From Nwico to Wsis: Actors and Flows, Structures and Divides

PART I

On the Agenda: NWICO

Introduction

The authors of these chapters analyse perceptions of imbalance in information flows between the Northern and Southern hemispheres during the 1970s and 1980s, the factors that led to the debates on NWICO (New World Information and Communication Order), on the free (and balanced) flow of information and on the Right to Communicate.

They focus on the main institutional and international actors such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), the United Nations (UN) itself and the European Union (EU). They further assess the outcome of conferences and commissions such as the Ministerial Conference of Non-Aligned Countries on Decolonization of Information in New Delhi (India), in July 1976, which denounced ‘imperialist forces’ and affirmed the right of developing countries to emancipation, the MacBride Commission and its report Many Voices, One World (1980), the Talloires Meeting (1981), to mention but a few. Finally, they consider the role of established major international news agencies – AFP, AP, UPI, Reuters – which bore the brunt of many attacks, as well as the early years and development of IPS (Inter Press Service), launched as an attempt to redress the North-South imbalance and to promote independent news networks throughout the Third World.

In the 1970s and 1980s, news agencies such as Reuters were ‘on the hot spot’; they were centre stage as the chief transnational actors critiqued within organizations representing states such as UNESCO and by new news agency players such as IPS that sought to offer alternative models. Michael Palmer, from an examination of Reuters company archives (the Gerald Long papers), and Patricio Tupper, based on his IPS experience and research, study the context of the heated debate, among media professionals and within UNESCO on the free flow of information, the freedom of press and a free and balanced flow of news. Kaarle Nordenstreng explores the context in which NWICO emerged and was played out, again noting the interplay between international organizations and professional journalists and their associations. Mustapha Masmoudi, a major activist in the 1970s and 1980s, focuses on the impetus from Third World and non-aligned countries. And Gustavo Gonzalez shows how the Right to Communicate, initially proposed by the French media scholar and practitioner who worked for the United Nations, Jean d’Arcy, served as a spur to media professionals and radicals – ‘organic intellectuals’ in Gramsci parlance – active in extreme-left circles in Latin America in the very different context of the 1990s–2000s. There, media owners often led the opposition to proposals put forward by radical movements and governments, a little like the way their predecessors in the West had opposed NWICO arguments.

This section therefore provides both a long overview of forces at play since World War II and detailed consideration of the strategies of actors prominent during the NWICO debate. States were often at loggerheads with media professionals and academics – the major representatives of civil society. UNESCO was the major international forum examining political, intellectual and professional approaches to communications and information. As a witness from the past, now retired UNESCO director, Hıfzı Topuz, concludes the section by showing how communication researchers helped inform UNESCO about issues to be placed on the agenda.

Correlations between NWICO and Information Society: Reflections of a NWICO actor

Mustapha Masmoudi

President of the Tunisian Association of Communication and Spatial Sciences, Former Permanent Delegate of Tunisia to UNESCO, Member of the MacBride Commission

Introduction

It is only in recent decades that information sciences have been associated with the management of economic business. Indeed, the means of communications have become the most important factor in this process. The evolution of this sector has not surprised those researchers who forecast the digital revolution and tried to convince decision-makers to integrate the media (both media conduits and contents) in development strategies. This approach started as an East-West antagonism and turned into a North-South disagreement. In fact, in the wake of independence, Third World countries claimed an active role in the international environment, both on the economic level – the advance of the New International Economic Order – and in the field of information – the New World Information and Communication Order.

At the time, some researchers, such as A. M. Rutkowski and K. Schaefer, thought that technological development would lead to the emergence of an information society, and the claim for a New Information Order should coalesce with the implementation of this society on the basis of equity and balance. Nevertheless, today it is recognized that the discussions stimulated by this concept inspired the organizers of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). Thirty years before the World Summit, the recommendations of the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (ICSCP), entrusted by UNESCO, provided the theoretical foundations of the concept of information society. It proved necessary to design a scientific method to implement a series of processes that took account of the changing context. WSIS was a summit that occurred in two phases, in 2003 and 2005. It brought together not only heads of state or their representatives, but also specialized international organizations, private companies (i.e. the business sector) and various components of civil society (NGOs, media, municipalities, universities). Through their findings and observations, the theorists present at the summit helped further understanding of the complex phenomenon of communication.

This contribution seeks to highlight the close correlation between the objectives of WSIS and those that underpinned the establishment of a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). The first part explores the reasons behind the demand for a new order, while the second part is devoted to a presentation of ICSCP’s contribution to WSIS.

The reasons for the demand for Nwico

Ever since its first session, the General Assembly of the United Nations has been interested in information. A global conference on freedom of information and its impact on development was held in 1948. Some time later, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) assigned Salvador Lopez the task of analysing the phenomena of imbalance in the flow of information around the world, the consequences of the inequitable distribution of electromagnetic frequencies and the lack of communication in developing countries. Unfortunately, the expert’s 1953 report went unheeded for a long time. The concerns of developing countries in this regard did not raise awareness among international organizations. It was not until the Non-Aligned Symposium of Information, held in Tunis in March 1976, that the debate was reopened and the international manipulation of information was rejected. The observations made during this conference by some 50 international experts were reinforced the same year during the summit of the non-aligned countries in Colombo and then studied carefully by the General Conference of UNESCO in Nairobi. Immediately after this, the non-aligned countries created their News Agencies Pool (NANAP). However, it was not before the release of the report of the chairman¹ of the Intergovernmental Council of Information of the Non-Aligned Movement in June 1978 that the debate on the concept of the New Order of Information was integrated in the ICSCP.² The report was then widely used in the 20th General Conference of UNESCO and the 33rd UN General Assembly (1978).

The discussion centred around three fora:

• The International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems (ICSCP)

• The 20th and 21st General Conferences of UNESCO

• Other international organizations

NWICO in the ICSCP report

Noting the wish of the majority of its member states to consider the role, the purpose and the conditions of global communication in depth, UNESCO’s Director-General at that time, Amadou Mahtar M’Bow, created the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. Its task was to identify the phenomena of inequality and imbalance and prepare an analytical report on the issue. The commission released its report three years later, which was published in six international languages with over one million copies. The sixteen members of the international commission were in fact the first to analyse in depth the significance of the gap between rich and poor countries in the field of information. They noted that the gap between the under-informed and the well-informed and the imbalance between issuers (North) and receivers (South) kept widening. The committee members concluded that it was important to allow a better distribution of welfare between nations. Indeed, the underdevelopment that affected the economic activities of the Third World was even more marked in the field of communication and information.

All statistics compiled at that time confirmed the phenomenon of this widening gap, both in quantity and quality, with each new technological discovery. In 1974, the exportation of media content from developed countries towards the developing ones represented 92.85% for the press, and 91.51% for TV. In contrast, developing countries with nearly 75% of the world population produced only 20% of books and audiovisual programmes.

The ICSCP stated in conclusion that the current communication order was not satisfactory and that it was essential to devise a redevelopment of the contributions of communication in the fields of learning, finances and power. To deal with this situation, the ICSCP proposed a series of measures that could lead to the establishment of a new order through a continuous process of change in the nature of relationships in communication between the different nations and within each nation.

NWICO in UNESCO Resolutions

The legitimate demands of the developing countries triumphed in 1978 when the 20th General Conference of UNESCO adopted three additional texts:

• The Declaration on 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

• The resolution prompting the UNESCO’s Director-General to organize an intergovernmental conference in order to discuss the creation of a cooperation funding mechanism in the field of information (DEVCOM)

• The resolution endorsing the principle of the establishment of a New World Information Order, and inviting the ICSCP to deepen the analysis of this concept and suggest how it should be implemented

Since then, the New International Information Order officially was subsequently called the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO). At the 21st General Conference of UNESCO, held in Belgrade in 1980, it was agreed that the foundations of the new order should have the following aims, among others:

• Elimination of the imbalance and inequality of the current situation

• Elimination of the negative effects of some public and private monopolies, and the eradication of excessive concentrations

• Removal of internal and external obstacles hindering the free flow of information and hampering a wider and more balanced dissemination of ideas

• Plurality of information sources and channels

• Freedom of press and information

• Freedom of journalists and of all media professionals; this freedom is inseparable from responsibility

• Ability of the developing countries to improve their own situation by upgrading equipment, training staffs, improving infrastructure and enabling information and communication to meet their needs and aspirations

• Sincere willingness of the developed countries to help them achieve these goals

• Respect for both cultural identity and for the right of each nation to inform the world public opinion about its own interests, aspirations and social and cultural values

• Respect for the rights of all people to participate in international exchange of information on the basis of equity, justice and mutual benefit

• Respect for the public right of ethnic and social groups as well as individuals to access information sources and to actively partake in the communication process

The objectives of this resolution reflected the aspirations of the moderate countries (the majority of the non-aligned group) for a New World Information Order, promoting a free and balanced flow of information. Unfortunately, the discussions during the following General Assemblies of both the United Nations and UNESCO failed to make progress. Some western countries even tried to dissuade the international community from adhering to the adopted resolutions and to erase the term ‘New World Information and Communication Order’ from international documents.

ICSCP’s Contribution to Wsis

The MacBride commission clearly charted the evolution of humanity towards the information society. It proposed a definition of the concept.

The definition of the Information Society

At the end of World War II and following the ban on armament investment imposed on defeated countries, the interest of these countries, in particular Japan, had been directed to the electronics industry. As a result, the Japan Computer Usage Development Institute (JACUDI), led by Masuda Yoneji, developed in 1971 the ‘National Plan to enable Japan to reach the post-industrial society by 2000’. Building on this research, experts deduced that the integration of the means of communication into a universal network is comparable to the construction of a highway that would encompass the world regardless of any frontiers. D. F. Parkhill, A. M. Rutkowski and K. Schaefer were the first experts to thus refer to the concept of an ‘information society’, even before the use of the term ‘information superhighway’. They also predicted that the rich would find the necessary solutions for the instantaneous transmission of data and the use of high-resolution multimedia. Then this network would be universal and capable of transmitting an incalculable number of services related to art, science, education, trade, health, transportation, public administration and government activities. At the time, the term ‘Internet’ had not yet emerged as telecommunications engineers used the term ‘computer universal network’ to explain the sense of connection that would guarantee an international flow of information and an instant transmission of text, voice and image. It is this power that would foster the transition to a post-industrial society and enable tele-services and other activities related to information to achieve a rate greater than 50 per cent of GDP. These same observations helped define the concept of information society during WSIS in 2003.

In fact, in WSIS resolutions the information society was identified with an environment in which information and communication networks are highly developed, easy and equitable access to information is widespread and socio-economic development helps to improve the quality of life and fight against poverty and starvation. The new society should be built with the participation of all concerned parties: government, the private sector and civil society. This contribution would be crucial in ensuring that the advantages of the information society are accessible to all, especially to women, to the young, to the disabled and to indigenous people. Then, the man in the street would be able to accomplish several remote services in the economic, social and cultural fields. Similarly, the decision-makers would exploit these advantages in the political, diplomatic and municipal fields as well as in other strategic sectors. The definition that emerged from the World Summit’s preparatory process depicts this new society as a social environment based on both networks and knowledge and in which the human being is the central element. It is also a society that tends to promote, through information and communication technology (ICT), economic progress, democracy, freedom of expression, transparency, accountability and good governance in general.

The beginnings of the Information Society in the Icscp report

The ICSCP report detected the beginnings of the information society and foresaw the consequences of the digital divide. Besides, this report even helped in the drafting of WSIS resolutions. The committee members had warned decision-makers that the accentuation of these imbalances in a transitional period leading towards a post-industrial society would certainly lead to economic crises and create pressures on employment. They concluded that the concerns of the developing countries justified the claim for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), in order to promote a balanced exchange that freely abides by ethical rules.

This claim, which was disputed in the recent past, is now accepted without controversy. Indeed, the principles of the information society as defined in the resolutions of WSIS (2003–05) were clearly inspired by the 90 ICSCP recommendations. The four following statements exemplify this:

• The social impact of the information revolution

In 1979, the writers of the ICSCP report emphasized the importance of information technology. The argument was included in the conclusions and recommendations of the MacBride Report, and runs thus: ‘Development strategies should incorporate communication policies as an integral part in the diagnosis of needs and in the design and implementation of selected priorities. In this respect communication should be considered a major development resource, a vehicle to ensure real political participation in decision-making, a central information base for defining policy options, and an instrument for creating awareness of national priorities.’ (MacBride Report 1980: 258).

• The democratization of communication

The MacBride Commission pointed out a deficit in the democratization of information and expressed the need to comply with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). The commission concluded: ‘Freedom of speech, of the press, of information and of assembly are vital for the realization of human rights. Extension of these communication freedoms to a broader individual and collective right to communicate is an evolving principle in the democratization process. Among the human rights to be emphasized are those of equality for women and between races. Defence of all human rights is one of the media’s most vital tasks.’ (MacBride Report 1980: 265).

• Cultural diversity

The term ‘cultural diversity’ has become very common nowadays. But it was the ICSCP report that highlighted the importance of this notion. Then, in the MacBride Report, the conclusions and recommendations are: ‘Promoting conditions for the preservation of the cultural identity of every society is necessary to enable it to enjoy a harmonious and creative inter-relationship with other cultures. It is equally necessary to modify situations in many developed and developing countries which suffer from cultural dominance. […] It is in relation to others that each culture enhances its own identity.’ (MacBride Report 1980: 259). The same assertions were supported by WSIS: ‘Cultural and linguistic diversity, while stimulating respect for cultural identity, traditions and religions, is essential to the development of an Information Society based on the dialogue among cultures and regional and international cooperation. It is an important factor for sustainable development.’ (ITU 2003: 9).

• A new role for NGOs

It is necessary here to recall the ICSCP interest in the NGOs in the process of NWICO’s creation. The report repeatedly stressed the essential role of professional communication and press organizations in the general development. This recurrent emphasis is not irrelevant as was proved by the massive participation of NGOs in WSIS. Indeed, the discussions initiated on this issue by the ICSCP had led to positive results over 30 years. In 1979, a first such event was the NGO conference on the Right to Communicate. The ICSCP had recommended that 80 representatives of civil society gather at UNESCO headquarters and required a special effort on the part of NGOs to promote endogenous development and act in a way that new media (those that were less expensive and less dependent on international networks of transmission) be not the perquisite of the most powerful or be manipulated by them. Moreover, the participants of the symposium recommended that NGOs intervene in mobilizing public opinion in favour of the Right to Communication, although their role was not clearly mentioned in the conclusions and recommendations of the MacBride Report.

The new challenges of the digital revolution

However, it should be recognized that the ICSCP was not able to forecast everything. It could not do so since the world is constantly developing, technology is advancing and concerns are continually changing. The new concerns can be found in WSIS resolutions or in its preparatory work. Participants thought that it was not possible to build an information society without taking into account the new challenges of the digital revolution and the specific concerns of the print, audiovisual and electronic press.

The new concerns of the South can be summarized in the following points:

• The emergence of digital information

• The independence of cyberspace

• The issue of Internet governance

• The financing of digital solidarity

The emergence of digital information was debated during a conference held in Marrakech in November 2004, which studied in depth the role of the media in the information society. The participants adopted a declaration in which they claimed that the freedom of expression and of the press should lie at the basis of the construction of the information society throughout the world. They added that the new ICTs should be an important tool for achieving equitable access to sustainable development. According to the declaration, the Internet and the other forms of the new media should benefit from the same protection of freedom of expression as traditional media. The conference participants also recommended that national legislations must ensure the media’s independence and pluralism and that:

• Broadcast media under state control must be transformed into public radios and televisions, benefiting from editorial independence and providing journalists with professional autonomy.

• Legal frameworks should encourage the development of community media. For this purpose, they must allow a transparent and equitable frequency allocation and facilitate women’s contribution and acknowledge their full and equal use of the media.

• The disputes over the media and between media professionals while exercising their operational duties must be resolved within the framework of an independent judiciary. These disputes, including those relating to defamation, must be brought before civilian courts and not criminal or military ones.

• The ethical and professional standards should be determined only by media professionals and should not be subject to government restrictions or pressure from any interest group.

These recommendations do not only fit well with the new digital environment; it is also worth noting that they are consistent with UNESCO’s 1978 declaration on ‘The Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace’.

In the same context, the independence of cyberspace was proclaimed by John Perry Barlow in 1996 in Davos. This statement came as a response to the US Congress’ reform of telecommunications and misuse of the Internet (Telecommunications Act of 1996). According to Barlow,³ the independence of cyberspace transcends traditional boundaries and states have no sovereignty over it. This statement has had repercussions in that its proponents were able to convince the Supreme Court to declare the Decency Act unconstitutional. The statement was also mentioned at the beginning of WSIS preparatory work. But government representatives from all sides rejected it and preferred referring to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, in particular to the provisions of Article 19, which offers the individual the Right to Freedom of Opinion and the right ‘to impart information through any media regardless of frontiers’. The ICSCP report did not explicitly advocate cyberspace independence but some civil society members evoked Jean d’Arcy’s views about the people’s Right to Communicate, irrespective of the medium. According to this expert, this concept should replace the human right to information and should be practised before being precisely defined. After a long debate, the majority of participants opted for a more concrete solution and decided to associate the provisions of Article 19 with those of Article 29, which emphasizes ‘the duties of the individual to the community in which the development of his personality is possible’. Nonetheless, the debate on the international right of communication remains ongoing.

In the summit declaration, a key place was dedicated to freedom of expression. This led participants to question the legal nature of the only organization that ensures Internet governance and holds the management of IP addresses and the Domain Name System (DNS). This institution is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit association of American law. Thorny questions have been raised about the ICANN organization and its functioning, as well as its relationship with governments and Internet private actors, including the Internet Society (ISOC). More fundamentally, it has been questioned whether it is legitimate that a national law organization, mandated by only one country (the United States), can offer domain names and IP addresses that are a scarce resource of cyberspace and pertain to the common heritage of mankind. For some, this issue recalls earlier debates about radio waves and frequency allocation.

This concern was shared by all partners. Public partners, both private organizations and NGOs, who hold a consultative status, believe that they must possess an effective voice or at least a monitoring mission. The first phase of the summit failed to resolve the problem; but the delegations recommended to the Secretary-General of the United Nations to establish a taskforce to study the possibility of creating an appropriate coordination mechanism. In order to further the negotiations during the second phase of WSIS, participants asked the United Nations to convene an ‘Internet Governance Forum’ to enable them to identify policies and mechanisms to be followed. But