New World Information and Communication Order - History

History

The fundamental issues of imbalances in global communication had been discussed for some time. The American media scholar Wilbur Schramm noted in 1964 that the flow of news among nations is thin, that much attention is given to developed countries and little to less-developed ones, that important events are ignored and reality is distorted. From a more radical perspective, Herbert Schiller observed in 1969 that developing countries had little meaningful input into decisions about radio frequency allocations for satellites at a key meeting in Geneva in 1963. Schiller pointed out that many satellites had military applications. Intelsat which was set up for international co-operation in satellite communication, was also dominated by the United States. In the 1970s these and other issues were taken up by the Non-Aligned Movement and debated within the United Nations and UNESCO.

NWICO grew out of the New International Economic Order of 1974. From 1976-1978, the New World Information and Communication Order was generally called the shorter New World Information Order or the New International Information Order. The start of this discussion is the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) as associated with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) starting from the early 1970s. Mass media concerns began with the meeting of non-aligned nations in Algiers, 1973; again in Tunis 1976, and later in 1976 at the New Delhi Ministerial Conference of Non-Aligned Nations. The 'new order' plan was textually formulated by Tunisia's Information Minister Mustapha Masmoudi. Masmoudi submitted working paper No. 31 to the MacBride Commission. These proposals of 1978 were titled the 'Mass Media Declaration.' The MacBride Commission at the time was a 16-member body created by UNESCO to study communication issues.

Among those involved in the movement were the Latin American Institute for the Study of Transnationals (ILET). One of its co-founders, Juan Somavia was a member of the MacBride Commission. Another important voice was Mustapha Masmoudi, the Information Minister for Tunisia. In a Canadian radio program in 1983, Tom McPhail describes how the issues were pressed within UNESCO in the mid-1970s when the USA withheld funding to punish the organization for excluding Israel from a regional group of UNESCO. Some OPEC countries and a few socialist countries made up the amount of money and were able to get senior positions within UNESCO. NWICO issues were then advanced at an important meeting in 1976 held in Costa Rica.

The only woman member of the Commission was Betty Zimmerman, representing Canada because of the illness of Marshall McLuhan, who died in 1980. The movement was kept alive through the 1980s by meetings of the MacBride Round Table on Communication, even though by then the leadership of UNESCO distanced itself from its ideas.

The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity of 2005 puts into effect some of the goals of NWICO, especially with regard to the unbalanced global flow of mass media. However, this convention was not supported by the USA, and it does not appear to be as robust as World Trade Organization agreements that support global trade in mass media and information.