A battle over press freedom looms between some Western organisations and developing countries, writes Benjamin Pogrund
THE Orwellian-sounding New World Information and Communication Order (Nwico) has surfaced again, nearly 10 years after the West thought it was dead and buried.
Information ministers from nearly 30 ”non- aligned” countries, including Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malaysia and Iraq, have called for the United Nations to discuss their accusations involving developed countries ”employing their media to disseminate false and distorted information of events taking place in developing countries”.
In return, the developed world views those who push Nwico as seeking state control over news and journalists and of wanting to block the free flow of information.
The issue is likely to be aired at a meeting in New York this month of the UN Committee on Information.
The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC), whose headquarters are in Virginia, near Washington DC, has sent out an international ”alert” to warn of the impending battle. It will join with eight other leading press freedom groups such as the International Press Institute to monitor developments at the UN.
Nwico first arose in the 1970s when developing countries vented their resentment about Western domination of the circulation of news around the world through the major news agencies and powerful newspapers.
They complained that they were reported in a negative light, with stress on their deficiencies and problems and little said about their achievements; Western reporters were unsympathetic, culturally blinkered and did not understand their societies.
A particular point of grievance was that, as a result of the colonial past, African countries had few facilities to get news direct from each other; instead, information about them was ”filtered” through Western-owned news agencies whose headquarters were in London, New York and Paris. Thus, for example, news from Ghana was sent to London and from there transmitted to Ghana’s immediate neighbour, Ivory Coast.
Nwico was the developing world’s answer and although never defined it came to mean a set of proposals which were furiously argued until the mid-1980s. The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) was a special arena for pushing Nwico, and this proved a major factor in driving the United States and Britain to terminate their membership.
Since 1989, after adopting a new communication strategy, Unesco has worked to promote press freedom and independence and media pluralism. Some elements of Nwico drew wide support, such as the call for cheaper telecommunications tariffs and training for journalists.
But the West totally rejected any idea of state supervision of news and saw most of Nwico as thinly disguised moves to control the press: hence the Nwico proposal for the ”protection” of journalists was scorned as merely a plan to gain control over journalists by licensing them; Nwico’s ”right to communicate” was seen as a code phrase for governments claiming the right to news space.
Equally rejected was the Nwico talk about ”codes of conduct” for journalists and the criticism of advertising.
Africa’s attempt to bypass, or even merely to complement Western news agencies, has confirmed some of the worst suspicions about Nwico; the Pan African News Agency (Pana) set up so that countries on the continent could exchange news with each other has been a dismal failure.
This is essentially because Pana’s representatives are compelled to rely to a great extent on news approved by their governments, which are often dictatorships. So everyone knows that the so-called news consists of little else but government handouts. Thus, Ghana sends Nigeria official garbage and Nigeria sends Ghana official garbage. Even if the media in any recipient country uses any of the debased information it enjoys little credibility.
Beaten back by the West, Nwico slid into oblivion, only to be resuscitated four years ago at a meeting of ministers of information of ”non-aligned countries” held in North Korea. A series of conferences finally led to ministers agreeing, at a meeting in Nigeria last September, to pursue the matter.
They noted their concern over the ”unbalanced global economic situation” and the ”use of the technological superiority of the West against non-aligned countries”. The enormous cost and rapid changes in information and communication technology, they said, are increasing the gap between developed and developing countries and dependence on external broadcast and information.
It is not yet known how many of the more or less 120 developing countries actually support the declaration and will try to argue for it at the UN. The term ”non- aligned” is a carryover from the Cold War era and its internal alliances are uncertain. Also, the developing world is not monolithic and some countries have a free press and will not be enthusiastic about the controls envisaged by Nwico.
The developing world certainly has justifiable grievances about its inferiority in the gathering and dissemination of news. But its case is weakened, just as it was a decade ago, by the fact that so many of those backing Nwico are oppressive societies where individual and press freedoms are in short supply.
According to the US body, Freedom House, two-thirds of the world’s governments either determine or significantly influence what news is reported: 34% of countries are rated not free, 30% are designated partly free, and only 36% of nations have a free press.
Referring to last September’s declaration, the WPFC says: ”On the one hand its appeal for better means to communicate, especially if fairly apportioned with non-government media, resonates strongly. But its language advocating a return to a Nwico that has meant controls in the past is a slap in the face for those who would like to help – and have in the past.”
The committee adds: ”A free flow of news and information is good, not bad, for development, and studies show a strong correlation between press freedom and development.”
It urges governments and organisations committed to press freedom to waken to the new threat because ”censorship, self- censorship, and ‘guided’ news hurt everyone”. It urges UN leaders, Western nations and nations within the developing country bloc to oppose new discussion of Nwico because it ”will only produce needless confrontation at a time when the UN needs consensus”.
The Press Freedom Barometer, which provides the statistics of journalists killed or arrested and media banned worldwide, will appear monthly on the Antenna pages