Is the NWICO debate obsolete?

INTRODUCTION

The debate over the role of information and communication in developing countries was never so intense before the Second World War. During the two decades which followed questions were raised on the imbalance pertaining to global news flow and later on, in other forms of media. During the 1970s, centre stage was given to the concerns about communication in ‘development’ of a nation. It would be crucial to note that this was a period of changing international political set-up and shifting of power. Many countries which were being decolonized and the prevailing ‘developing’ countries echoed similar demands regarding the bias existing in favour of the Western countries in terms of news, information and communication technology.

UNDERSTANDING THE NWICO DEBATE

“The domination endured by the poor of the world as a result of oppression by the powerful is a reality that degrades the whole of humankind as such. Hope for equality and justice is at the root of the struggle of every social group for the well-being of its members.”

(Lee, 1986: 82)

The above statement defines the concerns of the Third World countries which led to a calling for a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) during the 1970s. It was mainly initiated by the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) who later raised it the General Assembly of the United Nations. During 1970s the domination of global media and information industry by a handful of transnational giants raised serious concerns about the injustice and imbalance prevailing in the processing of world information. Simply put, ‘The legal debate over the NWICO centers on the differences between the U.S. position that a free and unfettered flow of information is an established international legal principle, and the NWICO proponents' belief that a government balanced flow of information is permitted by international law’. (Wilson, 1986:108). There existed disparities between developed and developing countries, regional disparities, one-way flow, vertical flow, market dominance, distortion of content, cultural alienation, barriers to democratization, lack of critical awareness and lack of cooperation between nations when it came to communication and information sector. These problems were recognised and pointed out later in the MacBride Report titled Many Voices, One World (1980) published by UNESCO, which identified all these problems and the MacBride commission came up with recommendations.

The NWICO debate had three stages. The first stage (1973-1976) demanded ‘the establishment of a free and balanced flow of information and rejected any attempt at cultural colonialism’ (Lee, 1986: 82). This was when the term NWICO had not emerged and it was called NIIO (New International Information Order). The first phase of NWICO was criticized to be very ideology-driven (Bascur in Lee, 1982: 83). The second stage (1976-1979) of the debate was the most important one. It was during this phase when the theoretical paradigms of the first stage were researched upon and a connection between ideology and ‘reality’ in the world order was established, much to the displeasure of the developed countries. It was actually the third phase which gave a concrete shape to this debate with UNESCO publishing the MacBride Report in 1980. There were sixteen international experts in the MacBride commission which were ‘largely representative of the world’s political, economics and geographic spectrum- had been asked to study no less than “the totality of communication problems in modern societies”’ (Mowlana and Roach, 1992). MacBride report placed the communication at the centre of development process for any developing country. It stated that “development strategies should incorporate communication policies as an integral part in the diagnosis of needs and in design and implementation of selected priorities. In this respect communication should be considered a major development source, a vehicle to ensure real political participation in decision-making, a central information base for defining policy options, and an instrument for creating awareness of national priorities”

(Many Voices, One World, MacBride, 1980: 258)

The basic demands of the NWICO were the four Ds- Democratization, Decolonization, Demonopolization and Development.

‘1. News flows are castigated as “one-way flows”, and measures to ensure a more equitable balance of news flows between countries are demanded (Democratization).

2. The ’one-way flow’ and misrepresentations are interpreted to reflect a lack of respect for the countries’ cultural identities, a matter of great importance to the non-aligned countries (Decolonization).

3. The monopoly status of transnationalcorporations in terms of communications technology is perceived as a threat to national independence (Demonopolization).

4. The vital role of mass media in the development process is underlined, and the non-aligned countries join together to demand a more just distribution of communication resources in the world (Development).’ (Carlsson 2003: 12)

YES, THIS DEBATE IS OBSOLETE

With an unforeseen impact and growth of globalisation, some argue, the NWICO debate doesn’t hold much relevance now. The balance of power is becoming more and more evenhanded i.e. impartial due to emerging ‘free flow’ markets and availability of a wider variety of resources.

Dr. Ulla Carlsson, the director of The Nordic Information Centre for Media and Communication Research (NORDICOM) wrote that when it came to the NWICO debate, there were ‘events and circumstances that led to the issue’s subsidence and subsequent removal from international agendas’ (Carlsson, 2003: 2). One of the reasons for the aforementioned is the breakdown of Soviet Union, the ‘traditional’ supporter of NWICO. Other reasons included the changing of the socio-economic landscape of the world. “..Political and academic debates over the idea of a NWICO have become rather quiescent in the past few years in light of the rapidly changing world political environment; international communication is likely to remain a highly visible global issue in the I99os. The scope and substance of discussions of this issue are expected to be shaped by two global trends now in the making: first, the widespread proliferation of new information/communication technologies, and second, the growing democratization of sociopolitical systems around the world in the aftermath of the breakup of the Soviet Union, a traditional long-time supporter of Third World calls for a NWICO.” (Aiysh, 1992: 488)

Another very important reason why this debate is sometimes rendered obsolete is because of the advent and conquest of internet over the world. The internet society or the ‘network society’ as conceived by Manuel Castells, a well-known communications scholar aptly describes the world we are living in. The internet has, according to proponents of the power of the World Wide Web; we are no longer bound by economic, social and political boundaries when it comes to communication and information being readily available to all. Internet is a medium which provides equal forums irrespective of the national backgrounds. In this age of internet, NWICO seems like it doesn’t fit, barring the areas where accessibility to internet is an issue but that is being ruled out more and more every day. Taking a very recent research example, Victor Pickard (2007), talked about NWICO, WSIS, internet governance, neo-liberalism, global communication, international communication and most recently, Internet policy. He describes NWICO as ‘a lost promise’ and that ‘NWICO gradually receded into relative obscurity following the pullout of its largest sponsors’ (Pickard, 2007: 122). The NWICO debate is often severely criticized by the West, especially in American newspapers and journals. Their argument advocating the ‘free-flow of information’ is a strong one. Their view is that the governments must not curb or regulate the information in their own countries, treating information as commodities and with neo-liberal institutions like WTO, information now is in the process to be traded freely. Whether or not this will lead to lead to adverse consequences is another matter but in a scenario like this where information is being treated as any other commodity in a ‘free market’, NWICO doesn’t hold much promise, in fact, in such cases it does not hold any relevance.

NO, THIS DEBATE IS NOT OBSOLETE

Despite the glorification and celebration of globalisation, we need to look at the criticism against neo-liberal policies around the world because the communication sector also has been engulfed in the neo-liberal policy debate. Increasing inequalities, profit-maximizing nature and imperialistic undertones are the burning issues which still haunt the communication policy making. One of the scholars whose work was on the WSIS writes that ‘the old controversy about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) seems to be experiencing a resurrection in our times, on the occasion of WSIS. The controversy then lasted about ten years, from 1975 to 1985 and escalated into the withdrawal of the USA from the UNESCO. They have only returned as of fall 2003’ (Kuhlen, 2003: 1)

One important concern of the NWICO was the standard of reporting of journalists worldwide in case of news. This is an argument which is valid even today. With the nations claiming to have greater press freedom, technology and skilled journalists, the bias seems to be more than ever before, which is ironical but not so hard to understand given the international and national political dynamics. There was a UNESCO sponsored study called ‘Foreign Images Study, a cross-national comparative news analysis sponsored by UNESCO and the IAMCR and organized by Jim Halloran. The study monitored the foreign news coverage of selected media (including news agencies) of 29 countries during one or two sample weeks in 1979. Like the findings of other studies, the results of this project justified several, though not all, of the critical arguments of the NWICO debate’ (Schulz, 2001: 5)

In order to understand today’s communication problems, it is very important to view them ‘in a historical perspective to understand the roots of the current debate and how they relate to changes that are affecting the world today.’ (Padovani, 2005:1). In a research article of 2006 published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was said that ‘civil society actors are calling for the use of multiple mechanisms for financing and a reduction in sole reliance on market mechanisms, echoing the recommendations of the MacBride Report.’ (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 14). This is an indicator that major elements of the NWICO debate are still very much valid.

‘Recent non-aligned meetings such as the eighth summit conference , held in Harare in 1986, and the Ninth meeting of the Intergovernmental Council for the Coordination of Information  (IGC), also held in Harare in June 1987, continue to provide unqualified support for NWICO’ ((Roach, 1990: 290) and hence never let it go out of steam. These summits and conferences extended the NWICO theme to the World Summit on Information Society in 2003 and the term NWICO is still referred to, in the reports and recommendations of these summits. “Despite the fact that they were writing in the late 1970s, the authors of the MacBride Report envisaged a network akin to the globally distributed internet that has emerged.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 20) This shows that the NWICO, though based in 1970s had envisaged a future with global governance and network. Pickard (2007) analyses that ‘by historicizing WSIS in its relation to NWICO, theorizing related debates in the context of neo-liberalism, and textually analyzing key policy documents, this analysis (that of NWICO and WSIS) brings into sharper focus the foundational assumptions of today’s global communications system’. It is very clear that to understand today’s problems pertaining to international communication and information flow, we have to go back to NWICO, and so it is certainly not obsolete.

CONCLUSION- THE FUTURE OF NWICO DEBATE

Having analysed the arguments of both the sides, the relevance of NWICO still cannot be ruled out as it is brought up in every communication policy debate.

“The political and economic context clearly has changed since the NWICO debate, but many of the political and economic issues are the same.” (Mansell and Nordenstreng, 2007: 26)

Although a direct comparison between NWICO and World Summit on Information Society (WSIS) is limited by the latter’s focus on the Internet, ‘significant technological developments clearly have exacerbated concerns first addressed at NWICO. Also noteworthy are issues no longer on the table during these discussions. These omissions reflect larger political economic structural changes that have filtered down through the policy discourse. For example, according to the WSIS vision, access is a wholly good thing without qualifying whether for individuals or corporations. Furthermore, little discussion centers on transborder data flow despite the fact that 90% of the Internet belongs to proprietary networks, not the “open” Internet. These networks require special security and firewalls and generate an enormous international flow of data. Yet it has become an unquestioned assumption that this flow should be left unregulated.’ (Pickard, 2007: 134). WSIS also raised parallel concerns with the NWICO even though they had a time difference of around 35 years between them. This strongly indicates that although the NWICO debate is not as strongly valid as it was when it was established, the international communication policy debates are still haunted by the ghost of NWICO, i.e., their basic elements are the same. Therefore, this debate certainly cannot be described as ‘obsolete’ or irrelevant yet. It remains to be seen whether it ever will be. To sum up the entire argument, ‘with the rapid developments in communications technologies and the resulting expansion of Western satellite and cable television in the developing world, key issues in the 1970s debates about the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) may again be relevant’ (Thussu, 2000: 323)

REFERENCES on request