Page 102 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

Foreign Communication Policy and DBS: 1962-1984 91

efforts more importantly reflected the perceived long-term needs of an
American state seeking to redress hegemonic decline. State officials
pursued free flow principles on behalf of mostly domestic capitalists -
especially the emerging and expanding information and communica-
tion sector - but did so as biased mediators working within the para-
meters of complex policy and cultural structures.

4.4 DBS, UNESCO AND THE NWICO

Ironically, US efforts to promote an international free flow of
information confronted their most concerted opposition in UNESCO.
From its inception, the role of UNESCO in relation to US foreign
communication policy has been significant in that its institutional
mandate involved issues explicitly concerning cultural-power aspects
of American hegemony. In 1945, US officials sought to expand US
'Open Door' relations with the world. 69 International institutions,
including the UN, constituted essential nodal points in this effort,
and UNESCO was considered to be a potentially important agent
for generating international stability and market access overseas for
US commercial interests. In sum, through its apparently neutral
offices and activities, UNESCO was established to stimulate liberal
economic and political values. Given the predominant position of the
United States in the post-war international economy, UNESCO's
cultural mandate, it was believed, could serve to benefit both Amer-
ican state and post-war capitalist interests. 70
Until the Soviet Union joined UNESCO in 1954, the US ideal of
the free flow of information was opposed among its members only by
West European countries interested in defending their international
news media corporations from US-based competitors. As technologi-
cal change, post-colonial movements and the Cold War became pre-
dominant forces influencing international affairs, UNESCO gradually
emerged as a medium through which relatively 'powerless' countries
could organize against the 'powerful' directly and transnational
corporate activities indirectly. Since its inception, American state
officials had worked to influence the perspectives and activities of
UNESCO personnel. But by the mid-1970s, the CIA both monitored
these officials and were directly involved in financing hundreds of
information and news programs (including the propaganda radio
operations discussed above) that were created in efforts to counter the
broadcasts of communist states and what were viewed as subversive,