New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO)

The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) was younger sister to a 1974 UN-sponsored proposal for a New International Economic Order (NIEO). NIEO had advocated an equitable economic relationship between nations of what (at that time) were commonly described as the first and third worlds (denoting developed and developing economies respectively). NWICO was created to foster more equitable communications between developed and developing worlds. It represented a high-level, sympathetic response to criticisms that developing countries were culturally dependent on the West through their consumption of Western media technologies and products.

NWICO was articulated through various forums during the 1970s, culminating with the 1980 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) General Conference in Belgrade, which outlined the principles of NWICO:

• elimination of imbalance and inequalities in information flows of such products as news media, television programs, communications hardware;
• elimination of the negative effects of media monopolies on diversity of expression in media;
• removal of internal and external obstacles to a free flow and wider and better balanced dissemination of information and ideas;
• plurality of sources and channels of information;
• freedom of the press and information;
• freedom and responsibility of journalists and all professionals in the communication media;
• respect for each people's cultural identity and the right of each nation to inform the world public about its interests, its aspirations, and its social and cultural values;
• respect for the right of all peoples to participate in international exchanges of information on the basis of equality, justice, and mutual benefit; and
• respect for the right of the public, of ethnic and social groups, and of individuals to have access to information sources and to participate actively in the communication process.

NWICO was a component part of a dialogue between three distinct power blocs during a period of continuing Cold War between capitalist and communist nations. These blocs were the Soviets, the developed Western nations, and the developing world. The Soviets argued that information must [Page 689]serve the interests of the state since the state is representative of the people. This principle was alien to the Western bloc, which advocated free flow of information and freedom of media from state interference. The Soviet principle conveniently overlooked the gap between ordinary citizens and party elites, while Western free flow rhetoric obsessed about state interference while ignoring the dangers for free expression of commercialized, private media. The developing world was hostile to Western rhetoric, which they suspected was a cover for Western media penetration of their markets and for the uncontested power of Western media over how developing countries were represented to the rest of the world.

NWICO critically addressed three dimensions of international communication: the imbalance of communication flows between first and third worlds, their content (which prioritized the developed world and undermined the developing world), and control of those flows (principally by Western corporations, in their own interests or those of political elites). The debate revolved around five critical contradictions. These were between (a) ideas of freedom and of sovereignty, for example, between the freedom of publishers to disseminate their media products around the world and the sovereign right of states to control information flows into and out of national territories; (b) ideas about media responsibility for the nation and about their responsibility to the people or, alternatively, a three-way contest between ideas of information as social development, information as political control, and information as social criticism; (c) notions of the freedom of the press, referring mainly to the rights of owners, and freedom of information, referring to the rights of individuals and groups to express ideas through media, to exercise control over media, and to access media; (d) a communication ideology of professional service that positions audiences as clients or consumers against a communications ideology of social participation that engages audiences as equal partners with the media in debate about public issues for the public good; (e) principles of communications equity, requiring some form of state or other intervention to achieve equality of access to expression, representation, and reception, and principles of communications choice, which guarantee freedom for audiences to make market choices between technologies, content, and consumption behaviors.

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