).

       Because of the way in which news is gathered and distributed,
Smith suggests, Western audiences have become conditioned to a view
of the Third World which is founded upon "wrong or ill-judged
information", and which can be characterised as "exploitive,
patronizing, and distorted." Moreover, because of the vast market
for news which the Western audience represents, this view has
become "self-feeding" or "self-sustaining".

       It remained difficult, Smith contended, to provide a balanced
view of the Third World, since the news gathering and disseminating
organisations, as well as their technological infrastructures were
controlled by a few Western nations:

       "The Third World has accused the West of cultural
       domination through its control of the major news-
collecting resources of the world, through the unstinted
       flow of its cultural products across the world, and
       through the financial power of its advertising agencies,
       its international newspaper chains, its newsprint
       companies, and its hold over the electro-magnetic
       spectrum on which broadcasting, navigation, meteorology
       and much else depend." (Smith, 1980: 13).


       Smith argued that "news imperialism" obtained from bias in
content as well as economic factors. Due to marketing practices,
the methods of news collection, and the structure of news itself,
audiences in both the producing and consuming states received a
biased picture of world.

       "Our mental media picture of the world is compounded of
       our Western interests within it and is supportive
       therefore of those interests. The struggle to escape from
       our bad image of the Third World is an essential stage in
       its struggle for independence." (Smith, 1980: 10)
                 While the North comes to know the South primarily by means of
       news reports, Smith contended, the exporting nations reinforce
       their own cultural images in the client nations through many other
       "physical and cultural" exports. Films, tourism, and consumer
       products such as automobiles are possible examples. As well,
       journalists from those nations and abroad report frequently on
       activities in the developed nations. However, because of the way in
       which news is constructed and marketed, emphasising the most
       violent or dramatic images, the media present a selective or
       distorted image of the less developed nations.

       In interpreting Third World events for domestic audiences,
Western journalists apply their own standards of propriety. Here
lies the crux of media bias:

       "It is what the agencies and western journalism do
       inadvertently which is the trouble. "We think of the
       price of motor cars as necessarily rising through no
       one's fault; we think of the price of petrol rising as a
       direct result of the 'greed' of a few Arabs." (Smith,
       1980: 110).

       Smith names four main Western agencies, United Press
International (UPI), Reuter, Associated Press (AP), and Agence
France-Presse (AFP), as the primary producers and controllers of
news. Subsequent writers usually included TASS, the former Soviet
agency, in a "big five" of news organisations.


       One solution to the problem of news imbalance was thought to
be the institution of a more bi-directional flow of information,
which recognised freedom of expression or communication as a
collective right of nations as well as an individual right. In
other words, NWICO advocates suggested, a small under-reported or
mis-reported country should have the right to rectify its public
image abroad.

       The NWICO debate focused on the desirability of a balanced and
controlled flow of information, as opposed to a free and
unrestricted one. This can easily be interpreted as an argument for
freedom of the press versus censorship. Smith warned that the call
for a balanced flow of information presented "a double crisis,
intractable both in doctrine and in management." (Smith, 1980: 16).
As Ithiel de Sola Pool remarked, "The slogan of protection of
national culture most often really means the protection of an
existing government, or of some special interest within it." (Pool,
1990 :125)

       The concept of a link between communications and control is
fundamental to cybernetic theory (Wiener, 1948). Wiener stressed
that in all organisms, from amoeba to nation state, communications
are fundamental to interaction with internal and external
environments. As Canada's Francis Fox, chair of a major federal
cultural policy review committee noted:
                 "The important thing about information technology is not
       so much that it uses and processes information - which it
       does in abundance - but that it is fundamentally a
       control technology. If we are to understand the nature of
       the new information technologies, it is necessary to
       focus less on their content and more on their function
       (i.e. regulation - in the cybernetic sense of the term -
       of systems, or in other words, control.)" (Babe, 1990 :
       250).

       Canadian historian Harold Innis noted another effect of
communications media, namely, their ability to alter our
perceptions of time and space, and consequently, our expectations
of other people's behaviour. In studying diplomatic messages sent
during the early years of the telegraph, Innis noted that a 'prompt
response', indicative of the correspondent's sense of urgency and
seriousness, soon came to mean a telegram rather than a letter.
This raised expectations about the time required for responses, and
in effect made the world a smaller place (Innis, 1954).

       This condensing of space and time became more pronounced with
the advent of the telephone. Pool calls the effect, the "spatial
reorganisation of activity", and takes special note of its ability
to undermine existing organisational hierarchies, and to enable
corporate decentralisation on a global scale.

       "Another effect of the telephone was also to loosen
       hierarchical layering. As Marshall McLuhan put it, 'The
       pyramidal structure... cannot withstand the speed of the
       telephone to bypass all hierarchical arrangements..."
       (Pool, 1990: 69).

       This predicted "decentralising" effect characterised the
"global village" conjectures of MacLuhan, and was evident in works
of writers such as Hiltz and Turoff (1978), who described the new
America as a "network nation". However, recent writers such as
Heather Menzies (1989), and Vincent Mosco (1989), point to de-
skilling of workers, centralisation of decision making, and other
"centralising" effects of the electronic technologies. Far from
producing a new, democratised, post-industrial, "information age",
such writers argue, the new trade in an information commodity has
merely resulted in a refinement of the methods of industrial
society and the market economy.

       As well, liberal Western schemes to speed the Third World
toward development may have helped to perpetuate indigenous elites.
Citing the case of the Philippine press, Smith contended that
bilateral grants, training, or skill-transfer programmes resulted
in "transplanted journalism", and the formation of elites who were
in effect "internal emigres", divorced from their own cultures.
(Smith, 1980: 155). As an Indian national observed, "News travels
faster but the rural elite are the first to have it." (Smith, 1980:
161).

                 In concluding that the existing information order is "a
product of and has itself extended the historical relationships
between the 'active' and the 'passive' nations," (Smith, 1980:
175), he emphasised the systematic and endemic aspects of the
structuralist argument.

       "We have learned that the de-colonisation and growth of
       supra-nationalism were not the termination of imperial
       relationships, but merely the extending of a geo-
political web which has been spinning since the
       Renaissance." (Smith, 1980: 176).

       As Smith accurately predicted, the clash between socialist and
capitalist views of press freedom made the NWICO debate an easy
target for conservatives like Leonard Sussman of Freedom House and
Owen Harries of the Heritage Foundation. (Preston et al., 1989:
209-216).

       Let us now examine some of the concepts of the New World
Information and Communications Order, its historical origins, its
key documents, and some of the major schools of thought in favour
of and opposed to the NWICO. In particular, the Western reaction to
the NWICO will be examined with reference to the terminology of
some of its major documents.


       Principles and Premises

       The basic premise of the movement for a New World Information
and Communications Order (NWICO), was that an imbalance existed in
the direction, volume, and types of information exchanged between
adequately developed countries and the Third World, which was
detrimental to development and systemic in nature. Of equal
importance with, and logically prior to this conception, is the
ethical notion that information should be viewed a shared resource
or as a social good rather than as a commodity.

       The major documents of the NWICO include the Unesco Media
Declaration of 1978, Unesco's Statement on Journalistic Ethics, and
the report of the International Commission for the Study of
Communications Problems (MacBride Commission), published in 1980.
NWICO premises included the assertion that information is necessary
to economic development, and that any attempt to establish a New
International Economic Order (NIEO) must incorporate, or even
depend upon, reform in the world communications system.

       In the chief NWICO paradigm, (the structuralist model), the
current world situation is characterised by the dominance of
information producing nations over those which consume cultural and
information 'products'. The set of relations between these "know"
and "know-not" nations, has been described variously as a centre-
periphery situation, as a North-South conflict, or as a
relationship of neo-colonialism or neo-imperialism.

                 The structuralist school included "neo-Marxian journalists,
many Third World diplomats, and theorists like Johan Galtung."
(Meyer, 1985:10). Galtung's major contribution to the platform is
his "centre-periphery" typology, which provided a perspective on
cultural dominance.

       "According to this schema, nations at the Centre...
       dominate a 'feudal network of communication'. The Centre
       owns the major news agencies and 'Centre news takes up a
       much larger proportion of Periphery news media than vice
       versa'... users in the Periphery 'come to see with Centre
       eyes.'" (Meyer, 1985: 10) quoting (Galtung, 1979, 165-
166).

       Galtung's schema was outlined in a paper entitled "A
Structural Theory of Imperialism". As well as modelling centre-
periphery relations, it attempted to account for the "community of
interest" mechanisms which perpetuate the relationship, and to
explain the system's resistance to change. (Galtung, 1971).
Representatives of the structuralist school include theorists
Herbert I. Schiller, Tom McPhail, Keohane and Nye, O'Connor, Hymer,
and MacBride commissioners Garcia-Marquez and Juan Somavia, Hubert
Beuve-Mery, and Mustapha Masmoudi.

       The range of problems addressed by the NWICO included cultural
dominance, concentration of media ownership among de facto cartels,
transborder data flows controlled by multi-national corporations,
the effects of tourism and advertising, and the uneven world
allocation of radio, satellite, and telecommunications technologies
and infrastructures.

       The NWICO proposals held that all of these relationships ran
counter to the interests of the developing world, threatening self-
determination, sovereignty and economic development. Although the
notion of a revised world information structure would entail the
establishment of a "free and balanced flow" of all sorts of
cultural, scientific, technical, and financial information, the
debate over the NWICO tended to focus on perceived problems with
the news media.

       Although the relationships described by the structuralist
model were generally accepted, the negative effects of current
world information flow were disputed by the NWICO's liberal and
conservative opponents. Some of these, endowed with the optimism of
Daniel Lerner, or Ithiel de Sola Pool, believed that the current
system was either inherently liberating, or would develop of its
own accord, or could be adapted to address the problems of
developing nations through sufficient attention to education, or
technology transfer, or the development of Third World
infrastructures. The more conservative among free market thinkers
favoured the continuance of the current information regime.

       Problems With the Agenda and the Forum

                 Those who sought to implement the NWICO proposals had to
contend with vigorous opposition from within the so-called
'dominant' countries - principally from the United States and to a
lesser extent from Britain (Preston et al., 1989). In retrospect,
we can categorize the problems with NWICO implementation as:
problems inherent in the NWICO formula itself, difficulties in
proving the veracity of its claims, complications arising from the
use of Unesco as a forum of discussion, bad will occasioned by
"stridency" in the language of proponents and opponents, and
ideological differences over basic concepts.

       As well, the fact that the scheme was to a large degree a
construct of Third World diplomats such as Tunisia's Mustapha
Masmoudi and other Non-Aligned Movement ministers, coupled with the
choice of Unesco as a forum for debate, occasioned resistance from
the developed nations. While the United States pointed to the
adoption of NWICO as one of its reasons for pulling out of that
agency, the US was already at loggerheads with Unesco before the
NWICO issues were tabled (Partan, 1975).

       US participation in Unesco depended upon the resolution of
several different political concerns, of which the NWICO was merely
one. However, at the height of its "vitriolic name calling" phase
(during the mid 1980s), the NWICO debate became the occasion for ad
hominem attacks on Unesco's leaders from the West, and "strident"
calls for the overthrow of imperialism from the Third World.

       Both supporters and opponents have emphasised NWICO claims
about inequalities in news flows, and freedom of information as a
collective right of nations. These notions ran contrary to Western
ideas of press freedom and free markets. Moreover, they served to
distract debate both from deeper phenomenological analyses of world
culture in its broader sense, and from establishing practical
agendas for the amelioration of conditions in the Third World.

       Terminology of the NWICO Proposals

       On 28 November, 1978, at the twentieth General Conference in
Paris, Unesco issued a proclamation calling for the establishment
of a New World Information Order. At the same conference, the
International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems,
(the MacBride Commission), which had been established by Unesco in
1976, presented its interim report. The final draft of the MacBride
report was published in 1980. Unesco's policies toward the media
are to be found in both sources, and in attendant documents such as
the 1980 "Statement on Journalistic Ethics", which was reaffirmed
at the 1983 Mexico select committee meeting. These documents tend
to be conflated in the literature of Unesco critics. It seems
essential to begin by examining the language of the 1978 Media
Declaration itself.

       The document, which came to be known as the "Unesco Media
Declaration" or "Media Charter", bore the full title: "Declaration
on the Fundamental Principles Concerning the Contribution of the
Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding,
to the Promotion of Human Rights, and to Countering Racialism,
Apartheid and Incitement to War." Its full text appears in Meyer
(1987).

       The phrase "countering racialism, apartheid and incitement to
war", occurs no less than four times within the body of the
proclamation, as well as in its preamble and title.  The link
between the goal of defeating these ills, and Unesco's scientific,
educational, and cultural role is established in Article III(2),
which asserts that "aggressive war, racialism, apartheid and other
violations of human rights [are] inter alia spawned by prejudice
and ignorance." Thus, combatting war could be seen as part of
Unesco's mandate of disseminating information and promoting
literacy and education. The language of this clause recalls the
maxim, "Wars begin in the minds of men", and is included by way of
allusion to the Unesco constitution.

       In good legalistic tradition, the Declaration contained in its
preamble fourteen "recalling" clauses citing traditional UN concern
with information, communication, and the press. These clauses
included references to the Unesco constitution, the 1945 Charter of
the United Nations, and to various UN resolutions on the subject,
establishing the declaration's historical precedent. The body of
the proclamation consisted of eleven articles, providing in the
main for recognition by member states of the rights of freedom of
opinion, expression, and of information, and calling upon them to
exert their efforts to strengthen peace and to promote education.
The provisions which were new and innovative with in declaration
consisted of calls for the establishment of "equilibrium and
reciprocity" in communications, and a freer and more balanced flow
of information between the advanced and developing nations.

       The provision for restructuring global communications and
information distribution sparked adverse Western reaction, since
mass communications were and are tied to the commercial and
national interests of the developed countries. As well, attempts to
regulate the media through import quotas, indigenous content
regulations, or accreditation schemes, entail the risk of misuse by
totalitarian governments, and appear to limit the freedom of the
press, which is enshrined in Article I of the Constitution of the
United States, though not, perhaps, in the constitutions of other
nations.

       The document called for the establishment of conditions
"guaranteeing [journalists] the best conditions for the exercise of
their profession" in Article II(4), and in Article X, for the
procurement by member states of "adequate conditions and resources"
to enable the Third World press to expand, and a respect for
"different economic and social systems" - a fairly transparent
reference to the now-defunct Soviet economy. States should ensure,
the declaration said, that journalists enjoy the proper conditions
in which to carry out their duties. Article XI called again for a
guarantee of "the existence of favourable conditions" for the
exercise of journalistic activities. The declaration did not
specify what these conditions should be.

       The declaration's connections to economic policies emerged in
Article VII, wherein the link between the UN's proposed New
International Information Order and its New International Economic
Order was explicitly stated; "...the mass media contribute
effectively to the strengthening of peace and international
understanding, to the promotion of human rights, and to the
establishment of a more just and equitable international economic
order."

       Calls for greater balance in information flow to and from
developing countries appeared in Articles VI and X. The latter
called on member States to "facilitate the procurement by the mass
media in developing states of adequate conditions and resources
enabling them to gain strength and expand", and to co-operate with
the media internally, with other Third World states, and with the
more developed nations.

       Viewed out of context and with hindsight, the Declaration
appears to be a basically liberal document. It repeatedly elicited
support for human rights, the freedom of the press, and the free
flow of information. While emphasising the responsibility of the
media for education and the maintenance of world peace, and making
broad calls for more equitable distribution of wealth, it does not
seem to contain any of the catch phrases so repugnant to Western
sensibilities - denunciations of imperialism, for example. There is
certainly no mention of the "licensing" of journalists - a phrase
which would become the rallying cry of NWICO opponents.

       However, if the Declaration did not recommend press
restrictions, it did contain several phrases and terms which could
be interpreted as accusatory of Western foreign policy and
attributable to Marxist-Leninist inspiration. Additionally, as
Daniel Partan remarked, (Partan, 1975), Unesco had for some time
left itself open to charges of "politicization" when its documents
touched upon matters only tangentially related to its educational,
scientific and cultural mandate, which was always interpreted quite
narrowly by its critics. Unesco calls for cultural protectionism
aroused suspicion of censorship or monopoly. As Ithiel de Sola Pool
observed, "The slogan of protection of national culture most often
really means the protection of an existing government, or of some
special interest within it." (Pool, 1990 :125)

       In the view of Western critics, the Declaration, with its
relatively mild phrases, and subsequent Unesco statements,
constituted calls for the licensing of journalists and state
control of the media. In establishing a link between the NWICO and
NIEO programmes, the Media Declaration could be interpreted as
demanding a world Socialist distribution of wealth. Since to
implement international protection of journalists, one must have a
way of recognising them, the document seems to recommend an
international press accreditation scheme. As well, it could be
argued that there is a fine line between procuring resources for
the media, and state procurement of the media themselves, or of
their privately owned technological infrastructures.

       If the language of the Declaration itself did not contain
provocative Marxist or anti-capitalist language, plenty of examples
could be found both in the statements of individual Unesco
delegates, and in other official publications. Links between
notions of "imperialism", "colonialism", "apartheid", and "Zionism"
appeared in the subsequent Unesco Statement on Journalistic Ethics,
as did references to "peaceful coexistence" and "disarmament", and
the rights of nations to "self determination".

       While the 1978 Media Declaration presented a set of broad
principles, it did not contain any concrete plan of action or set
of regulations. The MacBride Commission, formed by Unesco in 1976,
presented its Interim Report at the 1978 General Conference. The
final draft was ready for publication two years later. While the
MacBride Report represented a remarkable scholarly and diplomatic
effort, it too lacked an agenda, as Mustapha Masmoudi noted.
(Masmoudi, 1985).

       In 1980, Unesco held a consultative meeting in Mexico City,
which lent its support to the 1978 media declaration. By the time
of its 1983 Paris consultative meeting, the central principles of
the NWICO had taken form. This meeting ratified a declaration on
the "International Principles of Professional Ethics in
Journalism", which stressed the rights of individuals and nations
to "true and authentic" distortion-free information, and stressed
the obligation of the media to provide one, suggesting that the
journalists' primary duties were to "humanist values" rather than
to their employers. The ethics statement marked the first attempt
at a set of NWICO regulations. As well, it explicitly recognized
information as a social good rather than a commodity. Principle
III, the so-called "conscience clause", states:

       "Information in journalism is understood as a social good
       and not as a commodity, which means that the journalist
       shares responsibility for the information transmitted and
       is thus accountable not only to those controlling the
       media but ultimately to the public at large, including
       various social interests. The journalist's social
       responsibility requires that he or she will act under all
       circumstances in conformity with a personal ethical
       consciousness."

       Two additional inclusions are significant: the identification
of journalistic ethics with the "universal values of humanism...
social progress and national liberation", (Principle VIII), and the
expansion of the "peace" rhetoric of the 1978 Media Declaration to
include overt references to disarmament and neo-colonialism.

       "The ethical commitment to the universal values of
       humanism calls for the journalist to abstain from any
       justification for, or incitement to, wars of aggression
       and the arms race, especially in nuclear weapons, and all
       other forms of violence, hatred or discrimination,
       especially racialism and apartheid, oppression by
       tyrannic regimes, colonialism and neocolonialism, as well
       as other great evils which afflict humanity such as
       poverty, malnutrition and diseases."

       The term "disarmament" could well have been interpreted by the
West as a Soviet code-word for the unilateral dismemberment of
NATO's nuclear capabilities, upon which the 'balance of power'
rested at the time. The Soviets, with their superior conventional
forces in Europe, would have derived more latitude from nuclear
disarmament. Thus, in the critics' view, "disarmament" really meant
granting the Soviet Union de facto strategic superiority. Given the
international mistrust of the period, it is not difficult to see
how incorporation of such phrases into charters and declarations
would raise concerns about Unesco's "politicization".

       Many Voices Calling Vitriolic Names

       The International Commission for the Study of Communications
Problems had been formed during the nineteenth general conference
of Unesco, held at Nairobi in 1976. This commission, operating
under the presidency of Ireland's former Foreign Minister, Sean
MacBride, presented its Interim Report at the 1978 conference. Its
final report was published in 1980, under the title, Many Voices,
One World.

       This report tended to be mentioned, especially by hostile
writers, in the same breath as the Draft Declaration on Media
Policy, which had been formulated after presentation of the
Commission's Interim Report at the '78 conference. Moreover,
certain resolutions suggested by members from the Soviet and Non-
Aligned blocks, which were never actually included in either
document and would have placed limits on press accreditation, were
represented as having been central tenets of the New World
Information and Communications Order outlined in the MacBride
Report. (USNC, 1984).

       The MacBride Report represents a masterly attempt at
synthesis; to present the cases for structuralist models of
information while recommending liberal solutions. In fact,
dissenting opinions appended to the Report, Sergei Losev (a TASS
official), Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Juan Somavia, and Mustapha
Masmoudi, objected to various degrees to the document's liberal
slant. (Unesco, 1980: 279-281).

       Masmoudi's noteworthy characterisation of the report as a
"deontological code" explicates the report's ultimate grounding: it
rests upon voluntary rather than regulatory or prescriptive
adhesion, and proposes few normative measures. Article I(3) of the
Unesco constitution prohibits Unesco from intervening in matters
which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of Member
States. (Partan, 1975: passim). Thus, any Unesco resolution has
only the legal status of a recommendation.

       While calling repeatedly for "global perspectives", the Report
accentuated personal actions and the duties of individual reporters or
organisations as remedies for media inequities. In so doing, it endorsed no
credible macro analysis of the problems, preferring to deal with them from a
safer, ideologically neutral, micro point of view. Thus, despite Western
concern, stress was not put on any systematic domination by "imperialist"
forces in the MacBride Report's recommendations. In suggesting individual
rather than concerted social action, the Report remained an essentially
liberal document, thereby leaving itself open to critics of the Left as well.

       An example of the compromise nature of the MacBride Report may be seen
in its analysis on "Dominance in Communication Contents." The Committee
identified various problems associated with the cultural message of media
contents: the media may distort the contents of news or information by
presenting inaccuracies or untruths instead of facts; media consumption may
result in cultural alienation, so that the values presented in the media
overshadow local or historical ones; external influences, such as
transnational corporate interests, may affect media contents. However, the
Report suggested that the responsibility for cultural dominance must be
shared by both the producing and consuming nations, since consuming nations
buy media products willingly, and could presumably refrain from purchasing
them.

       While structuralist analysis is evident in the first three points, this
last exemplifies the Report's inherently liberal character. It is not surprising
that socialist Commissioners such as Losev, Masmoudi, and Garcia-Marquez,
should feel less than satisfied with the Report and should feel compelled to
append dissenting opinions. Nor is it surprising that conservative member Elie
Abel of the United States, should lodge his own complaints about the
document's socialist leanings.

       Although the MacBride Report was lauded by both camps as a masterful
and diplomatic effort, it could not lay the politicization controversy.
Moreover, it can be seen as a product of forces developing within Unesco and
the United Nations as a whole. It is clear that by the 1976 General Conference,
whereat Unesco's Director General, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, was instructed to
investigate the information issue, and to establish the MacBride Commission,
a general ideological climate existed within Unesco, and perhaps within the
United Nations at large, which contained elements inherently at odds with
American foreign policy.

       The United States announced in 1983 that unless Unesco implemented
changes in its budgetary system, and abandoned its "statist" approach, it
would withdraw from the agency at the end of 1984. In an eleventh-hour attempt
to head off American withdrawal, the Executive Committee of the United States
National Committee for Unesco (USNC), issued a privately printed "advisory",
containing 23 points, supportive of Unesco and refuting the administration's
allegations. (USNC, 1984). It is noteworthy that the signatories to the
Advisory included Leonard R. Sussman of Freedom House, in his capacity as
Vice Chairman of the USNC. Despite his opposition to various Unesco policies,
even Sussman wished to effect change from within. The Advisory argued that
Unesco had been no more or less politicized than any other UN body, that the
"rights of peoples" statements were not meant to detract from individual
rights, that Unesco did not adopt a "statist" approach to issues, and that the
USSR did not hold undue sway over Unesco.

       The USNC maintained, with arguable accuracy, that "The New International
Economic Order (NIEO) had not been central to Unesco programs", but granted
that it had been "reflected in many of the debates, publications and programs".
The Unesco budget, argued the USNC showed only a small increase during the
fiscal year, despite US claims of "profligate leaps", and that charges of Paris
officials' leading exorbitant lifestyles were false. As well, the USNC defended
contentious programmes like assistance to the PLO and various African
liberation movements, and to disarmament studies, by stating that they took
small percentages of the budget and were educational in nature. (USNC, 1983:
passim).

       The American withdrawal from Unesco, which took effect at the end of
1984, together with M'Bow's treatment at the hands of the American press, is
well documented in Hope and Folly, the definitive 1989 study by Preston,
Schiller and Herman. An interesting feature of this particular sequence of
political events lies in the fact that so much of the American campaign was
waged in the pages of the press. This lent credence to what was perhaps the
most audacious structuralist contention - that the press, even in democratic
countries, is manipulated by "governments or elites".  As well, the story
illustrated, through the rather heavy media reliance upon anti-Unesco
"experts" from the Heritage Foundation, that there are inherent weaknesses
in the "official sources" policies of the media. (Preston, et al., 1989: 216,
 222
and passim). It is far to easy, say critics, for administrations to promote
"experts" whose views they find agreeable. Once established, such experts
tend to become "convenience sources" for journalists.

       How justified was Western concern over the "politicization" of Unesco?
Did the Media Declaration and MacBride Report represent isolated phenomena,
or an overall shift in Unesco politics? Or were these reports merely the
latest examples in a leftward-leaning political climate within Unesco and the
United Nations itself at the time? For instance, concern over the
politicization of Unesco had already been aroused at least a decade earlier,
with Daniel Partan's study.

       Partan, who prepared his work for the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, noted three frequently used meanings of the term
"politicization". The term is used: "to refer to UNESCO decisions on matters
that are considered by some to lie essentially outside the domain of
'education, science and culture'", "to refer to decisions reached through a
process that some see as not reflecting the high standards of scholarship
that should be expected of the agency," and "to reflect a view that specific
actions taken by the UNESCO Executive Board or General Conference were
taken to express a partizan political position, rather than as an objective,
non-partizan determination on a matter falling within UNESCO's competence."
(Partan, 1975:9). While his paper came to be cited by NWICO supporters and
critics alike, Partan stated clearly that it offered no conclusions about
Unesco's politicization. (Partan, 1975: vii.)

       Under the directorship of Rene Maheu, Unesco had criticised Israel for
archaeological digs conducted in the occupied territories after the 1967 war,
charging that they violated the Hague Convention. (Partan, 1975: 95-99).
Unesco's calls for the elimination of colonialism and racialism had led to the
withdrawal of South Africa in 1955. The organisation had applied sanctions
against South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, and Portugal in 1966, and the General
Council had issued a statement "deploring racial discrimination and apartheid",
and "all forms and manifestations of colonialism and neo colonialism," as "a
threat to international peace and security [and] a crime against humanity."
(Partan, 1975: 122).

       In resolutions of 1960, 1962, 1964 the General Council had stressed
Unesco's role in "contributing to the attainment of independence by colonial
countries and peoples." The distinction between countries and peoples is of
note, since some of the groups seeking assistance were (arguably) "peoples"
without "nations" such as the Palestinians, or the Southern Africans. These
resolutions emphasised Unesco's desire for education planning, elimination of
illiteracy, training of qualified national personnel, organization and
development of science & technology, the preservation of national cultures
and the development of information media. (Partan, 1975: 116).

       The document urged: "Unesco should take a more active part in the
struggle against all forms and manifestions of fascism, neo-colonialism and
other forms of oppression and tyranny, racialism and apartheid caused by
imperialism..." (Partan, 1975: 126-127). This language implies (again arguably),
that the ills of racism and apartheid are products of Western politics.

       As well, critics charged Unesco with supporting guerilla and terrorist
groups. Instances included the admission of observers from the Palestine
Liberation Organisation, and the Organisation for African Unity, as
representatives of "peoples struggling for liberation, self-determination and
independence against colonial and alien domination." (Partan, 1975: 169).

       Nor were such sentiments confined to Unesco. The UN General Assembly
resolution 3237 had invited the PLO to "participate in the deliberations of
the General Assembly on the question of Palestine", in October of 1974.
(Partan, 1975: 173). When the World Administrative Radio Conference (WARC79)
argued for more equitable distribution of radio frequencies among the
developing nations, the United States considered withdrawing from the
International Telecommunications Union. (Surprennant, 1983: 225).

       Outside Unesco, but under its aegis, various groups such as the
International Organization of Journalists and similar bodies representing
Asian, African, and Latin American media workers subscribed to NWICO
principles as well. The International Progress Organisation entitled its 1985
Cyprus meeting: "The New International Information and Communications Order -
 Basis for Cultural Dialogue and Peaceful Coexistence Among Nations."
(Kochler, 1985).

       The use of Nikita Kruschov's phrase "peaceful coexistence", in the title
of a Unesco-sponsored seminar would have been enough to provide hostile
observers with 'conclusive' evidence of Unesco's "politicization." According to
William Safire, the term "peaceful coexistence" can be traced to V.I. Lenin, and
was used extensively by Khrushchev, who employed it in a very technical
sense, declaring in a 1961 speech:

       "Peaceful coexistence... is a form of intense economic, political,
       and ideological struggle of the proletariat against the
       aggressive forces of imperialism in the international arena."
       (Safire, 1978: 522).

       If the inclusion of such terms in the seminar's title, (even though dated
by this time), was not enough raise administration alarm, then Hans Kochler's
opening address could well have sent up the balloon:

       "As a result of the colonial past, the industrialized world is not
       only trying to impose its particular value-system and way of life
       upon other civilizations, it is also dominating and channelizing the
       flow of information from the developing countries to the outside
       world which reduces their chances to present their own views in
       an authentic way. The sophisticated infrastructure of information
       in the industrialized world prevents the development of
       alternative infrastructures in the 'Third World' which is contrary
       to the principle of freedom of information." (Kochler, 1985:1).

       Kochler suggested that information imbalance was part of a systemic
problem inherent in technology and in capitalism itself, which kept the have-
not nations poor. As well, he suggested that the media were being used as
Western propaganda channels. To be fair, Western agencies such as the Voice
of America, Radio Free Europe, and Radio Canada International freely admit to
having engaged in specific anti-communist activities. For instance, "As
concern with Communist influence in Eastern Europe in the 1950s mounted,
Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Hungarian" were added to RCI's language set.
(Canada, 1987: 103).

       Appearing at the same conference, Mustapha Masmoudi, Paul Audley of
Canada, Themba Sono, Andreas Sophocleous, and others provided less heated
analyses. However, the anger and frustration of the less developed countries
is evident in the presentations of speakers like K.P. Misra, and Saad Qasem
Hammoudi.

       Hammoudi cited Harold Innis' analysis of media and society. (Kochler,
1985: 29). Sophocleous presented a pro and con argument for the unrestricted
free flow of information, noting the potential dangers of "xenomania and the
imitation of foreign models in all aspects of life" and the danger of "erosion
of cultural tradition", and the "imposition of social and economic systems" on
consumer countries. (Kochler, 1985: 78-9). Misra lauded Mahatma Ghandi and
Indira Ghandi for attempting to find a middle way.

       Mustapha Masmoudi's contribution to this seminar is important because
it dealt in particulars. While pointing out the value of the Media Declaration
and MacBride Report, (and claiming credit for the NAM's 1976 Tunis meeting),
Masmoudi proposed a plan of action for NWICO implementation.

       Masmoudi argued for (a) a new definition of the right to communicate
which would ensure free and balanced flow of information; (b) equity and
equality based on democratization of informational means and structures on
a horizontal as well as a vertical level; (c) the establishment of a right of
access to information sources; (d) the discarding of principles such as the
'self control' of the media in favour of a standard code of ethics; (e) the
protection of journalists in their relations with their employers as well as
while on dangerous missions; (f) a right to rectification for the victims of
selective or unbalanced information; and (g) the inclusion in the Berne
Convention of favourable copyright concessions for the developing nations.

       He emphasised the differences between notions of "press freedom" or
"free flow" in Western and developing Nations, emphasising the NWICO ideals of
the collective right to communicate, the rights of sovereign entities to
protect their cultures, and the concept of a plurality of information sources.
"The essential criterion of information freedom resides in the plurality of
sources and in the free access to these sources and to all kinds of opinion."
(Kochler, 1985: 9-22).

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