United Nations, Role of

Joseph A. Mehan
Columbia University, USA

I. II. III. IV. V.

The 19461956 Period The 19571974 Period The 19751985 Period The 19862000 Period Conclusion

GLOSSARY
communications The hardware systems that carry information, such as AT&T, AOL, and Intelsat. information The material carried on communications systems and media, such as news and documentaries; technical, financial, and scientific data; and facts obtained by retrieval from information bases. media The outlets used to reach mass audiences, such as newspapers, radio, television, the Internet, and cable.

he United Nations was involved in international communications almost from its very beginning. The issue of communications and mass media had not been foreseen as a major UN responsibility at the founding conference of the United Nations, held in San Francisco in 1945. Global events, however, forced a different reality on the United Nations.

I. THE 19461956 PERIOD

The United States press was the initiator of the United Nations early involvement with communications/ media. Leaders of this effort were the American Society of Newspaper Editors and key journalists such as Kent Cooper, general manager of the Associated Press; Hugh Baillie, head of the United Press; Roy Howard, chairman of ScrippsHoward Newspapers; and Erwin D. Canham, editor of the Christian Science Monitor. The trade publication Editor & Publisher gave its strong support as well. The Americans sought to introduce a resolution at the rst UN General Assembly held early in 1946 in

London calling for an international conference on freedom of information. However, a prior agreement reached in San Francisco in 1945 stipulated that the rst General Assembly session would concentrate only on organizing the UN operating structure, not on matters of substance. The Americans had to wait for the second General Assembly session, held later in 1946 in New York, before they could introduce the resolution. It was approved in December 1946, and the meeting was set for the spring of 1948 in Geneva. The American journalists urgently wanted the conference to be held because they believed that the free Western press had played such an important role in defeating democracys enemies during World War II that this force should be harnessed to help guarantee a peaceful postwar world, especially a force copying the American media model. The conference took place from March 23 to April 21, 1948, with 238 delegates from the United Nations 51 member nations participating. Observers were also on hand from three countries that had not yet ofcially joined the United Nations, and eight international associations sent representatives. The four-week meeting afforded many opportunities, among them a forum for nations to present their opinions on what part communications and media should play during the postwar era. Nations could also address how media should function in harmony with the newly emerging principles and goals of the United Nations. The American journalists original purpose in proposing the meetingto use communications and media in pursuit of permanent peace, especially the U.S. model met with painfully opposite results. The Americans received an unexpected shock: delegates, even from friendly nations, showered criticisms on the American media. They charged that the American system privately owned, for-prot, independent of governmentwas mostly serving its own interests, not the publics. They added that it did little to promote peace.

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Critics, who came largely from nations that had government-supported or -operated media systems, said the American way was a form of cultural imperialism. By this, they meant that the historic U.S. policy supporting the free ow of information and universal access to news sources was actually a form of economic exploitation. The critics charged that such free ow also permitted penetration by American business enterprises, which would then create new sales markets or industrial bases of little benet to the home country. They contended that American goods (e.g., blue jeans, cola soft drinks, movies, popular music), introduced via American media, were ultimately transforming their cultures into copies of America. On a professional level, American journalists heard themselves described as ill prepared to cover stories in foreign countries, decient in others languages and cultural knowledge, and reporting only events of the most supercial and sensational nature. In communications/media debates within the United Nations for decades to come, American representatives were to hear these charges repeated. The criticisms inuenced the attitude that the United States brought to these debates, usually a defensive one. Despite this unpleasant surprise, American participants recovered and managed to join in the approval of an unexpectedly large number of resolutions. In all, the conference approved 48 resolutions relating to freedom of information. The United States voted yes on 45 resolutions, abstained on 2, and cast a negative vote on only 1. The resolutions approved included an international right of correction, a citizens right to receive and impart information, the gathering and imparting of news, and general principles for professional conduct on the part of journalists and publications. A resolution on the most sensitive of topics, freedom of information itself, passed with 31 votes in favor, 6 opposed, and 2 abstaining. The Soviet Union and its bloc cast the negative votes; the abstainers were the United States and Australia. The United States explanation for its abstention was that the resolution contained too many loopholes, allowing exceptions to the continuous practice of freedom of the press. Among exceptions cited were national emergencies, wartime conditions, and national security. An American representative commented, The tail of limitations was wagging the dog of freedom. The overall outcome of the conference, however, motivated Gunnar Garbo, a Norwegian communications expert, to conclude the following in a report (Working Paper 15 for the UN Educational, Scientic, and Cultural Organization [UNESCO]): The international community has never been closer to reaching

agreement on the fundamental conditions for the transmission of words and pictures within and between nations, than at the U.N. Conference on Freedom of Information. Momentum gained from the conference in placing international communications at the forefront of UN issues, however, was quickly lost by unrelated world events. The General Assembly, overwhelmed by the magnitude of the worlds immediate and massive postwar problems, was unable to take up the conferences results at that time. Action was postponed in 1948 until 1949 and then again the following year. The Economic and Social Council, which had jurisdiction over the conferences work, sent resolutions to subcommittees for review. A major unforeseen complication then exploded: war on the Korean peninsula. In June 1950, North Koreas Communist regime invaded South Korea, which was strongly backed by the West. The invasion challenged the United Nations charter, which dedicated the organization to maintaining the peace. With memories of the failure of the United Nations predecessor, the League of Nations, to act under similar circumstances during the 1930s, the United Nations took the lead in forming a military coalition, with major U.S. involvement, to defend against the North Korean invasion. By 1952, four years after the Geneva Conference ended, the results of the conference had been realized in only one piece of international law directly affecting the media: the Convention on the International Right of Correction. The convention was approved by the General Assembly on December 16, 1952. Although it was a source of satisfaction to those who supported it, the convention actually proved to be little used in fastmoving daily media operations. Garbo, who had commented earlier on the conferences unexpected success, was moved to comment now that the world forgot the UN conference of 1948 and the results it had achieved. Although the 1948 Geneva Conference did not accomplish the goals hoped for by its American instigators, and although it did not profoundly affect the overall course of international communications and media, it did have several important aspects that were part of the UN scene over the next half-century. The conference showed the recognition by the international community and the United Nations itself of communications/media as a major force in post-World War II affairs. It demonstrated the new organizations ability to organize and conduct a complex and important world meeting. And it foreshadowed problems and debates on this subject that would occur within the United Nations for decades to come.

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Heads of governments quickly recognized that no other entity except the United Nations existed with a global membership, staff, and facilities on the scale necessary to handle the challenge of international communications. National entities were acknowledged to be appropriate for handling communications and media operations within their own borders. But beyond that, there was no structure or authority in place that could deal with cross-border activities. The United Nations, therefore, obtained the fast-developing international communications and media issue almost by default. The period from 1946 to 1956 witnessed the UN system adapting to this reality. Fortunately for the new organization, the contemporary media scene was relatively quiet, essentially a continuation of the situation before World War II. Newspapers, magazines, books, and radio were still the prime outlets for reaching the public with information and entertainment. However, there was one new medium forcing its way into the existing outlets that would prove to be of unimagined importance: television. Aside from the forthcoming intrusion of television, the United Nations began to function actively in the realm of the established media. One of its agencies, UNESCO, had been assigned by its charter to handle international communications/media issues for the UN family. The charter directed UNESCO to collaborate in the work of advancing the mutual knowledge and identity of peoples through all the means of mass communications and to that end recommend such international agreements as may be necessary to promote the free ow of ideas by word and image. UNESCOs early programs, therefore, concentrated on research into the previous use and effectiveness of mass media and on possible future ways in which to employ media to produce improved benets for society. Studies also explored national policies on communications that could best help countries emerging into independence. UNESCO became a think tank on international communications for UN member nations. The International Telecommunications Union (ITU), which had begun life as the International Telegraph Union in 1865 but by now was a unit in the UN system, took over another function within the established media. The ITU assumed responsibility for assigning radio frequencies to stations crossing national boundaries, for developing workable standards and procedures that would permit transnational compatibility, and for negotiating agreements in areas of competitive service to avoid destructive clashes. With one exception, membership and representation in the ITU was limited to national entities, generally the Postal, Telegraph, and Telephone Ministries (PTTs) of

countries. That exception was the United States. Because of its unique private enterprise, prot-making system, the United States was represented at ITU conferences by delegations prominently including highlevel executives of major U.S. corporations, such as AT&T. U.S. government ofcials were the titular leaders of the delegation, but the strength lay with the corporate delegation members. The period from 1946 to 1956the rst decade of the United Nations existencewas a time that the organization spent, in the global communications area, establishing a workable status quo, pouring resources into reconstruction, preserving the overall status quo, and introducing innovation only when the pressure became too strong to hold it back (e.g., television). The history of the United Nations role in international communications and media was being forged methodically and systematically during the formative years of the early postwar communications revolution.

II. THE 19571974 PERIOD

On October 4, 1957, the world changed. The Soviet Union launched a tiny satellite called Sputnik into orbit around the earth in outer space. The earth had shattered its gravitational bonds and was now functioning in a different realm. The transformation was as sudden and denitive as when the rst atomic bomb exploded on July 16, 1945. The successful orbiting of the tiny earth satellite had subsequent consequences for every aspect of life on earth. One of them inevitably was the way in which people and nations communicated with each other. The United Nations reacted in 1958 with the establishment of a temporary Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) and then made the committee a permanent entity in 1959. The United States and the Soviet Union, the only member states with the capability of launching satellites into space at that time, became leading members of COPUOS. For the next 40 years, the committee was the key forum in determining how the international community would use the vast new potential of outer space. Each guideline, regulation, and standard that COPUOS set made history. COPUOS was in the purest sense a pioneer; it was operating where nothing else had ever been. COPUOS was pushing humanitys frontiers beyond terrestrial boundaries for the rst time since humans inhabited the earth. The framework required to produce an orderly system in space began to emerge in a steady succession of UN legal instruments. Many of the measures had

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originated within COPUOS. Some of the milestone agreements passed were the following:
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Resolution establishing a UN registry for launchings into space (1961) Resolution endorsing the basic principles by which the United Nations sponsors space launchings (1962) Declaration of Guiding Principles on the Use of Satellite Broadcasting for the Free Flow of Information (1962) Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space (1966) Resolution on Agreement on Rescue and Return of Astronauts and Space Objects (1967) Convention on International Liability for Damage Caused by Space Objects (1971) Resolution on International Relations in the Sphere of Information and Mass Communications (1978) Principles Governing the Use by States of Articial Earth Satellites for International Direct Television Broadcasting (1982) Resolution Relating to Remote Sensing of the Earth from Space (1986) Principles Relevant to the Use of Nuclear Power Sources in Outer Space (1992)

The remainder of the period from 1957 to 1974 saw the United Nations erect a structure in which international development of space communications could take place in a coherent organized manner.

III. THE 19751985 PERIOD

The whole international communications scene changed completely by the 1970s. New technologies were responsible for communications systems that by now regularly used outer space as a means of carrying content to any destination on the globe at incredible speeds. Broadcast satellitesdescendants of the original tiny Sputnik satelliteorbited the earth transmitting entertainment, information, business, and nancial data from signals sent to them by ground stations and then relayed to receiving stations thousands of miles away An e-mail sent from one computer to another computer takes 1/4 second to reach the satellite and 1/4 second to bounce to its destination. Television, meanwhile, moved from a small elite audience in the United States during the late 1940s to a virtual universal medium during the 1970s, with some nations able to participate better than others.

Content of broadcasts and transmissions was not merely routine trafc but rather invaluable data for business competition, strategic planning, and scientic advancements. Communications infrastructures and media outlets became major players on the world scene. In this new aggressive and competitive environment, conicts broke out within the UN arena. A major one took place in UNESCO, starting in the early 1970s. The conict arose after scores of poor underdeveloped nations completed a decade or more of experience as independent countries, following UN-sponsored decolonization during the 1950s and 1960s. Among the resources they discovered they needed were updated communications infrastructures and modern media facilities. The countries realized that the communications/media structures left behind by the departing colonial powers were either obsolete, inadequate, or nonexistent. The new nations, now identied as a group called the Third World countrieswith the United States and the industrial West being the First World and the Soviet Union and its bloc being the Second World made an appeal to rich countries for help on two grounds. One that they cited was internal: they said they needed adequate communications and media to knit together the various language and ethnic groups inside their borders into a cohesive national identity. A second they cited was external: they said they needed adequate communications facilities to be able to participate in the world economy, which was now being conducted through sophisticated new technologies that they did not possess. This dilemmathe so-called gap between the haves and the have nots remained at the root of many UN debates from the 1970s onward. (Although billions of people everywhere were affected by this ongoing story, it never received adequate media coverage and presentation to the publics awareness.) The initiative by the Third World nations in communications touched off four major controversies, all originally within UNESCO in Paris but eventually spilling over into UN headquarters in New York. The rst conict arose from the appeal itself for communications help from the poor developing nations. Their action was described by observers as a summons to erect a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO), an effort that began during the early 1970s. The second event of importance was the appointment in 1977 by UNESCO Director-General Amadou Mahtar MBow of an International Commission for the Study of Communications Problems. (MBow was from Senegal and was the rst black African to head a UN agency.) The commissions

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mandate was to make the rst survey ever of the status of the entire worlds communications and media and to report its ndings back to UNESCO by 1980. The third conict during the decade also arose from Third World origins. The developing nations for many years had wanted some kind of ofcial declaration that would publicly recognize the role the media play in world affairs and would put on record specic goals for the medias functioning. They initiated a campaign for a Declaration on Mass Media. The fourth signicant event was one that started in a noncontroversial way but soon became entangled in conicting ideological interpretations. This was the establishment during 19781980 by UNESCO member states of an entity called the International Program for the Development of Communications (IPDC). A closer examination of each of these controversies reveals the major strains and accomplishments running through the UN system in international communications during the period from 1975 to 1985. A. The New World Information and Communication Order Debate All subsequent conicts within UNESCO and the UN system over communications/media stem from the allegations made and emotions aroused by the NWICO debate. Just as the 1948 Geneva Conference put nations in a position where they were obliged by circumstances to reveal their positions on communications role in postwar society, so too the 1970s NWICO debate necessitated that nations take stands on the issue of meeting the poor nations basic communications needs. The result of the introduction of this controversial issue was to divide the world community into two basic camps: supporters and opponents of the NWICO. A paper submitted to UNESCO in July 1978 by Mustapha Masmoudi, information minister of Tunisia, was a milestone in summing up the Third Worlds argument against the existing communications/media order and an explanation of why a NWICO was needed. Masmoudis 24-page paper charged that a profound imbalance existed between the communications/media capabilities of the industrial nations and those of the newly independent nations; that it was a one-way ow of information, with entertainment, information, and technical data moving only from the rich countries to the poor; and that the handful of industrial Western countries had complete communications/media domination over two-thirds of the worlds population. Masmoudi concluded that a relationship of equality had to replace what he described as the current inequality, that a paramount role had emerged

for international communications in the industrial nations and needed to be established in the poor nations, and that aid of all kinds was necessarynew infrastructure, modern equipment, and creation of training facilities, such as for maintenance workers and schools of journalism, which did not exist at that time. In addition to his criticisms, Masmoudi made suggestions as to how to achieve the general goals that the Third World desired to have fullled. Among these were many ideas the West had already opposed: an international code of ethics to guide journalists, agreement by governments to protect journalists in the course of their work, and (perhaps the most controversial of all) a proposed tax on the importation of cultural goods. These goods overwhelmingly owed to the rich nations from the poor ones, so that Masmoudis call to build a fund to support Third World cultural and communications development through the tax would largely fall on the West. Led by the United States, the West gave a negative response to the NWICO appeal. Another factor in the NWICO controversy was the cold war antagonism between the United States and the Soviet Union taking place in the background. The Soviet Union had adopted (verbally at least) the cause of the NWICO, which indicated an almost automatic contrary response by the West. Leaders of Americas communications and media establishment perceived the NWICO drive as actually a Soviet-inspired plot to undermine the free and democratic Western press system and to substitute state control for it. These leaders envisioned the imposition by the NWICO of many practices odious in the West but acceptable in the Soviet Union and in the Third World countries that were run by dictators. These practices included censorship, elimination of freedom of the press, and dedication of the media to serve the state rather than the public. The American medias coverage of the NWICO debate, consistent with this viewpoint of the nature of the NWICO itself, was highly effective in creating a negative image among U.S. journalists, government ofcials, and the segment of the population that was exposed to its periodic coverage. Both supporters and opponents of the NWICO remained locked in their respective positions as the 1970s unfolded. The American press establishment created the World Press Freedom Committee in 1976, specically to lead the battle against the NWICO. The committee maintained a permanent observer at debates at UNESCO headquarters in Paris and sponsored two large international gatherings/meetings during the

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early 1980s to rally opposition to the NWICO and UNESCO. It continued to produce a steady stream of anti-NWICO press releases and statements. Invective replaced any chance for reasonable discourse. The conict continued from the 1970s into the 1980s. B. The MacBride Commissions Report Director-General MBow, fearing at the 1976 UNESCO General Conference that the organization was in danger of tearing itself apart over the NWICO issue, took a step he thought would ease the pressure creating a committee to study the problem. The 16member commission of communications and media experts was carefully chosen to give representation to all geographic and political interests. MBow named Sean MacBride, a former foreign minister of Ireland who had won both Nobel and Lenin peace prizes, to be its chairman. The group quickly became known as the MacBride Commission. Appointed in late 1977, the commission was given a mandate to review all the problems of communications in contemporary society seen against the background of technological problems and recent developments in international relations. After public hearings held in Sweden, Yugoslavia, India, and Mexico; 100 working papers especially commissioned to guide and inform the commission members; consultations with communications experts from all over the world; and two years of concentrated effort, the commission handed in its report to MBow at the end of 1979. The 275-page report became a major element in the controversial atmosphere in international communications during the late 1970s and early 1980s. Published under the title of Many Voices, One World, the report contained an exhaustive survey of the history, growth, current dimensions, and technological advances of communications on the world scene. The MacBride Commission Report also contained 82 Conclusions and Recommendations plus 12 more Issues Requiring Further Study. In essence, the MacBride Commission Report came down strongly in favor of much of what the Third World nations had been requesting. Of great signicance, it urged the wealthy nations to assist in building communications infrastructures that the Third World countries said they wanted and needed. The commission also favored public control or operation of the media as opposed to the private and commercial approach that formed the backbone of the American system. Its explanation for this stand was both practical and philosophical: that in the twothirds of the world that was underdeveloped, only

governments had the funding and resources to support a communications and media system; there was no viable private sector. The commission also believed that private for-prot systems would not provide the universality of services required given the money-losing nature of such undertakings. The general orientation of the MacBride Report did not appeal to the American-led Western communications companies. They believed that preservation of the status quo was essential for their well-being. The contents of some of the reports recommendations illustrate the source of the industrial Wests dissatisfaction: No. 38: Transnational corporations should supply the authorities of the countries in which they operate, on request and on a regular basis . . . , all information required for legislative or administrative purposes. No. 58: Effective legal measures should be designed to limit the process of concentration and monopolization. No. 12: Among Issues Requiring Further Study, the report suggested the establishment of an international duty on the use of the electromagnetic spectrum and geostationary orbit space for the benet of the developing countries. Leaders of the Western communications/media establishment vehemently denounced the report. U.S. journalists organizations objected strongly to it as seeming to favor practices they had long opposed licensing of journalists, protection of journalists by the state, codes of ethics, and the like. And American editorial writers and political columnists saw the report as a threat to press freedom and as an opening wedge to state control and censorship. The MacBride Commission Report remained a major ingredient in the turmoil within the UN system from the late 1970s to the 1980s. C. The Mass Media Declaration The Third World, with its great communications needs and numerical advantage in votes, initiated the drive for a declaration within UNESCO during the early 1970s. At times over the years, the Soviet Union, seeking to agitate the West, produced drafts that reected its Communist philosophycomplete government control and operation of media, censorship, media working for the benet of the state and not for the public at large, and so on. These drafts added to the fear and apprehension in the West. Inevitably and unavoidably, drafts of the Mass Media Declaration came to be tests of strength between the United States and the Soviet Union in the cold war struggle.

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By the time of the 1978 General Conference, however, a major political change had taken place in America. The Democratic party, headed by President Jimmy Carter, won control of the White House in the 1976 elections. The Democrats brought with them a tradition of greater approval of multilateral diplomacy and internationalism than did the Republican party. Even the cold war had moderated somewhat under the new American administration. MBow used the changed conditions to try to work out a compromise on the long-smoldering Mass Media Declaration controversy. The attempt at compromise was successful, and on November 22, 1978, the UNESCO member nations approved the proposed declaration by acclamation, with no objections voiced. Its ofcial title was as follows: Declaration on Fundamental Principles Concerning the Contribution of the Mass Media to Strengthening Peace and International Understanding, to the Promotion of Human Rights, and to Countering Racialism, Apartheid, and Incitement to War. The compromise outcome was achieved by a delicate balancing of content and responsibility. The text came out in favor of freedom of information, which pleased the West. But it also endorsed the concept of democratization of media, giving the workers and the public a greater say in their operation, a goal of the NWICO supporters. The declaration extolled the good that the media can do in supporting peace and the reduction of tensions and understanding among peoples, but it did not command, or even strongly suggest, that reporters and editors must do this.The passage of this international instrument, dedicated to the mass media alone after years of bitter and contentious arguments, indicated that UN involvement in international communications was still strong and that communications was still an issue of foremost importance for the world community. D. The International Program for the Development of Communications During the period from 1976 to 1980, when there were improved relations between the United States government and UNESCO, a fourth important step in international communications was taken. This was the establishment of the IPDC. The United States suggested the creation of the program at the 1978 UNESCO General Conference in Paris. The step would meet a long-standing desire on the part of the developing nations for a practical entity within the United Nations that would deal with concrete matters such as

actually putting new equipment into place and sending technical experts to train Third World media personnel and by creating schools of journalism. U.S. Ambassador John Reinhardt suggested at the 1978 General Conference that MBow convene a planning meeting within the next six months and added that my government is prepared to play a full part in these deliberations. An initial organizational meeting was hosted by the Carter administration in 1979 in Washington, D.C., and planning sessions were followed up at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 1980. By January 1981, the IPDC was ready to begin its operations. The rst distribution meeting of its board of governors was held in Acapulco, Mexico, in January 1982. By then, however, a Republican administration, headed by President Ronald Reagan, had taken over from the Carter administration in Washington. The Reagan administration would prove to be the most conservative in a half-century in American political history (since the Hoover administration of 19281932) and strongly favored bilateral foreign relations over multilateral ones. The consequence was that support from the United States that had been anticipated to give the IPDC meaningful strength and breadth was not forthcoming. The IPDC, however, was able to distribute some $30 million in seed money and start-up funds to about 700 communications and media projects in developing countries during the period from 1981 to 1999distributing approximately $2.5 million per year. The largest contributors were the Scandinavian countries and Japan. The necessary amount projected by communications scholars to bring Third World facilities up to modern levels was scores of billions of dollars annually. The IPDC plays a vital role, however, in at least getting projects started in Third World countries. The U.S. contribution to the IPDC amounted to a total of less than a half-million dollars. Its bilateral programs throughout the world, however, amounted to scores of millions of dollars. By the mid-1980s, the political debates within the UN system over international communications, largely within UNESCO, had had a major impact on the entire world scene. The United States, reacting negatively to the accumulated disfavor over the NWICO campaign, the MacBride Commission Report, the Mass Media Declaration, and criticisms that UNESCOs administration was inefcient, resigned its membership. At the stroke of the new year when 1984 became 1985, the United States walked out of UNESCO. On September 19, 2002, President Bush, in an address to the UN General Assembly, declared the United States will return to UNESCO. Great Britain,

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expressing similar reasons, followed the United States out at the stroke of the new year when 1985 became 1986. The British returned to UNESCO in 1998.

IV. THE 19862000 PERIOD

While the political dimension was going through tumultuous years at the United Nations, the operational side of international communications was moving along with great advances. Coping with these changes placed a strenuous burden on COPUOS, the ITU, UNESCO, and the General Assemblys Committee on Information (established in 1978). The new era created its own important questions needing answers. For instance, progress in broadcasting by satellite involved issues that were not only philosophical but also (ultimately) political. Technology had enabled broadcasters to use a geostationary orbit circling the globe at the equator to produce the same effect as motionless permanent sites. Satellites traveling at the same speed as the earth, 22,300 miles out in space, were in effect standing still. They were in the most desirable, efcient orbital slots. The practice within COPUOS had been to award the limited slots to those nations ready and able to use themrst come, rst served. However, the awakening of the Third World to its communications needs created a demand for the setting aside of geostationary orbital slots for the poorer nations until the time when they could use them. This produced a major debate. Another controversy centered around the use of direct broadcast satellites. These satellites bypassed nationally operated ground stations and sent their signals directly into the homes of private citizens via receiving dishes. This technological advance produced a controversy within COPUOS over prior consentwhether it was necessary to obtain permission from a country before intruding into its territory, another form of the long-debated national sovereignty principle. Without COPUOS, these bitterly contested issues would have had no forum in which to discuss and resolve them. Over the years of the 1980s, COPUOSand sometimes the ITU, the Committee on Information, and UNESCOresolved these or similar controversies. Sophisticated technology was an invaluable aide, providing in the case of equatorial orbit slots miniaturized but more powerful satellites, enabling more of them to be crowded into the limited space. The issue of prior consent was resolved by agreement that did not make mandatory the obtaining of ofcial permission but strongly urged informal consent.

The years from 1986 to 2000 were thus a time of tremendous growth and development of international communications, unlike any that the world had seen before. There existed at that time a wide variety of new activities: the global sharing of news and entertainment television programs seen simultaneously by hundreds of millions of viewers, corporate communications systems that huge conglomerates built privately and depended on for their global transactions, the satellite/computer/ber-optic/digital cable networks carrying nancial data to round-the-clock markets everywhere (along with entertainment), and so on. Also included in the United Nations involvement was the responsibility of facilitating the use of computerized reservations systems that permitted the transportation and tourism industries to function worldwide, setting up informatics and information retrieval bases used by scholars and millions of individual computer users, and supervising remote sensing operations, meteorological information, and many other areas. New forms of corporate organizations grew up almost overnight, integrally involving communications. Transnational conglomerates, produced by mergers and acquisitions without regard to national boundaries, grew to immense unprecedented sizes; these giant entities were quickly beyond national and even international control. The United Nations grappled with the problem of regulating them nevertheless. British communications authority Anthony Smith, writing in his 1992 book The Age of Behemoths, said that these behemoths had become a law unto themselves. The towering individuals running these behemoths included individuals such as Rupert Murdoch, Sylvio Berlusconi, Robert Maxwell, and Ted Turner as well as corporations such as Bertelsman in Germany, Disney in the United States, and SONY in Japan. Bill Gates, the multibillionaire head of Microsoft, led the new breed of young people of power located in the skyrocketing computer and computer service industries. The days when national PTTs were controllable by ITU ofcials were long gone. And so were the inuential roles of UNESCO, COPUOS, and the Committee on Information. Ben Bagdikian, an American editor and scholar, stated in the original 1983 edition of his book, The Media Monopoly, that some 50 giant corporations controlled the worlds communications scene. His fourth revised edition of the book in 1992 reduced that number to 20; the fth edition in 1997 had the number down to 10Time-Warner, Disney, Viacom, News Corporation, Sony, Telecommunications, Seagram, Westinghouse, Gannet, and General Electric.

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Technological developments of momentous importance propelled the furious advancement of international communications. The replacement of old-fashioned copper wiring with ber-optic cables was one of the major contributors. Copper could handle limited amounts of telephone calls at once, but ber-optic cables could carry loads hundreds of times greater. Analog encoding of computer signals was superseded by digital symbols that were innitely speedier and of much greater capacity. New-age cable systems carried the programming of 100 more channels to millions and millions of television viewers in their homes worldwide. Computers, which had been the small domain of scientists and large business corporations during the 1970s into the 1980s, spread with incredible speed into the general population during the late 1980s and 1990s. Networks of computer systems joined together to produce the phenomenon of the Internet and the widespread and fast-growing use of electronic mail (e-mail). E-mail could deliver messages to another computer anywhere on the globe in a matter of seconds. Interactivity became a common practice through the Internetthe purchasing of stocks, the purchasing of consumer items, and even the creation of romances. Personal computers enabled access to complete libraries without leaving home. High-denition television produced clearer pictures than could be imagined previously. Digital cameras, compact video cameras and video recorders, fax machines, and all the sophisticated services of computers made the international communications scene during the period from 1980 to 2000 almost unrecognizable from the age of newspaper predominance just 50 years earlier. The United Nations had spanned, inuenced, and directed to an important degree the evolution of world communications during the post-World War II period until the present. Within this remarkable era of new discoveries, new technology, and new uses, the UN systems services were indispensable. Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing into the 1990s, however, a major change was in store for the United Nations. At this point, many industrial and government leaders became impatient with the routinized, somewhat cumbersome UN machinery. In addition, some were disenchanted with the United Nations one nation, one vote system, which made equal at the ballot box the poorest undeveloped country with the richest, most advanced country. Furthermore, conglomerate tycoons did not like the transparency of UN operations, which were open to the media if not directly

open to the public. They preferred a much more controlled and protected environment. An important and revealing article about what happened next during the crucial period from 1980 to 2000 was written by an American scholar, Eileen Mahoney. Mahoney, writing in the 1993 volume Beyond National Sovereignty, disclosed insights that gave answers to questions that had been puzzling experts during most of that period. Mahoneys research and conclusions were a revelation and milestone in understanding the course of late 20th-century international communications. Mahoney wrote that the signicant action relating to international communications was not taking place any longer in the UN agencies where it had been located for 40 years. Instead, she declared, the United States had, without fanfare around 1990, shifted key negotiations regarding communications access agreements, sales of equipment, and areas of jurisdiction and responsibility to the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT). In fact, Mahoney wrote, agreements worked out in the GATT, such as those on low earth orbit use for handling mobile telephone services as well as services for maritime and aeronautical communications worth billions of dollarshad been negotiated in a closed trade arena without any public awareness (such as the United Nations had once made possible). From the standpoint of the United States and other leading communications powers, the move away from the UN system met the crucial needs of three forces driving their communications revolution: mergers, privatization, and deregulation. Within the atmosphere of the GATT, a commercial trade organization (where the United States had great weight and power, in contrast to the UN system of one nation, one vote), the arrangement was much more favorable to the handful of major industrial powers. The behemoths could now control most of the worlds communications and media capabilities without the awkwardness of the democratic, transparent UN machinery. Many academic critics viewed the picture disclosed by Mahoney with alarm. They were dismayed that international communications, which had always been held to be a natural resource open to all the peoples of the world, had now become a mere commodity. This meant that it could be tradedlike wheat, sorghum, coffee, or coalamong the minority handful of rich nations, while the majority poorer nations could only stand by as silent onlookers. In this context, public demonstrations and riots broke out at World Trade Organization (WTO) (the successor to the GATT) conferences in Seattle, Washington, and in Prague in

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19992000. The protestors charged that the WTO lacked accountability to anyone other than itself in dealing with transactions affecting billions of people, that it used undemocratic practices in its operations, and that it did not share with citizens at large the details of negotiations that profoundly affected their lives.

make it happenwas the political will. That ingredient, in historical perspective, still seemed to be lacking as the world of communications/media moved into the 21st century. See Also the Following Articles
COMMUNICATION CONGLOMERATES . DEVELOPING NATIONS AND THE MEDIA . ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, COMMUNICATION AND . ELECTRONIC COMMERCE . GLOBALIZATION OF MEDIA, CONCEPT AND NATURE OF . HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES . INTERNATIONAL COMMUNICATION REGIMES . NATIONALIST MOVEMENTS AND THE MEDIA . NEW MEDIA . NEW WORLD INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION ORDER . PRIVATIZATION, LIBERALIZATION, AND DEREGULATION . SATELLITE BROADCASTING

V. CONCLUSION
The idea of an NWICO for universal, improved communications/media capability at the service of all society seemed to fade further than ever from realization at the turn into the new millennium, the year 2000. In global oversight, UNESCO produced a 299-page World Communication Report in 1997. Its chief author, Algerian media scholar Lofti Maherzi, was not able to draw optimistic conclusions from the lengthy ndings in the report. Maherzis comment on communications changes during the period from 1970 to 2000 and the future of the world community was as follows:
Such huge transformations are without precedent in human history, and change power relationships on an international scale, eluding completely the ability of governments to understand and control them. They inspire confusion in most politicians and doubt in many observers. In truth, they have the ability both to create large-scale exclusion and to generate constraints which interfere with democratic processes, as well as to mobilize other resources for better serving civic life, collective solidarity, and a feeling for shared knowledge and understanding.

Bibliography
Bagdikian, B. H. (1997). The Media Monopoly (5th ed.). Beacon, Boston. Blanchard, M. (1986). Exporting the First Amendment: The Press Government Crusade of 194552. Longman, New York. Frederick, H. (1993). Global Communication and International Relations. Wadsworth, Belmont, CA. Hamelink, C. J. (1994). The Politics of World Communication. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Hamelink, C. J. (1997). Beyond Cultural Imperialism. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Herman, E. S., and McChesney, R. W. (1997). The Global Media: New Missionaries of Global Capitalism. Cassel, Washington, DC. MacBride Commission Report. (1980). Many Voices, One World. UNESCO, Paris. Maherzi, L. (1997). World Communications Report: The Media and the Challenge of the New Technologies. UNESCO, Paris. Mahoney, E. (1993). The utilitzation of international communications organizations. In Beyond National Sovereignty (Nordenstreng, K., and Schiller, H., eds.), pp. 314344. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. McChesney, R. (1999). Rich Media, Poor Democracy. University of Illinois Press. Mowlana, H. (1996). Global Communications in Transition. Sage, Thousand Oaks, CA. Nordenstreng, K. (1984). The Mass Media declaration of UNESCO. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. Nordenstreng, K., and Schiller, H. (eds.) (1993). Beyond National Sovereignty. Ablex, Norwood, NJ. Schiller, D. (1999). Digital Capitalism. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Schiller, H. (1971). Mass Communications and American Empire. Beacon Press, Boston. Smith, A. (1991). The Age of Behemoths: The Globalization of Mass Media Firms. 20th Century Fund, New York.

Maherzis comments on the huge transformations . . . without precedent in human history and their ability to generate constraints which interfere with democratic processes hearken back to another warning given a generation ago. Masmoudi, in his milestone 1978 paper supporting an NWICO, said that there was no doubt of the capability of industrialized Western powers, because of their great commercial success, to make the dream of communications capability for poorer nations a reality. But, Masmoudi warned, what needed to be presentwhat was necessary to