Truce in Paris

UNESCO delegates drop a threat to curb the news

For a time it seemed as if the biennial general conference of the 146-nation United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in Paris would be remembered for adopting Soviet-style curbs on press freedom. But last week, applauding delegates passed by acclamation a U.S.-supported compromise, lifting at least temporarily a threat that has been hanging over the West since 1970.

Leading the conference to a middle ground was UNESCO's director general, Amadou Mahtar M'Bow, of Senegal. He steered his Third World colleagues away from a declaration, originally sponsored by M'Bow himself, intended to counter what they perceive as distorted and inadequate coverage of their affairs (TIME, Nov. 20). The first draft, which sanctioned state control of the press and called for news organizations to publish official replies to "harmful" stories, was replaced by a version ostensibly affirming Western-style press freedoms. Though U.S. delegates would have preferred no declaration, they found the weakened version acceptable. Observed Newsday President William Attwood, a U.S. media representative on the American delegation: "If there's a reptile in the house, far better to have it a garter snake than a rattlesnake." Third World delegates also praised the compromise that M'Bow, as one of their own, had put together, but they continued to call for a "new world information order" more favorable to developing nations than the existing one.

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