Page 106 - Historical Dictionary of Political Communication in the United States

AND COMMUNICATION
NEW WORLD
ORDER
95
Ownership INFORMATION 1961, when Philip L. Graham of the Washington Post
changed
in
acquired a majority of the stock, and it has remained part of that organization
since. Under this ownership it has gained on Time in circulation and now trails
Time by less than 1 million with 3.2 million circulation.
SOURCES: Philip S. Cook, Douglas Gomery, and Lawrence W. Lichty, eds., The Future
of News: Television-Newspapers-Wire Services-Newsmagazines, 1992; Theodore Peter-
son, Magazines in the Twentieth Century, 1964.
Guido H. Stempel III
NEW WORLD INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ORDER. The
United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO)
involvement with a new world information and communication order (NWICO)
stems from the 1960s, when the organization teamed with international profes-
sional bodies to enhance the information and communication capabilities of
developing countries. By 1970, developing countries were generally dissatisfied
with what they called imbalances in the world's communication order. Two
major complaints were at the core of this dissatisfaction—the monopoly of in-
ternational communication resources by a few developed countries and the poor
image of developing countries presented through the world's media.
Six landmark meetings define UNESCO and the NWICO debate: San Jose,
Costa Rica, 1967; Nairobi, 1976; Paris, 1978; Belgrade, 1980; and Paris, 1982
and 1983. Perhaps the most controversial of the meetings were the one at Nai-
robi, where a declaration on mass media was discussed, and the one in Belgrade,
where the MacBride Report was adopted. The report's most contentious rec-
ommendations concerned the monopoly issue and freedom of the press that is
"inseparable from responsibility." These recommendations were attacked in the
West as attempts at government control of the media. UNESCO's retreat from
the issues and from notions that the NWICO required immediate restructuring
of the world information and communication order was supported by its dec-
laration in 1982 that the NWICO was "an evolving and continuous process."
Moreover, the organization began to emphasize international technical cooper-
ation on a model suggested by an earlier U.S. initiative. The International Pro-
gramme for Development and Communication (IPDC) signified this shift.
Nonetheless, the U.S. government withdrew from UNESCO in December 1983,
citing concerns for "individual human rights and the free flow of information."
The decision caught NWICO observers by surprise. Coming at the height of
tensions in U.S.-Soviet relations, the withdrawal made UNESCO one of the
major casualties of the Cold War.
SOURCES: Johan Galtung and Richard C. Vincent, Global Glasnost: Toward a New
World Information Order?, 1992; George Gerbner, Hamid Mowlana, and Kaarle Nor-
denstreng, eds., The Global Media Debate: Its Rise, Fall and Renewal, 1993; UNESCO,
One World: Report by the International Commission for the Study of Communication
Problems, 1980.
Folu Folarin Ogundimu