Word: unesco
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...threatens press freedom as Americans and Europeans conceive it. Next round in the conflict will come this month in Belgrade, when the new order will be debated by 151 nations belonging to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Focus of the debate will be a report prepared by UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. That 16-member body, which included representatives from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union and Third World states, was set up three years ago under the chairmanship of former Irish Foreign Minister Seán MacBride...
...litany of grievances that will be recited once more at Belgrade. Again, the Western press will be accused of "cultural aggression" against Third World countries, of perpetuating a "monopoly" of the news flow, of "distorting" the Third World's staggering problems of development. In Third World coverage, claims UNESCO's Senegal-born director-general, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, Western editors favor negative over positive, excitement over substance: "Their attention is more easily drawn to sensational disasters or to the witticisms of some publicity-seeking leader than to the desperate efforts of whole peoples to escape from...
From here, it is not a long philosophical step for governments to seek similar restrictions on the freedom of the foreign press to report unpleasant news. In fact, enough Third World countries were ready to support a Soviet resolution along just these lines at UNESCO'S 1976 general conference, in Nairobi, to give the international press its first real fright. The proposal was shelved at the last minute. Instead, the MacBride Commission was appointed to study ways of "achieving a freer and more balanced flow of information." The commission's report is now out; eventually it will...
...news, unfortunately, undermines the good. Damage control efforts by Western and moderate Third World members of the MacBride Commission were only partly successful. Reflecting the missionary zeal of its UNESCO drafters, the report is permeated with a preference for a guided, rather than an independent, press. One key passage calls for "the formulation by all nations, and particularly developing countries, of comprehensive communication policies linked to overall social, cultural, economic and political goals." Another, obviously aimed at the international news agencies, recommends "effective legal measures designed to circumscribe the action of transnationals by requiring them to comply with specific criteria...
Ominously, UNESCO's threeyear, $625 million budget, which was tabled in Belgrade last week, would fund studies into several pet UNESCO projects opposed by Western newsmen. These include a definition of "socially responsible communication" (implying criteria for news content), the "promotion of ethical principles" for journalists (feared as restricting reportorial freedom) and analyzing "the impact of advertising" (which could lead to a restrictive international advertising code). UNESCO also seems determined to push toward "special protection" for journalists-even though the MacBride report warns that this might involve setting up licensing bodies to determine which journalists should be protected...