(PROFESSOR MEHAN WAS A JOURNALIST FOR 20 YEARS, 14 OF THEM AT NBC NEWS IN NEW YORK. HE WAS A WRITER ON THE "TODAY SHOW,' DID DOCUMENTARIES ALL OVER THE WORLD AND COVERED MAJOR NEWS EVENTS SUCH AS SPACE LAUNCHES, POLITICAL CONVENTIONS AND PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGNS.
IN 1978 HE JOINED UNESCO AT THE UNITED NATIONS AND SERVED AS ITS LIAISON TO THE MEDIA AND REPRESENTATIVE ON U.N. COMMITTEES DEALING WITH COMMUNICATIONS THROUGHOUT THE NWICO DEBATES, UNTIL HIS RETIREMENT FROM THE U.N. IN 1990.)
If we were only going to discuss why the New World Information and Communications Order failed in the 70's and 80's, this would be a very short presentation indeed.
The "why" was that the United States didn't want NWICO to succeed, full-stop. If it didn't, the movement wasn't going to happen. And it didn't. It was not the cup of tea for the same nation that had launched the biggest foreign aid recovery program in history, the Marshall Plan, and the country which led the global drive for worldwide decolonization. But NWICO was something else, in a different category.
If we are talking about the MEDIA's part in WHY the NWICO failed, that's another matter altogether, with its own intriguing complexities and little-known forces at work. That's what I want to talk about.
In trying to stuff an evening's worth of discussion into this 20-minute slot, I will try a device of dividing the reasons for NWICO's failure as I see them into two lists. One list will be basic historic reasons why the American media was dead set against the NWICO and thus NWICO was dead on arrival; it never had a chance. The second list will be the special, specific reasons that applied in THIS particular situation and which added to the negative response. Remember I am talking about MEDIA .
Okay? Here we go.
Basic Historic Reason #1 was the sacred devotion of American journalism to its own narcissistic image--a free, capitalistic, private, and absolutely-no government involvement model. Indeed, we are talking about the inherent conviction that American journalists are the best in the world and God's gift to the world. The Third World media seeking Western help did not conform to this model or to the ascribed professional standards of the U.S. media--so they were never taken seriously in any positive framework. If Iceland had asked for help, it might have been a different story.
Basic Historic Reason #2. American media people do not like and will not tolerate criticism of their work. They, (we, when I was one of them) have a degree of hubris and arrogance that is unbelievable. That's why the National News Council failed in the late 70's and early 80's in the U.S. and why the U.S. has no such overall national monitoring agency today. Nobody can tell the U.S. media what to do--and get away with it.
NWICO was FILLED with criticism of the U.S. media-- most of it true. These critics said the U.S. media was sensationalist, violence-oriented, superficial, obsessed with making money, and concerned only with the more privileged classes. That same refrain is being voiced today by genuine, bona fide mainstream American media critics like James Fallows, Tom Goldstein, Mort Rosenblum, James Squires, Mike O'Neill and many others. That's because the U.S. media is in trouble with its own public. But to hear it from Africans and others who lived out in the boondocks was unbearable for the American media establishment at the time of NWICO.
Basic Historic Problem #3. Ingrained American media values seek to simplify stories by emphasizing personality coverage and by only broadly and superficially painting the nature of the opposing groups. Thus, there are the good guys and bad guys, the noble and trustworthy leaders and the callous and untrustworthy ones. I'm sure you can guess which side fell into which categories in the U.S. coverage. Meanwhile, the core central issues, the nuances, the complications, the consequences, all were untouched and never explained to the public.
Basic Problem #4. The Cold War. The Cold War was a major factor in the undoing of the NWICO effort-- for ironic reasons. It was not that the Soviets were big supporters of the movement; they were not. They opposed the idea almost as much as the Americans did because any international instrument which passed might interfere with their own tight little brand of total control of media by their government. So they threw in mischievous resolutions and programs designed to shock and outrage the West but which they knew would never pass in a final vote. And they didn't. Ever.
However, the Soviet tactics gave American journalists the opportunity--combined with their own inherent traits of sensationalism, competition, good guys and bad guys, etc.--to cover tirades and demands made by the Eastern bloc and to claim these were the essence of the NWICO. I mean the big stories about censorship, state control of media, elimination of private, capitalistic media, etc.--all of which NWICO was ALLEGED to be but was NOT. It WAS, in fact, a genuine Third World appeal for help with the media and communications infrastructure that these countries desperately needed to survive and to compete in our modern technological world.
There are other basic historic reasons which could be listed but I think these are enough to give you a general feeling for the receptivity mood of the U.S. media in this situation.
Now, let me turn to the special circumstances, the specific factors that unfortunately applied when NWICO came along and which played a part in its failure.
Unfortunate Situation #1. Above all else, tremendously important but never reported, so that it is a little-known reality, was the fact that IT WAS THE MEDIA'S OX THAT WAS BEING GORED in this whole business. This wasn't the media reporting on someone else (corrupt politicians, an earthquake somewhere or a profound societal trend.) This one dealt with the people writing and editing and broadcasting the story--it was THEIR problems, THEIR situation, THEIR warts and all.
To make matters worse, nothing stood between the media and the public, no objective monitoring of any kind, no non-partisan commission which saw that bias did not intrude on the coverage. The media had the monopoly and anything it wrote and said was unchallenged. I tried to challenge with my letters and media appearances but it was like a popgun firing back at a howitzer.
Unfortunate Situation # 2--American reporters do not like to read documents. They would much rather work from press releases or comments from a spokesman. Or, as was the case with the NWICO, write using material supplied by the World Press Freedom Committee or the Heritage Foundation, both lopsidedly murderous on the NWICO story. The NWICO story was one where nothing happened in reality, just resolutions and statements. If you didn't read the documents and didn't know exactly what was said, NWICO was vulnerable to all sorts of interpretations, false impressions or wrong guesses.
Unfortunate Situation #3--American reporters travel in packs. A "line" is set for a story at the outset by the most influential reporters or outlets and everyone else pretty much follows it. In the case of NWICO, since it took place largely at UNESCO's headquarters in Paris, hundreds of U.S. papers and broadcast stations depended largely on Harry Dunphy of the AP Paris bureau to let them know what was happening.
Harry did, but in the tried and true formula of good guys with white hats, bad guys with black ones. He knew that the difference between winding up on pg. 1 with a byline and being spiked was just how grabbing and formula-filled the story could be. 200-million readers and viewers back home in America largely got their impression of this crucial world movement from one reporter, or from The New York Times which sent someone to cover the big events or from reporters dispatched on special assignment.
Unfortunate Situation #4--Personalities always play a big part in American media coverage. Ronald Reagan received far more coverage as a personality than the policies he was pursuing and the consequences of what was happening in America. Likewise, People magazine one of the U.S.'s most successful and unprofound publications, is just that, full of personalities and fluff.
In the case of NWICO and UNESCO, sad to say, the personality focussed upon was the Director-General, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow. M'Bow was a black African from Senegal, French-speaking, an intellectual, a person who had very little contact with America and things American. You would never ask Central Casting to send you a person with Mr. M'Bow's attributes to fill this sensitive role in the NWICO/UNESCO drama. M'Bow became the lightning rod for all sorts of attacks, innuendoes, conjectures and criticisms--some of which were valid, many of which were not. But there is no doubt that Mr. M'Bow's presence was a negative factor for NWICO and UNESCO
I would like to add to the list one last Unfortunate Situation, call it #4 and a half, because it was half media and half political. During the Democrat Party years of President Carter, 1976 to 1980, there was actually significant progress made in communications matters at UNESCO. This could only have taken place with American government approval and support.
There was at that time the appointment of the MacBride Commission in late 1977, with a prominent American journalist on it, Elie Abel; the passing unanimously of the Mass Media Declaration in 1978; the creation in 1979 at U.S. instigation, of the International Program for the Development of Communications (IPDC), the first concrete, positive Western response to the Third World's appeal for media and communications help; and finally, in 1980, the report of The MacBride Commission itself.
During those Carter years, the media did not let up on its anti-NWICO, anti-UNESCO campaign--it still kept up a steady barrage of stories, editorials and columns. But it was upstaged by the actual steps the government in Washington was pulling off in Paris and the progress it was allowing to happen. Then in 1980, the Republicans returned to power with the Reagan Administration and things changed again--with a vengeance.
This sequence of events I've just related necessitates a brief examination of the effect of government on media --and vice versa. To put it another way: which came first, the chicken or the egg?
The record shows that the entire period of debate BEFORE Carter in 1976 and AFTER Carter in 1980 was one of intense U.S. hostility and opposition. Republican policy traditionally supports big business at home and abroad--and media and communications had by then indeed become Big Business. If media was opposed to NWICO, for whatever reason, so would a Republican government. That, plus heavy ideology in that government against multilateralism and anything associated with the United Nations, was motivation enough for its anti-NWICO, anti-UNESCO position..
As for the media, there was its own peculiar idiosyncrasies which I have described and a strong prestige and economic stake; the unacceptable prospect was that it would be stabbing itself by being the instrument used to build up competing communications capacity within Third World markets..
Both U.S. government and U.S. media therefore, had complimentary economic and ideological motivation for opposing NWICO and portraying it as a mortal threat to the West. The media could and did work on its own during the Carter years, but it was a lot easier and a lot more effective when the two forces joined hands, as they did in 1980. From there on, it was only a short distance before the U.S. pulled out of UNESCO--and is still out.
It would not be fair, I think, not to offer at least SOME explanation of the metamorphosis of Joseph Mehan. After all, I have described myself as being a typical mainstream American journalist prior to joining UNESCO. I had graduated from the prime U.S. journalism school, was a person who worked, lived and breathed in that atmosphere for 20 years , an atmosphere that I today have indeed am criticizing rather sharply. How do I explain my transformation?
I simply did the opposite of all the traits I've described American journalists as having. My arrogance, of which I had plenty, disappeared in the presence of Third World journalists like Tarzie Vitachi who spent time in jail and was exiled from Sri Lanka for his stubborn defense of press freedoms. I met many like Tarzie.
I READ the Mass Media Declaration; Masmoudi's great working paper #31 for the MacBride Commission, which spelled out the essence of the NWICO; the MacBride Report itself, with its 82 recommendations for change; the writings of my colleagues at the U.N., among them Fortunatas L. Masha of Tanzania. I read the reasoned profound comments of Gunnar Garbo, Jean D'Arcy, Edward Ploman--Europeans whose differing viewpoint from the American stereotype cliche was exciting, a revelation and liberating.
I read also what the American press was saying about NWICO and I told myself: "hey, wait a minute, that's not true." I knew for a fact that no step was EVER approved as official UNESCO policy that supported even faintly the charges of anti-free press, censorship, state control.
I knew that preliminary debates, in the open democratic forum of UNESCO, produced ideas such as those, introduced by some of the 150 or so member nations. But I knew, and everyone covering the story should have known, that these were speeches for political consumption; they did not have any bearing on the policies and programs of UNESCO at all.
There was one American journalist's writings which I must mention. It was Abe Raskin's report, not a story, for the National News Council in February, 1981. Raskin, a veteran of 40 years on The New York Times and one of the most respected, distinguished journalists in America, analyzed the U.S. press coverage of UNESCO's 1980 General Conference in Belgrade for the News Council.
What Raskin reported might have devastated American news people if they had ever read it. Raskin said that the coverage was so biased, so lop-sided, so one-sided that the American public had no basis on which to form an intelligent opinion about the NWICO or about UNESCO's general program of activities. The reason nobody read Raskin's report was that the media didn't publish it. Very simple.
Well, to wrap up my personal Odyssey, I became an atypical American scribe--and then I could see things with clear eyes. And I could also lose a lot of friends in the process.
In order not to make this entirely an examination of ancient history, I would like to take a few minutes more of your time to talk briefly about two topics. The first is the media's attitude towards NWICO now. And the second is whether there are any signs of life in the NWICO cause today.
I do not think there is any great change in the attitude of the American media. Four months ago, in April, my school and the U.N.'s Public Information Department held a conference on international media at Arden House, the Columbia Conference Center in upstate New York, 40 people from all over the world, many of whom you know.
Just prior to the start of the conference, a group of 10 journalistic organizations, the same ones which were involved in the NWICO fight 20 years ago, sent an urgent letter to the Secretary-General of the U.N. expressing their "deep concern" over the meeting. They said they feared that the Arden House Conference was going to set an agenda for the world's media, to tell it what to do.
And then they added this key, significant, revealing phrase: Such a step would be "clearly reminiscent of efforts BY THE SOVIET UNION AND SOME RADICAL THIRD WORLD COUNTRIES TO ESTABLISH A NEW WORLD INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS ORDER."
What do the French say about "the more things change, the more they stay the same." The same black hats and white hats. No substance, no issues. Has this group learned anything in 20 years? I don't think so.
As an added tag to the subject of the U.N. and communications, let me say that the action isn't at the U.N. anymore. According to Eileen Mahoney 's powerful article published in 1993 in William Drake's The New Information Infrastructure, the action has moved to GATT. There the U.S. can control the outcome much better and agreements affecting huge transnational media organizations are being made, some during the Uruguay Round, with the cooperation and concurrence of the media giants. So communications has indeed at last become a commodity like any other profit or loss commodity, sorghum, wheat, coffee beans, etc.
Secondly are there any signs of life in NWICO itself? Not under the same name but under the same purpose, and on a limited scale, UNDP, the Development Program, is doing something very exciting.
They have a Sustainable Development Media Program functioning which goes into Third World countries and works with universities, libraries, NGO's, non-profit institutions, to set up Internet capability and as many aspects of the so-called Superhighway as possible. The great merit is that this effort is much less costly than the old idea of total infrastructure development and it allows potential leap-frogging in technology to overcome the primitive starting conditions that exist.
Further advantages are that this is being done apart from government sponsorship , so it cannot be taken over as a government control vehicle and it is much closer to the grass roots than any other programs have been. So far, about 30 countries have been helped and UNDP plans further ongoing efforts.
And, of course, UNESCO's IPDC continues to function, providing seed money and start-up help along more conventional lines of communications and media facilities.
Well, I did not intend to take up an inordinate amount of your time. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to address this distinguished group. Sean MacBride was a friend of mine and I'm honored to be able to take part in this conference based on his work.