Introduction

Historically, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has tried to avoid controversy. Yet its role, profile, and focus in the international information and communication debate are unmistakable. UNESCO, a specialized agency of the United Nations based in Paris, sponsored crucial international conferences that focused on the global communication debate and also directed its research program toward promoting new initiatives, such as the New World International and Communication Order (NWICO). Initially UNESCO invested much, backstage as well as publicly, in NWICO. This eventually led to major problems for the agency, the greatest of which was the withdrawal during the 1980s of the United States and the United Kingdom from UNESCO membership. When they left, they also took their crucial financial support, which had been about one‐third of UNESCO's total budget. UNESCO put its efforts and credibility into supporting a call for NWICO, but with the demise of the Cold War, UNESCO was found wanting. It had made a strategic mistake in relying extensively on Soviet support for NWICO.

Before describing the critical historical meetings and stakeholders in the NWICO debate, it is important to note that the global media have two rather distinct origins. In the United States, their origins are strongly rooted in commercial media systems in which advertising and market forces play crucial roles. Initially with newspapers, radio, and now with television, telecommunications, and the Internet, the US model is one of corporate influence with private ownership and control. The US model treats media and culture as economic commodities. By contrast, in Europe and in most countries of the world, the historical model is one of government ownership or government control of the mass media. The BBC is a good example of a non‐commercial radio and television networks subsidized by both the government and listeners or viewers, who pay annual licensing fees. In most of the world, radio evolved as a government medium without commercials or the influence of marketplace competition. The role of electronic media was to inform, educate, and entertain, not to make money from advertisers. Broadcasting monopolies were the early pervasive global model. When television technology emerged, these same government‐approved outlets took responsibility for television broadcasting. For several decades they limited the number of national television networks to only one or two, much as they did with radio. They viewed the media as cultural partners that were necessary to promote a nation's history, culture, education, and the arts. When commercial television emerged, a mixed model was accepted in Europe and in many other countries. The commercial model of the United States was frowned upon until vast audiences began viewing the shows presented by new alternative commercial television stations. With deregulation and the advancement of cable and satellite technologies, several competing commercial broadcasting systems were born. These new stations, systems, or networks are frequently foreign media giants, such as Disney or Fox, and often reach larger audiences than the original government‐controlled networks.

It is important to keep this duality of approach in mind when considering the following NWICO debates. The debates themselves tended to move along two different tracks, the one track being more commercial, market driven, and free enterprise in orientation, the other being non‐commercial, publicly funded, and government controlled and regulated in the public interest in orientation. The following sections review the history of the international communication debates, illustrating the global and fundamental differences in the origins, philosophies, roles, and environments in which global communication stakeholders have operated and, in some monopolistic, government‐regulated environments, continue to operate. More than half of the nations in the world – those in the peripheral regions – still place some type of restriction on journalists or media outlets. Even though the commercial, advertiser‐supported networks have attracted by far the largest audiences internationally, there is still a dedicated and loyal niche audience supporting public broadcasting, led by outlets such as the BBC. Many non‐Americans view the international communication debate from a much different perspective. “Decolonization in itself has not made the world more just and peaceful. The evidence shows more news and images come from the Western world and the access to non‐Western culture in terms of information, knowledge, entertainment and images becomes more scarce.”¹

UNESCO: Backdrop for the NWICO Debates

Acknowledging in its constitution that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed,” UNESCO originated in Great Britain in 1945. Based on this lofty ideal, UNESCO has transformed itself from a passive force into an active force in international affairs. It views its mission as that of a catalyst for and supporter of development:

Both on the theoretical and the practical level, UNESCO has a vital role to play.… The current economic relations between industrialized and developing countries must, certainly, be transformed, but they cannot on their own change the political and socio‐cultural factors which shape integrated developments. Thus UNESCO has the task of helping: to enlarge the scientific and technological bases which permit each country to use its natural resources better; …to increase and improve communications and information systems; …to promote the progress of social sciences so that each society can undertake its own studies and utilize the instruments of change without losing its own identity.²

Formally established as a specialized agency of the United Nations in 1946, UNESCO entered the international arena with 20 member states, the vast majority being core nations. Its budget is drawn from a levy imposed on each member state. Its General Assembly, comprised of all member states, meets every two years to determine the agency's programs and budget. A 45‐member Executive Board supervises the implementation of the programs, and the day‐to‐day operations of the agency are carried out by the Secretariat. Although based in Paris, the Secretariat draws its personnel from all member states.³ In the early years, all members were core or semiperipheral nations. Peripheral nations began joining UNESCO after World War II. Many were former colonies of European core nations – this created a tense working environment. Today, delegates from several peripheral nations hold senior positions in UNESCO. To a large extent most peripheral nations view UNESCO as the one specialized agency of the UN which promotes their needs and agenda, with its focus on a broad range of development initiatives.

UNESCO's mandate is broad, covering educational, scientific, cultural, and communication programs and research projects around the globe. The convening and sponsoring of international ministerial and research conferences to discuss various aspects of this broad mandate is one of UNESCO's most important and time‐consuming tasks. In fact, it is through this role that UNESCO became a major player in the international communication debates leading to NWICO.

Originally the Western nations, particularly Britain, France, and the United States, dominated UNESCO. However, beginning in the 1950s and continuing today, power and influence shifted as a result of the continual addition of newly emerging nations, primarily from Asia, Africa, and other peripheral areas. Almost all were former colonies of some European nation. The one‐country one‐vote procedures that govern the agency have provided the peripheral nations with a voice and power. During the 1960s, the shared ideological and economic conditions of several of these peripheral nations led to the development of a power bloc or lobby known as the Group of 77. Although this bloc has grown to include well over 100 nations, its role and that of these newly emerged nations within UNESCO is fraught with contradictions. As UNESCO expert Richard Hoggart explains,

The new nations, who were, in general, creations of the early sixties, tend to take the UN seriously though ambiguously. Since the UN was set up by the victorious allied powers, it has the stamp of Western ways of thinking. On the other hand, its record in anticolonialism is good and it has made a considerable contribution to the emergence of some new states. Their relationship to the UN is therefore rich in ambiguities.⁴

This ambiguity is no better illustrated than in their attitudes toward global communication On the one hand, many of these nations want, some desperately, to become modern industrialized countries with color digital television, personal computers, cellular phones, and all the media trappings that money and technology permit. Yet, as noted earlier, most lack even the basic telecommunication infrastructures for telephones, let alone sophisticated ground terminals for satellite television transmission, or broadband cable for Internet access. At the same time, many of these nations reject Western culture – Hollywood films, Madison Avenue commercials, and core nation or foreign‐produced television programming. For many in the peripheral zone, only pure, indigenous domestic media products are acceptable. The dilemma, of course, is that core nation technology and shows are easily accessible and cheaper than the production or creation of high‐quality indigenous systems or software.

Throughout its existence, UNESCO has had its critics. Part of that criticism is a result of the periodic negative assessment of its parent, the United Nations. Another flashpoint during the mid‐1970s was a decision that excluded Israel from the European regional grouping, creating a barrage of criticism from the Western press and leading the United States to temporarily withhold its contribution to UNESCO, an amount equal to about 25% of the agency's total budget.

Paradoxically, another cause for criticism was the consistent demand of peripheral countries for better development initiatives. UNESCO's initial response to critics was to focus on education, which culminated in the publication of the 1972 Faure Commission report, Learning to Be.⁵ But with the completion of that major effort, a substantive policy vacuum developed that permitted the introduction of a series of resolutions by republics of the Soviet Union concerning the development of national media and communication policies. UNESCO, core governments, and multinational media corporations largely ignored the issues and questions being raised because they underestimated the strength, determination, voting power, and depth of animosity felt by peripheral nations. These peripheral nations had a long list of grievances about international media flows. The lack of substantive policy permitted the Soviets and several peripheral nations to hijack UNESCO's planning agenda in the late 1970s. The result was the eruption of the NWICO debates, which dominated the activities of UNESCO for more than two decades. This chapter highlights the major forums in which the media and communication debates crystallized. Even today, many nations around the world are critical and concerned about the impact of foreign software on their domestic values, attitudes, and beliefs. A good example is the concern of the American‐dominated Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It is based in California and its main task is to globally manage the allocation of Internet domain names and addresses. Several critics want to turn over ICANN to a new UN agency and remove it from the hegemonic control of the US government.

Identifying the Issues and Taking Sides

The debate officially began in 1970⁶ when UNESCO's General Assembly outlined the need to articulate national communication policies, and a series of publications dealing with this issue began to emerge. This examination, by the peripheral nations in particular, led to increased documentation and greater awareness of the one‐way flow of media messages from core to peripheral nations. It also became apparent that national communication development policies for semiperipheral and peripheral nations could not be produced when so much of their media were produced or controlled by foreign firms based in London, Paris, New York, or Los Angeles.

Subsequently, three significant resolutions were introduced that increased the visibility and divisiveness of the global media issue. The first related to the rapid development of direct broadcast satellite (DBS) technology. DBS allowed media outlets to transmit their messages directly to receiving sets throughout the world. Whereas traditional ground station broadcasting signals could be controlled or blocked to prevent the widespread transmission of alien messages, DBS signals could easily circumvent these restrictions and procedures. In response, UNESCO passed a resolution – by a vote of 100 to 1, with the United States as the only dissenter – to require satellite broadcasters to obtain the prior consent of national governments and their regulators before transmitting messages to a foreign territory. Even though there was no technical way to enforce the resolution, its passage represented a boldfaced rejection of US “free press” and “free flow” rhetoric and business practices.

The second resolution called for regional meetings of experts to discuss national communication policies. This resolution received the unanimous support of the General Assembly, but dissension arose when it was decided to hold these meetings in peripheral regions and not in the core industrialized nations, as had been UNESCO's tradition. A few of the key early meetings were held in Latin America.

The third contentious resolution, which was introduced by the USSR, sought to acknowledge both the right and the responsibility of national governments to control the media messages availability to their citizenry. Although the resolution failed to pass, it was attractive to many peripheral nations, which were heartened to have the support of at least one of the superpowers. Although peripheral nations had achieved a significant presence in UNESCO, this Soviet “sharing of the minds” with respect to communication policy lent strength to their votes, opinions, and influence. For their part, the Soviets had no journalistic qualms or ethical dilemmas about extending international government control of media; clearly, their major objective was to aggravate the United States, Europe, and other core nations.

The Nonaligned Movement

As the process of decolonization continued to transfer newly emerging nations from the foreign policy mandates of their former colonizers, now many peripheral nations began to fear becoming satellites or pawns of the one of the two superpowers, the United States or the Soviet Union. Consequently, a new political pressure group emerged. In 1973 a summit meeting of foreign ministers of nonaligned countries met in Algiers. During this meeting, participating nations acknowledged their desire to develop a unique foreign policy stance independent of both the United States and the USSR. They wanted to create a “third option” to reflect their independence. Many of the policy positions postulated sought to overcome the consequences of past colonization. Among these was a demand for the decolonization of information and an end to the one‐way flow of media.

A series of nonaligned conferences followed in Peru, Tunisia, Mexico, India, and Sri Lanka. At each successive meeting, the rhetoric and action progressed from attacking transnational communication corporations to developing an action plan for the establishment of a wire service, Inter Press Service, which would begin as a pool of contributing government information services. Additional issues included debate about the New International Economic Order (NIEO) and awareness of the growing power of a nucleus of oil‐rich, nonaligned countries in the Middle East, known as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).

In addition to the nonaligned summit meetings, a crucial seminar was held at the University of Tampere in Finland. Finland's president Urho Kekkonen, in addressing the issue of cultural imperialism, asserted that the theory of the “free” flow of information was really a rationale for a “one‐way” flow. Not coincidentally, a major research study was also presented at the conference that documented the pervasive influence of US and British television program sales internationally.⁷ As research increasingly revealed evidence of the one‐way flow of media products, particularly wire services, anti‐Western rhetoric escalated.

Latin America Meetings

While the nonaligned countries proceeded to articulate their complaints and develop communication strategies, several UNESCO‐sponsored meetings were convened to investigate the disparities in international information flows and participation in national communication policy development. The major issues quickly became the relationship between communication policies and economic, social, and cultural development, and the role of governments in promoting the latter by controlling the former. A major conference to examine these questions was set for July 1976 in San Jose, Costa Rica, but two background meetings were held in Bogota, Colombia, July 4–13, 1974, and Quito, Ecuador, June 24–30, 1975. These meetings provided significant impetus and research for critics of Western media. Background papers, data, and research documents were presented outlining several grievances about a broad range of international communication issues. Foreign wire services, particularly those headquartered in New York, London, and Paris, received considerable criticism about their coverage of Latin America.

It should be emphasized that all parties to the debate understood that these regional conferences were creating momentum for a major international conference focusing on media and information flow issues. Global information flows and media policies dominated the debate at UNESCO just as education had in the 1960s. However, while there had been a general consensus about the positive role and impact of education, a strong and highly divisive polarity of opinion (free press versus government control) was developing concerning global information policies.

19th UNESCO General Assembly, Nairobi, 1976

The vital role of information and the debate about how to promote development through information policies were the focus of the 19th UNESCO General Assembly. By this time, most peripheral countries had abandoned the desire for and rhetoric about a free press in favor of a development press, one that would assist in the positive development of their poor nation‐states. They wanted a cultural stamp of their own making and not one imported from core nations or “Made in the USA.” The director general of UNESCO, Amadou‐Mahtar M'Bow from Senegal, Africa, could not have agreed more.

The major document before delegates at the Nairobi conference was a resolution similar to the one that had been introduced by the Soviet Union in 1971, entitled “Draft Declaration of Fundamental Principles Governing the Use of the Mass Media in Strengthening Peace and International Understanding and in Combating War, Propaganda, Racialism and Apartheid.” This declaration, specifically Article 12 requiring that national governments take responsibility for all media systems, garnered extensive attention from the Western press. Once again, the Western media coverage of UNESCO was negative. The negative focus affected the leadership role of Director‐General M'Bow as well as the media debate.

Before outlining the major events in Nairobi, it is necessary to remind readers of a situation during the early 1970s that again cemented Western, and particularly US, faith in the value of a free press. Without dwelling on the details, two junior reporters for the Washington Post, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, pursued a lead that ultimately resulted in the resignation of Richard Nixon as president of the United States. Like nothing else might have, the Watergate scandal reinvigorated a latent distrust of government regulations and demonstrated to the people of the United States and other core nations the need for a press free from government control. Even the mere suggestion of increased government control of the media was anathema to the US public and Western journalists. In a similar fashion, British control of the national press during the Falkland Islands invasion in 1982 irritated many British reporters and publishers as well as the British public. Consequently, the Western model of the press as the “fourth estate” had been strongly reinforced in advance of the Nairobi conference.

After years of preliminary discussions concerning the role of the media, the Nairobi debate boiled down to a signal draft declaration consisting of twelve articles. Given the heightened profile of the issue within UNESCO and on the news agenda of the global wire services, a means to avoid a direct confrontation between East and West was sought. Leaving aside other issues, it was Article 12, calling for state responsibility for media activities that dominated the conference. In the “spirit of Nairobi,” a compromise was reached, mainly backstage, to shelve the draft declaration and to reduce pressure among the peripheral nations and nonaligned militants by forming a new group to study the issue further. UNESCO created the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, headed by Senator Sean MacBride of Ireland.

Having accurately analyzed the strong Western objection to development journalism and government oversight or control of press activities, Director‐General M'Bow wanted to avoid an outright showdown, as well as save his career. Although he was able to delay the debate and critical vote until UNESCO’s next General Assembly, to be held in Paris in 1978, he also exacerbated the problem by linking the debate over a new international information order to the proposed new international economic order.

New International Economic Order (NIEO)

In order to provide a complete picture of the rise of the nonaligned movement, it is necessary to describe the development of the New International Economic Order (NIEO). During the early 1970s, the United Nations and its member agencies became major vehicles for change, offering hope to emerging peripheral nations. Many observers were surprised by the extent to which the resolve and the magnitude of change adopted by the United Nations was misanalyzed not only in terms of NWICO, but also with respect to the underlying NIEO. It took Western economists several years to come to grips with NIEO, and only a few understood its link to international communication and NWICO. This point is highlighted in a report published by UNESCO, which also addressed the changing balance of power within the international agency, and across the UN system.

Just what was the NIEO that the United Nations, and therefore UNESCO, were supporting? In effect, it represents a major change for the West, which traditionally controlled the United Nations and its organizations. This is clearly not the case any longer. When 146 nations met in Paris for five weeks of UNESCO meetings in the fall of 1978, the largest group – 106 member states – represented the peripheral nations, and many were also part of the so‐called nonaligned nations. They were originally labeled the “Group of 77,” and this label is still used despite continually increasing size and influence.⁸

Given the shift, it should not be surprising that the pressure for changes to enhance the development opportunities of peripheral nations became a pressing issue on the agendas of the United Nations and its specialized agencies. In response, on May 1, 1974, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution to adopt a major program of action establishing a New International Economic Order. The declaration encouraged member states to:

work urgently for the establishment of a New International Economic Order based on “equity, sovereign equality, interdependence, common interest and cooperation among all states,” irrespective of their economic and social systems which shall correct inequalities and redress existing injustices, make it possible to eliminate the widening gap between the developed and the developing countries and ensure steadily accelerating economic and social development and peace and justice for future generations.⁹

The result was a flurry of research and conferences conducted to clarify the issues and develop strategies for achieving the goal.¹⁰ Despite all the activity, enhanced economic development for peripheral nations failed to occur. However, the peripheral nations found an unexpected opportunity for change when the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), originally founded in Baghdad in 1960, was able to force a substantial increase in the price of oil, a basic commodity throughout the world.¹¹ During the 1970s, OPEC quickly became a model for peripheral nations to emulate in hopes of obtaining the economic concessions and achieving the financial growth that had escaped them over decades of foreign control.

The changes in economic orientation and philosophy brought about by NIEO influenced all aspects of the UN and UNESCO. Everything from the influence of transnational corporations to the role of the major wire services and the impact of popular culture was examined in light of either NIEO or NWICO. The anti‐colonial rhetoric of the new order was harsh. Colonial domination, neocolonialism, racial discrimination, apartheid, media images, cultural imperialism, Western hegemony, and violations of human rights were all subject to severe criticism. Although the goals of the new order were lofty, its real objective was to shift international power from Western, core nations to a loose coalition of peripheral regions, Arab OPEC regions, nonaligned nations, and socialist (namely, the USSR) countries. The next goal was to effect a change in sociocultural priorities under the protection or guidance of NWICO.

The Debate Begins in Earnest

As UNESCO prepared for the next general meeting, the future of Director‐General M'Bow rested on how he handled the contentious draft declaration on the mass media. He realized that the “spirit of Nairobi” was a false one built on acrimony and distrust. The agreement to establish the MacBride International Commission as a means of buying time and reducing the building pressure had been worked out backstage at the last moment to avoid a walkout by Western delegations. That compromise was no longer sufficient to withstand the mounting strain.

M'Bow also had to do something to polish UNESCO's image, which had become severely tarnished. UNESCO's Secretariat perceived the problem as one created by the Western press, which had emphasized negative aspects of UNESCO's leadership, initiatives, and programs. In reality, however, UNESCO's public image was more negatively affected by its shift from a passive, pro‐Western agency to an activist, pro‐development, peripheral‐oriented agency. Its ideological commitment to fundamental change, through NIEO for example, was little understood and was perceived as a threat to the free markets and economic security that core nations had taken for granted since UNESCO's inception in the 1940s. But new peripheral nations looked to this specialized agency of the United Nations to take care of their international grievances.

As for the plight of peripheral nations, “it was as though they had moved from military colonialism to technological neocolonialism without a thought beyond the purely practical and profitable.”¹² Many peripheral nations had rushed to accept Western technology and software designed for other cultures and other needs, and now conceded that Western‐controlled aid was not the answer to their problems. They had seen aspects of electronic colonialism and they did not like what they were seeing. They did not want to be consumers of a foreign and alien culture. As a result, peripheral nations approached the media and culture debate with a call for greater distributive justice bolstered by their five‐year discussions of the need for a NIEO. They had flexed their muscles, voted, received attention, and won; now they were prepared to go after the Western mass media.

In his opening address to the 1978 General Assembly, Director‐General M'Bow set the framework for UNESCO's future agenda. Noting that “the establishment of a new international economic order constitutes …one of the major contexts, and no doubt the largest, within which the activities of the Organization will take place,” M'Bow continued by asserting that the imbalances between the West and the peripheral nations were not limited to “solely the production and exchange of information and knowledge.”¹³ In this way, M'Bow ensured that NWICO would become further intertwined with the NIEO. After reviewing several other UNESCO activities including human rights, education, disarmament, and science and technology, M'Bow turned to communication. He acknowledged “the task awaiting the international community in this field over the next few years represents a real challenge, since it is a task which is at one and the same time immense, complex, essential and urgent.”¹⁴ Then M'Bow proceeded to review the MacBride Commission and highlighted specific areas that required further research and clarification, including disparities in global communication.

In closing, M'Bow criticized his opponents and urged them to adopt NWICO:

I believe very sincerely that the draft now before you could meet with a large measure of agreement, provided that it is read objectively and dispassionately, and that form of words are patiently sought which dispel the ambiguities of hidden motives that some people still read into it. In this way, the large measure of agreement that the General Conference considers necessary could be achieved.¹⁵

M'Bow lost ground quickly as Western nations, in response to his address, spoke against the submitted draft declaration. Activities in plenary sessions, in corridors, and in media briefings cumulatively portrayed UNESCO as divided along East–West lines, with the East (socialist) receiving support from many peripheral and OPEC nations. It was clear that the controversial draft declaration on the role of the mass media would have significant implications. It represented a distinct change from the free flow of information policy established by the United Nations and formally supported by the United States since the 1940s.

Moreover, peripheral nations clung to their objections to the Western media. Their criticisms reflected three primary issues. The first argument was a straightforward anti‐capitalist approach that criticized the commercial orientation of the press, radio, television, and film industries. The second line of attack focused on the one‐way flow of information from the United States, through wire services, television programming, and Hollywood productions, to other nations, with little if any reciprocal trade. Some peripheral nations, particularly those in Africa that were former colonies of European powers, also attacked the BBC, Reuters, and Spanish and French broadcasting interests, although less vociferously. Fear of electronic colonialism motivated the third argument, which featured a dislike of the history, norms, morals, language, lifestyles, and cultural aspects conveyed through the content of core nations' press, radio, television, advertising, and film productions.

For many Western delegates, the issue boiled down to one of state control over the mass media. Secretary of State for Canada John Roberts, M.P, delivered one of the strongest speeches during the entire assembly. In explaining Canada's reservations about the Declaration, Roberts stated:

I am making no secret of my disquiet, and that of the Government of which I am a member, concerning the Draft Declaration on the Mass Media… On every continent there are some people who think that governments should regulate journalists, should tell them, in the public interest, what to write, or should pass judgment on their accuracy. Canadians do not believe that either politicians or public servants should have anything to say in the management, direction or correction of the media. Quite the contrary. In their view, only a free press can guarantee that the decisions of the state power are in harmony with the wishes of the people. Governments have no means of knowing what the needs of society are for its own wellbeing, unless they are told by an informed public.¹⁶

Roberts went on to list reasons for a postponement of the adoption of the contentious text. The address was well received, and because Canada has stature in UNESCO, the Western wire services gave coverage to Robert's remarks. In response, Dr. Phillip Muscat from Malta summed up the major peripheral nations' grievances:

The service that emanates from the big international press and news agencies sometimes tends to be slanted against the developing countries of the Third World and their leaders. Great prominence is given to certain news items of minor importance, while national achievements in vital sectors are barely mentioned or wrongly reported. Moreover, in certain instances the international press is used as a destabilizing factor against the governments whose only crime is generally that of standing up for their rights, their sovereignty and independence.¹⁷

Following the plenary session, M'Bow began, as he always did, by criticizing Western press coverage of the issue. He then called for the development of a universal journalistic code of ethics to govern the actions of media and journalists. Many feared that such a code would lead to some type of system that ultimately could be used to restrict journalists' freedom. The Soviets and authoritarian nations thought they had an ally in M'Bow and an issue, NWICO, with which to restrict the Western media.

Ultimately, UNESCO's 20th General Assembly approved a compromise draft declaration on the mass media that endorsed freedom of the press. This represented a significant diplomatic reversal in favor of the West and moderate developing nations and a temporary reprieve for Director‐General M'Bow. Although it was M'Bow who initially presented, endorsed, and pushed the first controversial draft declaration, the Western press uniformly and correctly blamed the Soviet bloc for the attack on their free‐press philosophy. One suspects that M'Bow, finding his back against the wall and his career on the line, abandoned what he had cherished in October to pacify the Western nations and thereby retain their substantial funding. Of course, it is likely that M'Bow also recognized that the forthcoming final MacBride International Commission Report and the next UNESCO General Assembly provided opportunities for him to regroup and present his NWICO tenets once again.

UNESCO in the 1980s

As described in the previous section, it took a reluctantly accepted eleventh‐hour compromise to pull the 20th General Assembly's session on mass communication out of the fire in 1978. Yet the delegates to UNESCO general assemblies continued to put at least the face of consensus and unanimity on the international communication discussions that invariably tottered on the brink of open warfare and collapse. Once again, this time in Belgrade in 1980, the General Assembly adopted a mass media resolution by consensus when nobody called for a vote on it. As unbelievable as it may seem, that resolution actually won approval because it simultaneously advocated proposals based on the principles of both sides of the debate. The result was an uneven and inconsistent declaration.

Despite its equivocal language, reciprocal concessions, and unanimous approval, the resolution was “one of the most bitterly fought over in UNESCO's history.”¹⁸ It revealed the extent to which the Western and developing world positions on NWICO were irreconcilable. Even though concessions were made by both sides, the peripheral nations, acting with the support of the Soviet bloc, seemed to get the better of the West. According to several observers, their advantage appeared to turn on the inclusion of some principles that could be interpreted as anti‐free press.

The launching at the 21st General Assembly of the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) also created a great deal of controversy and suspicion. A 39‐member intergovernmental council was established to administer the program and set out its priorities and policies. IPDC continues today with the goal of aiding communication projects in peripheral nations. Because council members were to be elected on a rotating basis to ensure regional representation, peripheral nations would have considerable leverage within IPDC. Another controversial issue concerned the funding for IPDC. Many peripheral nations wanted an international fund to be established within the UNESCO framework. The United States refused to pledge to such a fund and suggested that the money needed to initiate the program should be diverted from UNESCO's regular mass communication budget.

In retrospect, the 21st General Assembly was remarkable for the decisions made. It not only approved a version of the NWICO, but it also accepted the MacBride Commission report, which clearly endorsed activities that would promote development journalism and communication, and it created the IPDC to implement some of those policies. What was unclear at the time was the degree to which the hostility brewing against Director‐General M'Bow would, by mid‐decade, reach sufficient intensity to justify the withdrawal of both the United Kingdom and the United States from UNESCO.

The 22nd General Assembly of UNESCO convened in Paris on October 25, 1983. One hundred sixty‐one countries participated in the five‐week conference, which turned out to be one of the most critical in the history of UNESCO. Just a few weeks after the meetings were adjourned, US State Department’s dissatisfaction with a number of UNESCO issues led to the announcement of their intention to withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 1984 unless its demands for substantial change were met. The United States did withdraw.

The meetings began with the presentation of “The Draft Programme and Budget for 1984–1985,” which was prepared by the UNESCO Secretariat on the basis of the consensus reached by the delegates. Of most relevance to this discussion is “Major Programme III, Communication in the Service of Man,” outlined below:

Programme III.1 Studies on Communication:

1. to simulate the development of research, especially concerning the sociocultural impact of new communication technologies, the democratization of communication, and the future of books and reading;
2. to further elaborate the concepts of “the right to communicate” and access to and participation in communication, and to continue to study the idea of the responsibility in communicators;
3. to continue the study of methods for planning, programming, and financing of communication, with special reference to the communication industries.¹⁹

The program continued by encouraging the reduction of current international communication imbalances through the development of a plurality of information sources and through cooperation and collaboration. It acknowledged that the activities listed in the program would “facilitate a detailed examination of a new information and communication order, with a view to promoting its establishment.”²⁰ The proposed budget for the three major programs listed in Programme III was almost $30 million, an increase of more than 33% over the previous budget. So much for the cost containment sought by the United States and the United Kingdom.

It had been hoped that the freedom of the press issue and NWICO, which had divided UNESCO for over a decade, might be only a minor topic at this meeting. On the first day of debate, however, two serious and contentious issues arose. The first was the substantial increase in the budget for communications. The second was a Soviet Union proposal calling for curbs on press freedom as part of NWICO.

The Soviet delegation realized that the First Amendment was sacred in the eyes of the US press, and its intention was to aggravate the US and other Western delegations. The Soviet draft urged UNESCO to draw up a list of “mass media organs” whose reporting had violated the guidelines that the organization had enunciated earlier. These were the same guidelines that most Western governments had criticized as hostile to the freedom of the press. The Soviets were forced to withdraw their contentious resolution, but its introduction had heightened distrust of NWICO by providing a concrete illustration of its threats to press freedom.

Although the media debate was a key issue, the size of the budget increase created another serious problem for the United States. The United States was the only one of the 161 nations to vote against the $374.4 million budget. At the final vote, 10 other countries abstained after asking for a budgetary freeze. The final budget adopted was about $12 million less than that first proposed, but the cuts did not go deep enough for the United States, which had been seeking “zero growth” in all UN agencies.

Although the United States failed to achieve as much as it had hoped, it certainly was more successful than it had been in the past decade. It had curbed the development of NWICO, and there was an emerging shift toward the Western perspective on press matters. Although the final budget did not represent zero growth, it was only 2.5% higher than the previous one. What, therefore, prompted the US decision to pull out of UNESCO less than one month later?

Shortly after the close of the 22nd General Assembly, stories began appearing in the US press about the possible withdrawal of the United States from UNESCO. According to a New York Times report, the proposal was being considered in the State Department and a decision was expected soon.²¹ Gregory J. Newell, Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs, said that his office had conducted a study of the performance of some nineteen organizations and noted that in addition to mismanagement and lack of budgetary restraint, there were problems of politicization within many UN agencies. He asserted that internal studies had shown what the Reagan administration viewed as improvement in many UN multilateral agencies, but that UNESCO had responded inadequately. Newell then ordered a complete review of UNESCO that would later justify US withdrawal.

Opponents of the withdrawal pointed to the improvements made at the 22nd General Assembly. They feared that withdrawal would leave the organization vulnerable to those who opposed US interests. Moreover, the United States Commission for UNESCO, although acknowledging problems, voted by an overwhelming majority to continue membership and fight for change from within. But Newell recognized the vulnerability of UNESCO and used it to condemn and threaten the entire UN system.

Following the reviews, the US State Department recommended, on December 21, 1983, that the United States file notice of its intention to withdraw from UNESCO on January 1, 1985. The decision had to be made by December 31, but the US would have one year in which to reassess the situation. President Ronald Reagan sent a formal letter of withdrawal to Director‐General M'Bow on December 29, making it clear that the departure was temporary and that the United States retained the right to rejoin. According to a State Department spokesperson, the decision was taken because “UNESCO has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with, has exhibited hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion.”²² Under President Reagan, the White House and the State Department had ignored the UN and UNESCO and now they were trying to punish the UN system for promoting policies that questioned the US’s role as a global commercial power.

Officially, the State Department recommendation to withdraw from UNESCO was based on what it identified as three major behavioral problems: (1) the politicization of issues; (2) the promulgation of statist concepts; and (3) mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility. The United States officially withdrew from UNESCO in January 1985. It returned under President Bush but in 2019 the US withdrew again under Trump and took almost $100 million with it.

UNESCO without the United States

By the time the 23rd session of the UNESCO General Assembly was convened in Bulgaria on October 8, 1985, not only had the United States withdrawn from the organization, but the United Kingdom was also reconsidering its membership. Given this Western power void, the socialist bloc was anxious to put its own stamp on the meetings.

In fact, the selection of Sofia, Bulgaria, as the site for meeting was part of a Soviet strategy to enhance its own power and position within UNESCO. Given the budgetary limitations facing the agency, it made fiscal sense to hold the conference at UNESCO headquarters in Paris where it would not be necessary to house and feed 1,000 UNESCO employees for the six‐week assembly. But it was precisely that expenditure, in addition to the revenues generated by the presence of 3000 additional delegates to the conference, which caused the Soviet Union to lobby strongly on behalf of the Sofia site. Moreover, by convening in Bulgaria without an official US delegation, many socialist countries saw this as an opportunity to strengthen their role within UNESCO and use it as a vehicle to promote anti‐West projects and administrators.

Once again, the most sensitive issue to emerge during the General Assembly was the discussion of NWICO. NWICO emphasized the disparities among nations and suggested means, sometimes contradictory and contentious, for reaching a new order and balance in international information, media, and communication flows. Although NWICO was still a relatively modest concept, the major problem was the fact that it was systematically perceived as being structurally different by the two major groups of nation‐states. Western, core nations viewed NWICO as troublesome, vague, and potentially harmful. On the other hand, the socialist bloc, peripheral nations, and nonaligned nations contended that NWICO was both a practical program and a theoretical concept to encourage and legitimize a more activist indigenous production capacity. It was considered to be a paradigm from which to facilitate infrastructure developments along pro‐peripheral nation lines. This cleavage was reinforced by the US withdrawal from UNESCO.

The United Kingdom played an interesting role at the 23rd General Assembly. Basically, the UK's position was a difficult one because it had given notice in December 1984 that it intended to withdraw from UNESCO at the end of 1985. As a result, the British were almost as powerless within UNESCO as the United States. As diplomatic eunuchs, their efforts to exert influence became somewhat melodramatic. Most of the peripheral nations saw no reason to consider the UK's views, complaints, or objectives, and even its Western allies and Commonwealth partners realized that its actions were intended to legitimize its decision to withdraw as of January 1986.

New Era, Leaders, and Strategy

M'Bow left the Director‐General position at UNESCO in 1986. He also left a politically weakened and fiscally poor UN agency to his successor, Federico Mayor from Barcelona, Spain. Mayor was elected as the new Director‐General of UNESCO in 1987 and held the office until 1999. During his UNESCO tenure, he altered the agency’s role and did not support NWICO.

Mayor assumed the leadership of UNESCO at arguably the lowest point in the agency's history. Its budget had been slashed as a result of the withdrawal of the United States and the United Kingdom and particularly negative Western newspaper, magazine, and other media coverage had tarnished its reputation. Director‐General Mayor's immediate goal was to establish a climate of trust in the hope that the United States and the United Kingdom would return to full membership. He also sought to decrease the size of the bureaucracy and improve administrative management. By the late 1990s, Mayor convinced Great Britain to return but had little else to show for his efforts at significant reform.

At the 25th UNESCO General Assembly in 1989, Director‐General Mayor issued a new communication strategy. This new approach stressed the Western principles of freedom of press, freedom of expression, and the development of an independent and pluralistic media. This philosophical and ideological shift was not only more attractive to the West, but it also coincided with the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, which had raised expectations for an independent press throughout central and eastern Europe.

In order to implement the new communication proposals, Mayor announced that a series of UNESCO meetings would be convened in Namibia, Kazakhstan, Chile, and Yemen. At each of these regional meetings, UNESCO's free‐press communication proposal was to be enunciated, and ideas to promote press freedom and media pluralism in the regions would be explored. For example, the Windhoek Resolution, emerging from the 1991 Namibia conference to promote a pluralistic and free African press, declared that:

1. Consistent with article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the establishment, maintenance and fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development.
2. By an independent press, we mean a press independent from governmental, political or economic control or from control of materials and infrastructure essential for the production and dissemination of newspapers, magazines and periodicals.
3. By a pluralistic press, we mean the end of monopolies of any kind and the existence of the greatest possible number of newspapers, magazines and periodicals reflecting the widest possible range of opinion within the community.
4. The welcome changes that an increasing number of African States are now undergoing towards multiparty democracies provide the climate in which an independent pluralistic press can emerge.
5. The worldwide trend towards democracy and freedom of information and expression is a fundamental contribution to the fulfillment of human aspirations.²³

Wherever Director‐General Mayor went during the 1990s, he promoted the new UNESCO communication strategy. His activities and comments were directed toward persuading two audiences: the current UNESCO membership and the United States. Not only did he advocate resolutions supporting new free and pluralistic press initiatives throughout the regions of the world, but he also sought to convince the United States that UNESCO's communication policy was very much in line with the US free‐press traditions and that they should return.

For example, in his opening address to the conference in Bulgaria in September 1997, Mayor asserted:

The indisputable success of that Round Table certainly gave new impetus to UNESCO's work for the development of independent and pluralistic media in both the public and private sector and encouraged us to continue along the same lines in other parts of the world firstly in Africa (Windhoek, Namibia, May 1991), then in Asia (Almaty, Kazakhstan, October 1993), in Latin America and the Caribbean (Santiago de Chile, May 1994), and in the Arab region (Sana'a, Yemen, January 1996). The four Declarations and the corresponding plans of action adopted at those meetings have become real milestones in UNESCO's struggle for freedom of expression and of the press.²⁴

He proceeded to emphasize this point and went on to stipulate the steps that must be taken to achieve the goal:

The most crucial requirements today include:

Building up pluralistic and independent media public and private alike to replace the former monopolistic state controlled news agencies, newspapers, and radio and television networks;

Transforming media legislation unsuited to democratic requirements;

Providing the skills and knowhow to meet the challenges of a democratic and competitive society including new areas of specialization such as marketing, advertising, media management and public relations.²⁵

This revised communication policy at UNESCO paved the way for the return of the United Kingdom, but it did not persuade the United States. In fact, UNESCO's critics in Congress, the State Department, and those outside of government remained adamant that the United States stay out of UNESCO. For example, in 1995, despite the positive changes undertaken by Mayor and the return of the United Kingdom, the Heritage Foundation argued, “Rejoining UNESCO …would be a serious mistake.”²⁶ Its rationales were delineated in “Executive Memorandum #403.” They are:

1. UNESCO has serious management shortcomings.
2. Rejoining UNESCO would send the wrong signal about UN management reform.
3. UNESCO's mission lacks focus.
4. UNESCO activities are redundant.
5. The United States already benefits from the best of UNESCO.²⁷

The memorandum concludes with a plea to the US government to spend elsewhere the $65 million annual dues that would be owed to UNESCO. President Clinton stated in 1995, “I assure you that US membership in UNESCO remains on my list of priorities for the future.”²⁸ Also on his list for the 1990s was paying back the $1.6 billion in dues owed to the United Nations that Congress had refused for years to approve; it finally relented in 1999.

UNESCO in the 1990s

In the early 1990s, as a result of dramatic but peaceful political revolutions, the former Soviet Union and its client states rapidly abandoned totalitarian structures, including their press systems. Consequently, many journalists and editors from newly independent states of eastern and central Europe began to participate in the new communication strategy debate within UNESCO. The general conferences, which continued to be held every two years, produced several resolutions supporting the goals of the new strategy. In particular, there was considerable support for independent and free media along the lines of the Western model. In addition, the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC) encouraged proposals that facilitated the founding of free and open press activities in peripheral nations. Director‐General Mayor also created a new unit within UNESCO entitled “Freedom of Expression and Democracy.” Its goal was just that – to promote freedom of expression and other democratic ideas, including a free and pluralistic press. Moreover, under Mayor's leadership, UNESCO began to work against the imprisonment and expulsion of journalists around the world. In response to these policy changes, the United Kingdom rejoined UNESCO in 1997.

The United States' Reaction

Director‐General Mayor's efforts and the revised international communication policy did not go unnoticed in the United States. When the US National Security Council established an interagency working group in 1993 to examine UNESCO, all relevant activities ranging from the administration of the agency to its media‐related strategies underwent thorough scrutiny. The working group's findings were positive, and it recommended that the United States rejoin UNESCO by mid‐decade. Simultaneously, a small group in the US House of Representatives initiated favorable discussions concerning UNESCO and suggested that it was time for the United States to return. Educators also began to lobby informally for US reentry. Mayor also traveled extensively in the United States to promote good relations between UNESCO and the US. Despite the goodwill created by Mayor, his successor, and UNESCO's free‐press initiatives, it was not until 2001, under President Bush, that the US rejoined UNESCO.

A New Focus

In the late 1990s, UNESCO produced a major document titled World Information Report that began to chronicle information resources in almost two hundred countries around the globe. Its publication marked a change in emphasis within UNESCO to the examination of the global information highway, including the Internet. The World Information Report provided extensive documentation of computer‐based information processing, including the shift toward multimedia, telecommunications, and electronic databases.

The report is divided into three parts. The first section describes the information services in individual countries or regions. The second section details the infrastructures for information industries and focuses on technical issues including multimedia and telecommunications. The final section discusses issues and trends such as the emergence of the information society, information highways, economic implications, copyright matters, and other social or legal questions. The report concludes with a chapter outlining the necessity for international cooperation in order to ensure access for all through the interconnection of global information technologies. Mayor emphasized the importance of these issues and UNESCO's new direction in 1998:

We need to make a new start, founded on the principles and values enshrined in UNESCO's Constitution, which stipulates that, for a lasting peace, “intellectual and moral solidarity” is a necessary condition. Here, the new communication technologies and especially the development of the information highways have the potential to give concrete form to global solidarity by including the excluded, because the networks they form can reach all human beings, wherever they live.²⁹

Part of the new focus is to promote practical and concrete programs that can help peripheral regions. For example, now in UNESCO documents the push concerning communication is to provide “equal access to information and communication technologies.”³⁰ UNESCO is also sponsoring regional conferences focusing on a free and pluralistic press.

Mayor's Successor: An Asian Leader

In October 1999, two important events occurred in UNESCO. First, a new Director‐General was elected after major candidates had emerged from Australia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Japan. Ultimately, the Japanese ambassador to France, Koichiro Matsuura, was elected. He began his six‐year term immediately and presided over the annual budget of $300 million. The Director‐General was re‐elected to a second term. Since the last two Director‐Generals have been from core nations – Spain and Japan – it is likely that a new Director‐General would be from a peripheral or semiperipheral nation.

The second event concerned allegations of cronyism and mismanagement, specifically that the French government had used the Paris‐based UNESCO to place former government aides on UNESCO's payroll throughout the 1990s. The UK paper The Guardian ran extensive stories documenting the administrative problems, going so far as to report that almost half of UNESCO's appointments in the 1990s failed to meet the administrative criteria for credentials and for fair and open competition for senior appointments.³¹

In 2004 Director‐General Matsuura organized a meeting to draft a global convention on the protection of cultural diversity and artistic expression. This followed an earlier 2004 meeting with over 600 delegates from 132 UNESCO member states, plus numerous NGOs, that discussed the protection of cultural goods and services. This includes the mass media for many of the participating nations. This Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions puts UNESCO on a likely collision course with the World Trade Organization (WTO).

The Convention was approved by UNESCO in 2005, with the US voting against it. The Convention seeks to affirm the rights of nations to set their own cultural policies, plus recognize that culture is linked to identity, values, and concept of self. Basically, the Convention does not see culture as a commercial good to be bought and sold, like cars or wheat. It is distinct and in many cases unique and thus needs to be protected from electronic colonialism. The Convention covers five related activities: creation, production, distribution, access to, and enjoyment of cultural expressions and activities. Finally, it also seeks to protect languages and the protection of diverse or indigenous languages.

The WTO is seeking to expand its mandate by including cultural industries in such a way as to reduce all protectionist measures – such as quotas, grants, subsidies, license fees, and a host of other protectionist tariffs. This entire matter has the potential to become a major global public policy issue. The US will be on one side and the cultural nationalists on the other.

Finally, UNESCO is also heavily involved in the World Summit on the Information Society. UNESCO is providing assistance for many of the WSIS action plan areas under the umbrella of UNESCO’s major initiative, “Knowledge Societies.” Some critics of the WSIS claim that it seeks to promote governments having a role in media oversight and to them it sounds like a phase or stage two of the discredited NWICO. Given that the second meeting of WSIS was in anti‐free press and authoritarian Tunisia, the outlook is dim for all agencies, including the ITU and UNESCO, which sponsored WSIS and supported the bizarre selection of the location of Tunisia for a major international conference dealing with the media and communication.

Conclusions

Although the UNESCO General Assembly has always addressed thirteen major programs, beginning with the 1976 meeting in Nairobi its conferences have been dominated by the single communication program, NWICO, and its fallout. Like a lightning rod, NWICO attracted all the media attention. Not only was it an issue of distinct interest to the media, but it also polarized the delegates to the point that the United States and the United Kingdom withdrew. It also created significant public image problems for the agency and threatened its internal operations and financial stability. Today, UNESCO still has major fiscal and image problems. Historically, the debate was about aspects of electronic colonialism that the core nations did not want to hear about, deal with, or come to terms with. Peripheral nations were concerned that their cultures, values, languages, and influence were being displaced by slick, heavily advertised sounds and images from a few core nations.

Although there is little doubt among those familiar with UNESCO that the organization does sound work in several areas ranging from literacy and environmental concerns to scientific and educational topics, these efforts receive scant attention at the general assemblies and in global media. This imbalance is clear when one realizes that UNESCO's communication sector receives less than 10% of the agency's budget, but clearly receives well over 90% of its media coverage. The problem is complicated further because that coverage, particularly in Western nations, is overwhelmingly negative. It is difficult, therefore, for concerned individuals and governments to be supportive of UNESCO when the public at large is not favorably impressed, and when the uninitiated believe that all UNESCO does is debate communication and promote anti‐free‐press policies.

The historical role of the Soviet Union is also clear. It was obvious to many that the Soviet Union was promoting an anti‐free‐press agenda and that it had considerable rein within the halls of UNESCO. To a large extent, without the United Kingdom or the United States at the negotiating table, UNESCO became a captive of the socialist nations that offered token support to peripheral nations. A second challenge related to internal leadership. After eleven years as Director‐General, M'Bow had failed to respond to the growing negative perception of UNESCO, even within the UN system. His term came to an abrupt end in 1987. Finally, and perhaps most surprising, was the implosion of the Soviet Union, which spelled the end of its role as the great benefactor, champion, and savior of UNESCO and NWICO. When the USSR exited from the world stage, so too did the influence and funds it lent to UNESCO.

Despite the problems NWICO created, the overall debate in UNESCO has been informative. It not only forced a reanalysis and reaffirmation of values, but it also accentuated the need for hard data and planning practical strategies in order to enhance communication development throughout the world. NWICO continues to evolve in its search for practical and applied measures aimed at redressing media imbalances and promoting greater concern for cultural sensitivity and indigenous software. The peripheral nations still cling to NWICO in the face of greater core nation media pressure to adopt Western philosophies, products, and practices. Director‐General Matsuura wanted none of the divisive rhetoric and was promoting a media‐friendly UNESCO, and the current Director‐General, Audrey Azoula, is continuing with the same goals. Finally, a small group of academics and journalists from around the globe continue to promote the aims of NWICO. Under the banner of the MacBride Round Table, they meet every two years to examine the state of affairs in peripheral nations.³² They are an advocacy group created in 1989 to examine the global communication imbalances identified in the 1980 MacBride Report, titled Many Voices, One World³³, commissioned by UNESCO. They are expanding the research agenda to include Internet issues as part of the NWICO legacy.

Finally, UNESCO is moving into two areas loaded with contention. They are a global convention on cultural diversity, and strong affiliation with the WSIS. Either of these hot‐button issues could once again see major donor nations re‐examine their commitment to UNESCO and its programs.³⁴