The Word War of the Worlds

The revolution in Ishmaelia had barely begun, but on Fleet Street the publisher of the daily Beast was already telling his correspondent precisely what coverage he wanted: "A few sharp victories, some conspicuous acts of personal bravery on the Patriot side, and a colourful entry into the capital." Such was the quality of African reportage half a century ago, as described by Novelist Evelyn Waugh in his hilarious classic Scoop. To officials of modern-day African nations, as well as those of other developing countries of the so-called Third World, not enough has changed since Waugh's day. Western coverage of their affairs, they complain, is cursory, colored by colonialist idioms and preoccupied with corruption, political turmoil and natural disaster.

Now those officials are doing more than just complain. At various international conferences over the past few years, Third World nations have mounted a coordinated attack on the activities of the Western-based news organizations that transmit most of the world's news. The stated aim of this "developmental journalism" campaign is to make information better serve the developing countries' plans for economic growth and, as one oft-heard slogan has it, "decolonialize the news." "The West still regards the Afro-Asian countries as inferior," says Indian Publisher Asoke Sarkar. "You do not understand us."

Press Pool. The 250 Western publishers and broadcasters who gathered in Oslo last week for the 26th annual conference of the International Press Institute, however, are worried that the movement could become a campaign to replace straight reporting about the developing world with government-approved propaganda. At last fall's United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's General Conference in Nairobi, the Third World bloc tried to push through a Soviet-backed proposal endorsing greater government control of the international flow of news (a U.S. lobbying effort stalled the motion). The bloc did succeed, however, in gaining UNESCO backing for a new Third World press pool that would supplement--and, some press libertarians fear, eventually supplant--the Western wire services in those countries. Says H.L. Stevenson, editor and vice president of U.P.I.: "If this pool decides it wants to give out handouts at the airport, that's it--we don't get into the countries."

Even before the UNESCO endorsement, a press pool was formed by nonaligned nations last July. Today as many as 47 national news agencies are exchanging reports, though most of the pool's copy is self-serving propaganda. Not many Western journalists take the effort seriously. Says Reuters Managing Director Gerald Long: "They're zero competition for us." So far, perhaps. But within a month after the Indian news agency Samachar joined the nonaligned-nations' pool, the agency dropped both U.P.I. and West Germany's Deutsche Presse-Agentur. If UNESCO continues to lend its prestige and expertise to the Third World press pool, such defections might increase.

Delegates to last week's I.P.I. meeting in Oslo generally deplored UNESCO's intrusion into the developmental-journalism debate, which some of them claimed violates the agency's charter and lends unwarranted legitimacy to Third World press-bashing. Many Western journalists admit, however, that their coverage of the developing world could be improved. U.P.I., for instance, has more full-time correspondents in London (14) than in all of Latin America (12), and NBC does not maintain a bureau anywhere in Africa. "We concede that an imbalance of information exists in some parts of the world," says U.P.I.'s Stevenson. "But we don't concede that this imbalance is part of any imperialistic plot hatched in our New York office."

Instead, the underwhelming presence of Western correspondents in the Third World is in large part the fault of the developing nations themselves. Most of them are one-party states or outright dictatorships, with a tightly controlled domestic press, and little patience for Western notions of free inquiry. I.P.I. officials in Oslo reported last week that 31 governments, most of them developing countries, expelled, harassed or denied visas to foreign correspondents last year. Says Gerald Gold, deputy foreign editor of the New York Times: "They are complaining about the very guts of American journalism, which is to look at things with a hard eye."

Play in Peoria. They also complain that the Western press completely overlooks Third World news of importance to Third World readers--which means that, because Western news organizations dominate the international flow of information, such news often goes unreported. "If a new steel mill is built in Mexico, that fact is very newsworthy in Mexico," says Roger Tatarian, professor of journalism at the University of California's Fresno campus. "It is not necessarily of much interest in Peoria."

That may change. The developing world has lately become more prominent in international economic affairs, following precipitous price increases of oil, coffee and other Third World commodities. For that reason, and perhaps because Western editors are troubled by the implications of developmental journalism, a number of news organizations are beginning to take the Third World more seriously. The Washington Post has roughly doubled its force of part-time correspondents, or stringers, in the developing countries in the past five years to 14. CBS this year opened an African bureau in Nairobi, and ABC will open one in Johannesburg next week. In addition, the World Press Freedom Association, a group of Western news organizations and professional societies, is committed to raising $1 million to "assist the development of Third World news gathering."

Third World spokesmen are generally skeptical of such overtures, fearful that they might perpetuate "cultural imperialism." The officials prefer to go it alone. To that end, Third World representatives will meet later this month in Kinshasa to lay plans for expanding their press pool. And they are almost certain to reintroduce last fall's defeated press-control proposal at the 1978 UNESCO general conference in Paris.

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