The Global First Amendment War

By Curtis Prendergast

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers. --Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

That noble sentiment dates from a more hopeful era: December 1948, when the declaration was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly. Now, as it was then, freedom of access to information remains imperiled in much of the world. Perhaps the most persistent offenders against the spirit of the declaration remain the Soviet bloc countries; they still drastically limit the circulation of newspapers and magazines from the West and regularly jam the broadcasts of Radio Liberty. Today a more subtle but no less serious challenge to the free flow of information has been posed by the attempts of some Third World countries to control the news that crosses their borders in the name of establishing a grandiose "new world information and communication order."

It may be an oversimplification, but not by much, to say that a First Amendment war is shaping up on a global scale. The new information order, as some Third World zealots would define it, directly threatens press freedom as Americans and Europeans conceive it. Next round in the conflict will come this month in Belgrade, when the new order will be debated by 151 nations belonging to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Focus of the debate will be a report prepared by UNESCO's International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems. That 16-member body, which included representatives from the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, the Soviet Union and Third World states, was set up three years ago under the chairmanship of former Irish Foreign Minister Sean MacBride.

The MacBride report reflects the familiar Third World complaints against Western news organizations -a litany of grievances that will be recited once more at Belgrade. Again, the Western press will be accused of "cultural aggression" against Third World countries, of perpetuating a "monopoly" of the news flow, of "distorting" the Third World's staggering problems of development. In Third World coverage, claims UNESCO's Senegal-born director-general, Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, Western editors favor negative over positive, excitement over substance: "Their attention is more easily drawn to sensational disasters or to the witticisms of some publicity-seeking leader than to the desperate efforts of whole peoples to escape from the crushing poverty that afflicts so many of them."

True enough, although this is not just a sin of wicked Western journalism. What editor anywhere would spike a file on the sadistic buffooneries of Uganda's ex-dictator, Idi Amin, or the scandalous extravagances of Central Africa's now dethroned Emperor Bokassa? As it happens, Third World spokesmen are not the only ones who complain that editors are more inspired by sensation than substance. It is also true that a more "balanced" international flow of information is needed. As Third World countries tirelessly point out, four Western wire services --Associated Press, United Press International, Britain's Reuters and Agence France-Presse--together supply more than three-quarters of the international news published outside the Soviet bloc, where TASS predominates (the Soviet agency generally escapes Third World accusations, less because Moscow is cooperating with the prosecution than because TASS is not regarded as a "news" service). A.P. reports are read, heard on radio or seen on television by an estimated 1 billion people every day. Technical superiority only reinforces the competitive edge of the West. Some Third World newsmen cannot telephone outside their own capitals; in contrast, the Wall Street Journal can publish simultaneously in twelve locations across the American continent, with a printing plant in Hong Kong offering same-day publication of the Journal's Asian edition.

But whether Western journalism neglects Third World concerns, at least to the extent critics charge, is questionable. M'Bow can thank the U.S. and European press for focusing world attention on the sensational disaster of famine in Africa's Sahel region, and for helping mobilize relief. Moreover, recent studies have challenged a number of Third World charges against the Western press that have, by repetition, become dogma.

In Asia, monitoring of A.P., U.P.I., Reuters and A.F.P. showed they carried a daily average total of 100,000 words of Third World news--five times what 19 representative newspapers in the area actually used. Another study of 85 Third World countries disclosed that most did not allow individual newspapers or broadcast stations to subscribe directly to the foreign wire services; rather, the government was the subscriber, or controlled the in coming news-service channels. "The" picture of passive millions in the developing countries awash in a tidal wave of alien information is somewhat fanciful," observes Stanford University's Elie Abel, former journalism dean at Columbia and the only American member of the MacBride Commission. "Their governments are, and have long been, in firm control."

Nonetheless, Third World countries feel it is not their version of events that is heard and seen by the world at large--or even by a neighboring country. (Before satellites, communication lines between French-speaking African countries went via Paris; those for British Africa, via London.) "The background of the MacBride Commission," acknowledges Reuters Managing Director Gerald Long, "is the feeling among many nonindustrial countries that they lack the information structure present in the industrial world, in which they are right, and that they should have that structure, in which aspiration they are justified; that their countries are little and poorly reported in the press of the industrial countries, which is true, and should be better reported, which is desirable."

But how? Two years ago, Tunisia's then Information Minister, Mustapha Masmoudi, presented a plan linking the new information order to the developing countries' demand for a new, more equitable international economic order. The Masmoudi scheme would have "balanced" the international news flow mainly by choking the Western press, with such measures as curbs on news-agency activities, controls on "abusive" access to news sources, and a "supranational organization" to enforce correction of "false" reporting.

Outrageous and unworkable, these proposals did not reflect a monolithic Third World view; in press policy, these countries differ according to their traditions and governments. Still, for many newer nations, the urgent needs of development take precedence over the luxury of a critical press. Explains Zimbabwe Journalist Chen Chimutengwenda: "We must have planned development, and the role of the media has to be planned too. Its role must be strictly defined for maximum contribution to development. A nation in a hurry to develop is like a nation in a state of emergency: freedom to criticize must be restricted by the government according to its priorities."

From here, it is not a long philosophical step for governments to seek similar restrictions on the freedom of the foreign press to report unpleasant news. In fact, enough Third World countries were ready to support a Soviet resolution along just these lines at UNESCO'S 1976 general conference, in Nairobi, to give the international press its first real fright. The proposal was shelved at the last minute. Instead, the MacBride Commission was appointed to study ways of "achieving a freer and more balanced flow of information." The commission's report is now out; eventually it will be published in 13 languages, including Bengali and Swahili. It contains 82 recommendations, embedded in 160,000 words of glutinous UNESCOese. (MacBride himself was appalled by the draft--some pages were given to the commission only 15 minutes before its mandate expired--and confessed a "desire to rewrite it from beginning to end." Unfortunately, time did not allow him to do so.)

There is good news and bad news in the MacBride recommendations. The good is that the commission members rejected the wilder extremes of the Masmoudi plan. Third World representatives went along with their Western colleagues in declaring that "censorship or arbitrary control of information should be abolished" and that "accurate, faithful and balanced reporting... necessarily involves access to unofficial as well as official sources of information." The only recorded dissent from these ringing endorsements of press freedom was that of the Soviet representative, Sergei Losev, director of TASS.

The bad news, unfortunately, undermines the good. Damage control efforts by Western and moderate Third World members of the MacBride Commission were only partly successful. Reflecting the missionary zeal of its UNESCO drafters, the report is permeated with a preference for a guided, rather than an independent, press. One key passage calls for "the formulation by all nations, and particularly developing countries, of comprehensive communication policies linked to overall social, cultural, economic and political goals." Another, obviously aimed at the international news agencies, recommends "effective legal measures designed to circumscribe the action of transnationals by requiring them to comply with specific criteria and conditions defined by national development policies." That is an open invitation to discriminatory legislation.

Ominously, UNESCO's threeyear, $625 million budget, which was tabled in Belgrade last week, would fund studies into several pet UNESCO projects opposed by Western newsmen. These include a definition of "socially responsible communication" (implying criteria for news content), the "promotion of ethical principles" for journalists (feared as restricting reportorial freedom) and analyzing "the impact of advertising" (which could lead to a restrictive international advertising code). UNESCO also seems determined to push toward "special protection" for journalists--even though the MacBride report warns that this might involve setting up licensing bodies to determine which journalists should be protected.

A year ago, a California gathering of newspaper editors was asked how many knew about the new information order; only two out of 282 editors raised their hands. But the battle over the UNESCO proposals is not just a matter for the trade. At stake, ultimately, is the right of readers, radio listeners and television viewers everywhere to be properly informed about the world around them; for the developing and industrial countries alike to learn about one another without hindrance.

International organizations like UNESCO can propose but not legislate; their declarations bind no one. Nonetheless, even nonbinding U.N. motions, if broadly endorsed, have a certain moral weight; at the very least, they frequently serve as guides to developing states in shaping domestic law and policy. Warns Robert Primoff, a New York City international lawyer: "Na tions otherwise hesitant to take certain action may find courage in numbers, or feel morally justified, if there exists a declaration or code adopted by a hundred or more nations." Which is why these UNESCO recommendations must not be allowed to point the wrong way. Restrictions on freedom of information, whether for one country or for several, should not even have the appearance of international sanction. The information battle is widening, not narrowing, to encompass not only news but scientific and technical information, the data that move on the international computer networks, the images that will shortly be carried by direct satellite broadcasting.

Third World governments are not alone, obviously, in wanting to control the news. The privately owned press is not automatically good, even in Western countries. The government-financed press is not automatically bad or inevitably an untrustworthy propaganda organ; both BBC and A.F.P. receive government support but are independent of government control. Narinder Aggarwala, an Indian journalist now with the U.N. Development Program, suggests that press autonomy with in the government framework, along BBC lines, could be feasible and should be encouraged both by UNESCO and Western journalism.

The latter, of course, has a vital stake in seeing that Third World nations develop strong communications instruments of their own. Freedom of information, after all, is indivisible. One way of helping is by providing technical assis tance. Some aid, mainly journalistic training and surplus equipment, has already been provided by U.S. and European press and broadcast organizations, but it has been largely an earnest of good intent. In the U.S., government aid has been restricted by legislation that confines development assistance to "basic human needs"--a phrase that has not been interpreted to mean the need to read a newspaper or hear better newscasts. More generous support, both public and private, for the Third World press will not dispel all the clamor in UNESCO for news management. But it would be one step toward meeting Third Word demands for a balanced flow of information--which requires, first of all, a Third World press that is competent and equipped to feed that flow.

Ultimately, of course, the battle for freedom of information must be fought on home ground. One Third World member of the MacBride Commission, Indonesia's Mochtar Lubis, has strong views on this. He also has a strong personal antipathy to press controls; as editor of the crusading newspaper Indonesia Raya, he was twice jailed by his government. "Personally, I do share the main complaints of the Third World about the bias of international news," says Lubis, adding, "I have much less patience and less respect for the spokesmen from the Third World who demand at the international level 'a free and balanced flow of information and news' but who are completely silent about the nonexistence of a free and balanced flow of information and news within their own countries, between the power elite which rules and the masses of the population."

Here is the crux of the matter. Within Third World countries, as elsewhere, there are editors, publishers and broadcasters who share the highest ideals of information freedom, as set forth in the U.N. Declaration on Human Rights. The public in Third World countries is no less entitled to receive and impart information freely. If a U.N. body like UNESCO, however high-minded its motivation, were to endorse a new world information order restricting that freedom, the first and gravest disservice done would be to Third World countries.

--By Curtis Prendergast

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