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called for equal distribution of the electronic spectrum as well as national protection
against cross-border satellite communications. The report was fiercely attacked by
corporate media in their own news outlets, in publications (Righter 1978), and in
lobbying, serving as a foretaste of the mobilisations carried out since by TNMCs
such as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation against politicians threatening
their interests in Australia and Britain. The United States left UNESCO in 1984,
unhappy at the turn of debate and maintaining its doctrine of ‘free flow of infor-
mation’ which for its critics advanced free speech claims while buttressing the
existing dominance in US exports and influence. Britain left too in 1985 but the exit
of the US, UNESCO’s major funder, was a significant blow and the body has not
regained the same resources or influence since, even though the US rejoined in 2003
in time to intervene in debates on what became the Convention on the Protection
and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions (UNESCO 2005).
The MacBride report marked an end point; its conclusions were worthy but
woolly and it failed to provide a guide for action in a hostile environment. The
report ‘failed to galvanize private and public sector participants into action to
promote the massive investment … needed’ argue Mansell and Nordenstreng
(2007), who draw parallels with the influence of civil society organisations in the
World Summit on the Information Society 2003–5. Yet, there were some posi-
tive outcomes, notably regional initiatives to support cultural production and the
expansion of the Inter Press Service news agency (originally founded in Argentina
1964) across Latin American and Africa.
The new world communication order sought by non-aligned countries of the
South did not just fail because of Western neoliberalism. Third Worldism
became discredited because of the practice of reactionary states. Contradictions
were exposed between the authoritarian, statist demands to control commu-
nication inside national borders and pleas to democratise communications and
deepen cultural diversity. Calls for a new world order were used as an alibi for
failures of domestic action. Internal inequalities were exacerbated between elites
welcoming new circuits of modernisation and large sections of society (Iran
under the Shah; Kenya under Moi). Internal state attacks on popular culture
(such as reggae and Rastafarianism in Jamaica) exposed contradictions, as did
the high levels of internal political censorship, state repression and media control.
There were ongoing efforts by some states to erect barriers to foreign media
influence. The Soviet Union moved to block satellite transmissions. In 1996, the
Taliban shut down Afghanistan’s only TV station when it took control of Kabul,
banning televisions, videocassette recorders and satellite dishes.
Cultural imperialism was invoked to support authoritarian controls in the
developing world. ‘Defence of Asian values and eastern essentialism against
Western imperialism is even now a standard pretext used by conservatives and
communists alike to legitimate illiberal controls against their own people’
(Curran and Park 2000b: 5). NWICO, argues Miller et al. (2005: 76), offered an
inadequate theorisation of capitalism, class relations and postcolonialism; it
‘risked cloaking the interests of emergent bourgeoisies seeking to advance their