Page 134 - Communication Commerce and Power The Political Economy of America and the Direct Broadcast Satellite

DBS and the Structure of US Policy Making 123

5.4 CONCLUSIONS

A detailed analysis of the structural conditions characterizing US
foreign communication policy and the historical context of their
development for the most part has been absent in the writings of
Schiller and other proponents of the cultural imperialism paradigm.
As such, the dynamics and implications of the structural conditions
addressed in this chapter have been underplayed. The bias of US
policy making that was perpetuated by these conditions can be
described as the tendency to focus on short-term issues - such as
corporate plans in relation to an upcoming ITU conference - rather
than relatively long-term concerns- such as a coordinated intra-state
effort to institutionalise the free flow of information in international
law. Following the failed effort by State Department officials to take
on a leadership position in US foreign communication policy, the
Senior Interagency Group for International Communication Policy
provided the National Security Council with its first comprehensive
overview of the policy problems in this field. 61 But despite these and
lesser responses to the free flow crisis, the US public sector ultimately
was incapable of meeting the long-term needs of its private sector. A
core component of this public sector inability readily to reform itself
was reflected at and prior to WARC-79. The extraordinary size and
complex make-up of the American delegation was the result of more
than just the political and economic importance of the conference. It
also reflected the nature of US foreign communication policy struc-
tures. The wealthiest, best organized and most 'connected' American
corporations, rather than just being heard in the domestic negotia-
tions that preceded the meeting, also were directly represented in
Geneva. The assumed necessity of sending sixty-seven officials and a
forty-person support staff underscored more than the significance of
international communications to the United States; it underlined (as
early as 1979) the presence of a structural disparity between the
significance of free flow and the ability of American state officials to
act competently on behalf of free flow interests.
These structures and related policy-making biases directly influ-
enced the domestic policy developments discussed in the next chapter.
To some extent, the liberalization of US communication activities,
vigorously pursued in the early 1980s, generated an unforeseen escala-
tion of the foreign communication policy crisis. The haste and ideo-
logical fervor in which US communications were re-regulated
ironically hastened the efforts of established corporate interests to