Global Media development 1940s–1970s

Sections 12.6 – 7, Revolutions in Communication, 2025

Rivalry and Cold War conflict between Soviet Russia and the West was escalating when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was written in 1948.

At one point, the Soviets cut off vital rail traffic from West Germany to West Berlin for a year. The US and allies responded with a massive airlift of food and fuel that circumvented the blockade. The Berlin airlift worked so well that the Soviets relented in May 1949.

Former radio jamming tower in Minsk, Belarus, now used for standard broadcasting. By Homoatrox, Wikipedia.

However, within a few days, the Cold War shifted to the airwaves when the Soviets began jamming radio signals from the Voice of America and British Broadcasting Corporation that were being aimed across Europe, especially into Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and other Russian Soviet-occupied countries. The US and Britain responded by ramping up signal strength (Ward, 1949).

The new radio war came as something of a surprise to engineers who were trying to harmonize frequency allocations and new broadcasting technology. Although the ITU’s seventy eight members agreed on most technical issues, the Cold War confrontation made the process far more complicated.

Meanwhile, the ITU and UNESCO began studying media scarcity in the developing countries of the global South and researchers found a troubling level of underdevelopment. In one 1962 study, Africa had the world’s lowest level of access to information, with only two radios, one newspaper subscription, and half a cinema seat for every 100 people. Minimum standards would be about ten times that level of media in a modestly developed country (Giniger, 1962). In contrast, the US had more than thirty-three newspaper subscriptions and seventy radio receivers for every 100 people in 1960.

Developing countries also produced less media content. At least 80 percent of the world’s news, films, and broadcast programs traveled in one direction: from the global North to the global South. This meant, for example, that even the media that existed in the global South was full of irrelevant information about European royalty and Hollywood stars. It also meant that the global South was best known in the global North (or Western media) for “coups and earthquakes,” as an International Herald Tribune editor wrote (Rosenblum, 1979).

No one was surprised when UN studies showed a lopsided North–South flow of information, coupled with a lack of infrastructure, capital, legal support, and expert training, but there was a sense that media development was at the heart of many other problems as well. Regional meetings of the ITU and UNESCO took place in 1960 in Bangkok, 1961 in Santiago, Chile, and 1962 in Paris. Recommended action included regional media development councils, and development of broadcasting, news agencies, and national journalism schools.

Many meetings resulted in declarations and formal statements to the effect that everyone agreed on media development and the free flow of information. However, they took place against a backdrop of increasing Cold War animosity rather than North–South cooperation. One important response to the global imbalance of media was the establishment of the non-profit, non-aligned Inter Press Service (IPS) journalism cooperative in 1964. It was intended, founder Roberto Savio said, to give a voice to those absent in the traditional flow of information, including: “women, indigenous peoples and the grassroots, as well as issues such as human rights, environment, multiculturalism, international social justice, and the search for global governance” (Savio, 2014).

Similar concerns animated the establishment of the Caribbean News Agency (CANA) in 1975, the PanAfrican News Agency (PANA) in 1979, and Al Jazeera, the Arab news agency, in 1996. These regional news agencies were also affiliated with the Yugoslavia-based Non- Aligned News Agency Pool from 1975 to 1990 and the Non-Aligned Movement News Network managed by BERNAMA, the Malaysian National News Agency, from 2007 to the present.

Media issues came up repeatedly at UNESCO conferences in the 1970s, starting with a 1970 resolution “deeming that information media should play an important part in furthering international understanding and cooperation in the interests of peace and human welfare.” The resolution also affirmed “the inadmissibility of using information media for propaganda on behalf of war, racialism and hatred among nations” (UNESCO, 1982). A similar resolution in 1972 called for the preparation of a “draft declaration concerning the fundamental principles governing the use of the mass media with a view to strengthening peace and international understanding and combating war propaganda, racialism and apartheid.”

Although these generic bromides seemed shrug-worthy, Western nations were wary. First, political positions were hardening during this time, with developing nations of the global South tending to side with Soviet Russia and East Bloc nations. Secondly, an innocuous statement about free press might contain fine print. For example, one proposal from a Russian delegation to a 1975 UNESCO meeting held that “States are responsible for the activities in the international sphere of all mass media within their jurisdiction.” What did that mean? Would governments be obliged to control their media? Could Moscow file a formal UN complaint about a Washington Post story? The US and Western European nations saw the statement as “a serious threat to the free flow of information” (Kauffman, 1976).

The US and allies responded in 1978 with a “Marshall Plan” for communications development, but reception to the proposal was flat. What the developing nations wanted was an acknowledgment of principles, including the legitimacy for non-aligned media (such as the IPS) and the principle of “balanced” world communications (Nordenstreng, 1984).

All these discussions led to the Mass Media Declaration of 1978—a major UNESCO treaty on media ethics, professional development, and global information traffic. In the 2,000-word treaty, UNESCO members agreed to: • fight apartheid, racism, fake news, incitement to war, religious hatred, discrimination, hostility, and violence; • demand a free flow and a wider and better-balanced dissemination of information; • promote free speech and protect journalists; • provide a right of reply for anyone who believed their views had been misrepresented; • correct inequalities in the flow of information to and from developing countries.

Although parts of the final text endorsing governmental control over the news media were removed, many news organizations were troubled. “We don’t wish to seem ungracious for official efforts undertaken on our … behalf,” said a Washington Post editorial, but the declaration “condoned the idea that it is within the proper province of governments to call the media tune.” And even if this particular tune was not so bad this time, the Post said, why would it be supported by communist states that practiced media control systematically or by developing nations that controlled the media when it was convenient? (The Washington Post, 1978).

From the Soviet Russian standpoint, the idea of a government-supervised control over the flow of information was beneficial because it held back “information imperialism,” in line with communist theories of media law (Shevtsova, 1980).

Liberal Americans urged critics to continue engagement with developing nations. “These objectives are regarded by some western critics as threatening content control of the mass media,” said Leonard Sussmann, a US delegate to UNESCO during the Carter administration. “We reject this objective. But we point out that western journalists have generally failed to distinguish between Third World pleas for greater communications facilities and the presumed threat to limit the freedom of the news media. Western journalists thereby inadvertently lend credence to the criticism of their performance” (Sussman, 1986).

In congressional hearings about the UNESCO debates in 1979, FCC commissioner and delegate to an ITU conference Glen O. Robinson said that the global flow of information was in fact a serious issue; it should not be seen simply in terms of the East–West or even North–South conflict. Fair distribution of frequencies and geostationary satellite orbits would become even more difficult if these conferences were to become more political, he warned (Robinson, 1979).

“There appeared to be a difficulty in striking an appropriate balance between the concept of freedom of information and the need for a sense of responsibility to prevent abuses of this freedom,” said a UNESCO history written several years later. “Speakers from developing countries particularly stressed the need for a multidirectional flow of information. They felt that the cultural integrity of their countries required freedom from undue influence of large foreign media organizations serving private interests and often monopolistic in character. They considered that the principle of free flow of information was not being practiced when countries lacked the production capacity to participate in such a flow on an equal basis” (UNESCO, 1982).

Many voices, one world— and a lot of controversy, 1980s

As the controversy peaked over the Mass Media Declaration of 1978, UNESCO created an international study commission headed by Irish politician and Nobel laureate Seán MacBride to better outline the problems and see where points of agreement might be found.

The MacBride Commission’s 1980 report Many Voices, One World concluded that the unequal flow of communication was making developing nations even more dependent on the cultural products of the industrial West. Centuries-old customs, time-honored cultural practices, and simple lifestyles were being threatened. The rush to “modernization” was leading to social chaos, made all the worse by the one-way flow of information from industrial nations to developing nations. News about the developing world in North America and Europe was dominated by spot reports on disasters and military coups, with the underlying realities and more complex developments ignored by the Western press (International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems, 1980).

Many of the MacBride recommendations were not controversial. One was a call for more professional training for journalists on both sides of the North–South divide. Another was for protection of journalists and freedom of the press. Another was a recommendation that rich nations be encouraged to help smaller nations foster internal media development, and that smaller nations should have more control over the cultural processes of modernization and find ways to reduce media commercialization.

On the other hand, some of the MacBride recommendations were perceived as inviting heavy-handed media regulation by non-democratic nations, especially the Soviet bloc. The International Federation of Newspaper Publishers (FIEJ), among others, issued strong denunciations of the idea. Overall, the MacBride recommendations amounted to an international theory of social responsibility for the media as it moved toward a “New World Information and Communications Order” (NWICO). In many ways it was like the Hutchins Commission report on social responsibility of the press (noted in Section 3.15), but on a global scale. After the Reagan administration was elected to office in 1981, US diplomats took a harder line. “We oppose interpretations of the NWICO which seek to make governments the arbiters of content,” said Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams (Nordenstreng, 1984).

The hard line was reinforced by a public relations campaign by US publishers and broadcasters called “Danger at the UN,” which said, in part: Imagine Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the UN’s true godfathers, discovering a UNESCO-sponsored coalition of tyrannies and their accomplices hatching elaborate plans to muzzle free world news media, all in the name of correcting alleged “omissions” and “imbalances.” (Nordenstreng, 1984)

In contrast, the editor of a magazine expressing the Non-Aligned Movement view said: “The Third World is not fighting against the principle of a free press. They … are engaged in a relentless struggle for the establishment of a free press in their own countries” (Gauhar, 1981).

The US never disputed the idea that media development was needed. “It is essential that a program be initiated which will aid developing countries to improve their communications facilities,” said Leonard H. Marks, United States Information Agency director, in the 1980s. “They need more telephones, more broadcast equipment, more printing presses and the people to operate them” (Marks, 1986).

However, bilateral projects, rather than global restructuring through an international agency, were preferred (Haule, 1989). In fact, the US backed away from the promise of support for the International Program for the Development of Communication, which was to be the funding arm of the NWICO (Preston, 1989).

At one point in the 1980s, US communications development assistance reached $500 million per year. Still, most of this was not for printing presses and broadcast equipment, but rather for loans to establish satellite ground stations and other telecommunications infrastructure in developing nations.

The problem was the divergence of interests, said John M. Eger, an attorney and former White House telecommunications advisor. “While we see ourselves offering the developing nations information they need to survive, they see in our technology a threat of vast and unwelcome change … endangering traditional national roles and ways of life” (Eger, 1978).

The divide grew so large, and the debate so heated, that the US and Britain withdrew from all of UNESCO in protest in 1985 and 1988. (They rejoined in 2003 and 1997, respectively.)

Looking back, many believe that the US overreacted to Soviet provocation and missed an opportunity for global engagement. In the first place, the structure of media (and some content) has always been a subject of government regulation in all countries. US and European broadcasting has had local content rules and prohibitions against foreign ownership and propaganda in various forms for the past century. US antitrust laws required that NBC be broken up in 1943 and that the Associated Press open its membership to all news organizations in 1945. Also, defamation and incitement to violence are not protected forms of speech, even in the most liberal traditions such as the US First Amendment.

“Media regulation was not the Big Bad Wolf,” said Finnish media scholar Kaarie Nordenstreng. “During the 1980s and 90s … a wide array of creative regulatory policies emerged to ensure the social responsibility of communication corporations” (Nordenstreng, 1984).

Although not successful in bridging some of the gaps, the MacBride Report’s authors “had the foresight to hope for a kind of ‘globalization’ that, rather than signify divisions among citizens of the world, acknowledged our common humanity,” said Andrew Calabrese in a twenty-fifth anniversary article on the MacBride report. “With all of its flaws, for which progressive communication activists understandably have distanced themselves over the past twenty-five years, the MacBride Report projects a spirit of hopefulness about how a better world is possible, [and] about the continued importance of public institutions as means to ensure global justice” (Calabrese, 2005).

The need for social responsibility in the media is perhaps better understood in the twenty-first century, with propaganda intended to deliberately destabilize countries now infusing an indifferent and gargantuan digital media system.

See also