NWICO - New World Information and Communication Order

ABSTRACT 

The situation of imbalance in the international flow of news was given a voice through the platform of the new world information and communication debate but till today – three decades and a year after the publication of the MacBride report, the effect of it being opposed by the developed world has still not worn out. This paper seeks to trace the history and content of  the NWICO debate evaluate the success or failure of the debate and proffer solutions to some of the problems the debate has encountered.

INTRODUCTION

The average African of today when asked to choose between two products of equal relevance from a western nation and one from an African nation - probably even his own African country,  would more often than not pick the western product without a second thought. Whom do we blame for this? Do we even need to push blames to anyone? What can we do to prevent a situation like this? Is there even a situation, and if there is what is the solution?

According to the NWICO cause the African man is not to blame because it is the western world that has distilled him with a sort of inferiority complex that he is somewhat proud of and for MacBride et al (1980) “the ills of … of modern communication are rooted in the past” i.e. they have been implanted almost since the beginning of time, and he cites the declaration of the rights of man proclaimed in France in 1789 as being “essentially freedom for ideas, for those who create and propagate it … permitting top-down communication from political and intellectual leaders to the public”

The example by MacBride above is a more ancient form of imbalance and was within the same country, but it was the imbalanced flow of information from the developed world down to the developing world that gave rise to cries of foul play of the developed world against the third world. The developing world engaged the western world in several debates notably in 1969, 1974, 1975 and ultimately in 1980 when the report “many voices one world” was published. Ever since then it has been one Struggle or the other as the third world tried to prove that the so called free flow of information was actually a one way flow from the north down to the south without any corresponding feedback.