Confrontation at Talloires

Western newsmen mount an angry challenge to UNESCO curbs

Tucked picturesquely into the western slopes of the Alps, the lakeside resort of Talloires, France, features three-star gastronomy and a timeless mountain calm. But the distinguished assembly that gathered there last week had no interest in sightseeing, and lost little time in shattering the Alpine quiet by speaking up loudly in defense of world press freedom.

The delegates were representatives of 60 print and broadcast organizations from 24 countries, including the four major international wire services (A.P., U.P.I., Reuters and Agence France Presse). They were drawn together by their common opposition to the restrictive aspects of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's proposals to regulate the world's press through a plan called the New World Information Order. By the time they ended their two-day session, the conferees had issued a toughly worded Declaration of Talloires. While pledging "cooperation in all genuine efforts to expand the free flow of information," they promised "concerted action" to uphold the "basic human right" of press freedom and called on UNESCO "to abandon attempts to regulate news content and formulate rules for the press."

The Talloires meeting, sponsored by the World Press Freedom Committee, an international watchdog group, was a direct response to UNESCO's Belgrade conference last October. There UNESCO'S 152 member states (now 155) adopted the MacBride Report. That document, which evolved from a three-year global communications study by a panel of experts under former Irish Foreign Minister Sean MacBride, sought to redress Soviet bloc and Third World complaints of "cultural aggression" on the part of the Western-dominated press by empowering UNESCO to "balance" the international flow of in formation. Among the MacBride proposals: standards for news content, new codes of press ethics calling for a definition of the role of the press and measures to "protect" journalists (a euphemism for licensing them). Delegates from Western na tions saw these measures as attempts by Soviet bloc and Third World nations to discourage the press from reporting embarrassing or detrimental information. When the measures were adopted despite their concerns, Western press representatives decided to take up the fight themselves.

The battle at Talloires developed into such an explosive confrontation between delegates and their guest speaker, UNESCO Director-General Amadou-Mahtar M'Bow, that his interpreter was unable to keep up with the angry exchanges. UNESCO'S press curbs, said Cushrow Irani, chairman of the International Press Institute and publisher of The Statesman of Calcutta, would "transform the press into an instrument of governments." British Journalist and Author Rosemary Righter (Whose News?) reminded the director-general that he had once said the press should be responsible "for promoting cohesion and integration" in Third World nations. M'Bow, a Senegalese educator, heatedly denied that he intended to muzzle the press, but argued that he was dutybound to push ahead with the plan voted upon by UNESCO'S member nations.

The Talloires conferees made it clear that they felt no such obligation. Nor, some members suggested, should Western governments have any part of such a restrictive program. Washington Star Editor Murray Gart urged members "to withdraw support of and representation in UNESCO" if the agency continues with its plans to shackle the world press. Gart's proposal was defeated, but the point was made: UNESCO receives more than 50% of its three-year budget from Western nations, a full 25%--or $156 million--from the U.S. alone.

The majority of the Talloires conferees, however, agreed with Los Angeles Times Editorial Pages Editor Anthony Day, who said when the meeting was over, "The West does better to stay in for now and fight. It just has got to be tougher."

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