II. Digital Documentary and the Digital Revolution:
“ We
stand on the threshold of a telecommunications revolution- a revolution potentially
as profound and far-reaching as the agricultural and industrial revolutions.
The one significant difference between the present changes is that the
telecommunications revolution is happening so fast, we can actually be aware of
it… We have the ability to make the revolution anything we want it to be.”
II.1. The
New World Information Order: A Foreshadowing:
In
1980, UNESCO, the United Nations Scientific, Educational and Cultural
Organization, announced the need for something called The New World Information Order. The stated intent was to address
the undeniably superficial coverage of the developing world in the globally
dominant Western media, following the example set by the New World Economic Order created by the United Nations General
Assembly to reset the rules for international commerce.
According
to UNESCO, Western news media projected a very unfavorable image of the
developing world with its focus on events, rather than processes; however,
rather than find creative ways of producing new, alternative media on the grass
roots level in the developing world, the NWIO proposed to rectify this
imbalance from the top down - through Draconian government regulations which,
among other things, would make it necessary for all journalists to obtain
government-issued licenses to practice their profession.
The
response from the Western world was swift and harsh. After all, freedom of the
press has long been a sacred cow in the West, and government interference in
the communications media has been officially taboo since World War II. In reality, of course, manipulation and
disinformation campaigns are quietly tolerated, as long as they are very
discrete; the sinister Orwellian over tones of the very name New World Information Order made the
whole proposal an easy target, and condemnation was virtually universal in the
Western media.
This
condemnation was followed by a series of Western media attacks on UNESCO
itself, as well as very personal attacks on its Senegalese Director-General,
Amadou Mahtar Mbow, whose penchant for high-living and autocratic management
style had made him many enemies both inside and outside the United Nations
system. Mbow responded with a vigorous defense, stating that he was the victim
of a ‘veritable smear campaign”, and adding
that, as the first ( and , at that time, the only) African senior manager in
the UN system at the time, he was being treated “like an American black who has no rights.” [2]
In
1984, the United States left UNESCO, and was soon followed by the United
Kingdom and Singapore; in 1987, Mbow was replaced by Fernando Mayor Zaragoza of
Spain, and the New World Information
Order was thrown into the dustbin of historical obscurity. Unfortunately,
many of the very real problems caused by the Western global media monopoly the
proposal had sought to confront were also consigned to oblivion in the West, though
less so in the developing world . As some anonymous Korean once said when asked
about the difference between Korea and Japan, “ Oppressors have short memories, but the oppressed can never forget.”[3]
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