and Communication Order: Did Their Statements Miss the 'Hidden Agenda'?

For some years now, there has been a call for a new information order, a new international information order (NIIO), or a new world information and communication order (NWICO). Although the United Nations Educational and Scientific Organization (UNESCO) has served as a forum for NWICO demands, it has not been the only one. Several organizations, including church-sponsored organizations, now work on NWICO issues.' Many people have gotten to know about the NWICO through western media that warn of "UNESCO's protection racket" and "free press curbs"; few know about the translation of NWICO demands into programs of action by, among others, church groups. (...)  Zusammenfassung Anliegen dieses Beitrages ist es, die Bemuhungen kirchlicher Kreise um die Verwirklichung einer neuen weltweiten Informations- und Kommunikationsordnung, ursprunglich eine Forderung der UNESCO, zu wurdigen. Nachdem die Kirche zunachst in den 70er Jahren die Thematik nicht in den Blick nahm, erschwert durch eine verunglimpfende Zusammenfassung der Pastoralkonstitution "Communio et Progressio" (1971) durch Cees Harnelink (1975), wurde spatestens durch die Stellungnahme Johannes Pauls II. vor der UNESCO die Bedeutung einer neuen Weltinformationsordnung als kirchliches Anliegen hervorgehoben. Ahnlichkeiten in den Forderungen der NWICO und denen einiger Kirchen bestanden zum Teil in einer Kritik am privatwirtschaftlich organisierten Mediensystem und fuhrten zu Widerspruch auf amerikanischer Seite. Kirchliche Medienexperten, besonders aus der Dritten Welt, beklagten die mangelnde technische Ausrustung ihrer Lander fur eine effektive Anderung der Informationspolitik. Die inhaltlichen Forderungen blieben weitgehend unberucksichtigt. Fur ihren Ruckzug aus der UNESCO fuhrten die Amerikaner - im Zusammenhang mit der kirchenpolitischen Mediendiskussion - mangelnden Respekt gegenuber der Pressefreiheit an, wahrend andere westliche Lander diese Meinung nicht teilten. Weitere Indizien erharten den Verdacht, das die verdeckten Grunde fur den amerikanischen Ruckzug eher wirtschaftlicher Art waren: die USA hatten einen bilateralen Handel an Informationstechnologie in die Dritte Welt aufgebaut, der ein Verbleiben in der UNESCO uberflussig machte. Die Kirchen scheinen diese Hintergrunde nicht erkannt zu haben. Der Verfasser sieht nur dann eine Chance fur die Kirche, eine kompetente Medienpolitik zu betreiben, wenn sie in Zukunft auch versteckte politische und wirtschaftliche Motive ihrer Partner berucksichtigt.


I. The Churches Learn (Jl the Debate
Church people took notice of what was then called the NIIO toward the end of the 1970s. A search for earlier interest reveals virtually nothing. Even Cees Hamelink, who has been at the vanguard of church thinking on the new order, made almost no mention of UNESCOsponsored work in his 1975 thesis. 3 When, in 1978, Harnelink acutally did publish a paper on the NIIO, Leopoldo Niilus of the World Council of Churches (WCC) introduced it by expressing his surprise that no major church-oriented communication organization had spoken out "loudly and clearly in defense of a New International Communication Order". 4 In 1980 Neville Jayaweera ofthe World Association for Christian Communication (WACC) chided the churches for their Iack of interest in the NIIO, noting that "amidst all (the) exchanges one Iooks in vain forasingledefinitive pronouncement from the churches". 5 The next year J ohn Bluck, thcn director of the WCC's communication department, observed that "despite their track record on other international issues of devclopment and peace, the churches have been late entrants into this forum". 6 A "will to declare" would seem to have taken hold of some church people; thus possessed they were not content to Iet actions speak louder than words, through programs promotingajust information tlow. They wanted statements. No matter that the churches already had documents on file that could have been dusted off and applied to the NIIO  Progressio brought into the discussion 7 must have looked a little odd to the proponents of bold new statements. But the proponents probably dismissed the available statements too easily. Four older documents -including Communio et Progressio -had been singled out for criticism in Hamelink's thesis for what he considered their inadequate conceptual framework. Harnelink of course had his own idea as to what an adequate conceptual framework would Iook like, one that others might not accept. In order to pass judgment on the four Statements, however, Harnelink provided handy-and selective-summaries of them. Histhesis has certainly had its influence;g it further appears that many people replaced a reading of primary sources like Communio et Progressio with a reading of Hamelink's summaries. Communio et Progressio took years to write and expressed some matters of principle that the international discussion had not dated. Hamelink's few paragraphs, unfortunately, came to substitute for the document itself; along with his summary came the opinion that the document was totally inept.
Besides the tendency to see earlier efforts as inadequate, there seems to have been little crosspollination when the time came to speak to the debate. John Paulll has now talked about the NWICO on several occasions-one ofthem having been his visit to UNESCO headquarters in 1980.9 There are at least half an dozen other statements that testify to the churches' acquaintance with the NWI CO: the study paper of the Asian Catholic Bishops (1982); the statement of the Lutheran World Federation (LWF, 1982); the staff paper on the NWICO endorsed by the W ACC's central committee ( 1982); the Sao Paulo document, produced by the Catholic media agency UNDA/ Latin America in cooperation with regional church Ieaders and other organizations ( 1982); the sixteen propositions ofthe Swiss churches on the evolution of the media ( 1983); and the WCC's statement on "communicating credibly", received by the Vancouver general assembly (1983). 1 0 Taking the WCC's product as an example, although it comes toward the end oftheburst of statements it gives no hint of other work on the issue.

The Churches Speak to the Debate
Different, yet similar steps were taken toward what some hoped would become brave declarations on the NWICO. When John Paulll visited UNESCO in 1980 he followed papal practice, begun with John XXIII's 1963 encyclical Pac·em in Terris, by stressing resemblances between church teaching and efforts by the international movement. For his part Jayaweera found that the churches and the NIIO advocates shared values like concern for truth and concern for the dignity of the human person. Bluck noted "the overlapping agendas (sie) of the new order and the ecumenical movement" and listed WCC programs on solidarity with the poor, sharing of resources, ensuring people's participation, and standing up for the integrity of culture. But we should observe, here, the shift of emphasis that already took place in these early efforts. Jayaweera and Bluck, especially, startedout by calling for a contribution to the international debate, and then indicated connections between church priorities and NWICO principles. They set up the project -and to a certain extent the resulting Statements-in such a way that church priorities were discussed at some length; then the NWICO discussion was summoned as an illustration of general interestinsuch matters.
Those who initiated the movement toward statements did weil to note the possible Iiaisons between the churches' priorities and the NWICO demands for democratic communication. Their Dirtation with the NWICO was at the risk of bad press in the USA.1 1 And within the churches themselves the call for a new orderwas often interpreted as undue criticism of the old order. When, for example, the WCC's general assembly discussed that statement in plenary session, Walter Arnold of the German Evangelical Church thought the document too negative and led a movement to have it revised. Hans-Wolfgang Hessler, the director of the same church's press service, later expressed these reservations about the ratified document. 12 Despite the criticism, however, the connections between church priorities and NWICO idealsareeasy enough to make. Since the 1920s notions of communication have actually developed in parallel to notions of Iove; thus, Jacques Ellul sees Martin Buber's dialogic, 1-Thou relationship as the best account of Christian Iove available. 1 3 The expressions of ideal communication -which occasionally peak through during NWICO discussions -should Iook at least vaguely familiar to groups that try to promote Christian Iove. In some ways, then, recognizing the links between church teaching/Christian valuesj ecumenical agenda and the NWICO vision of communication may have been courageous. In other ways it was short of being remarkable.
For reasons that will become apparent below, we now Iook briefly at what the resulting statements have had to say about technology. They talk about it all right, but they often begin with their own problems -like the North American electronic church and the Western European deregularization of the media. They question technology and see too much of the message trimmed away in order to fit it into the media. The Asian bishops, for example, call for critical though on technology and more discriminating use. So do the L WF report, the Swiss churches' propositions and the WCC's statement. Once "on board" the discussion those church people criticize media technology in general: the L WF sees the need to reform technology and to remove it from current patterns of dominance; the Swiss churches warn of persistent imbalances in technology; and the WCC asks questions about uneven distribution. When technology and the NWICO are mentioned in (more or less) the same breath, the imbalance of technology appears as a grievance shared by NWICO advocates. For the Asian bishops the NWICO process is political in the noblest sense; it attempts to arrive at a more just world without recourse to violence. FortheL WF the NWICO addressed the problern of dominance but has, unfortunately, broken down into niggling and nagging. The Swiss churches offer a proposition on the NWICO, where it is seen as a movement to end unilateral dependencies. The WCC, meanwhile, Iists technology among a number of dilemmas and says those dilemmas have led the South to make NWICO demands that have been ignored. 14 Thesestatements begin with their own problems vis ä vis technology and find fellow travelers in the NWICO movement. In an age where technology has become sacred, even this modest apostasy deserves some recognition. But despite the often avowed intention to say so mething to the international debate, it can be asked whether they really do that. Only the W ACC paper and the Sao Paulo document actually question the NWICO movement itself. The Sao Paulo group, in fact, unmasks a "hidden agenda". Alone, it refers to "false interpretations of the NWICO"; it goes on to say that "technological modernization benefits the TNCs, impairs the national economies and undermines political sovereignty"; it identifies an "unjust situation, aggravated by the aid strategies and the pseudo-transfer of technology". The Sao Paulo group, then, went from the noble principles where other groups stayed, to the grubby world of political/ commercial policy where things are harder. lt is there, precisely, that more creative skepticism on the part of churches could have made some difference to the NWICO discussion.

The NWICO Hidden Agenda
Today it is the fashion to Iook for conspiracies or, at least, "hidden agenda". The abundance of conspiracy theories or hidden agenda suspicions might seem like rampant paranoia. But the conspiracy and hidden agenda are occasionally real.
For some time people have been especially careful about material on aid and developmentinvestigating it for conspiracy and hidden agenda. 15 Since part ofthe NWICO corpusfalls in that literary genre, it was only natural for it to be scrutinized. While people might criticize their analyses, Herbert Schillerand Cees Harnelink deserve some credit for having investigated the NWICO materiaJ.16 Schillerand Harnelinksee the NWICO as devolving into a sort of Marshall Plan for communication technology. The NWICO demands, to a certain extent, have been animated by good intentions. But their concrete realization has often found rich countries preparing trade 1 aid packages of transnational corporation (TN C) hardware and software for the poor ones. Like the original Marshai Plan, this set-up could help donors more than recipients -by creating markets and, therefore, employment at home. Such tradel aid schemes actually reinforce the TNC's domination of the present communication order; rather than create a new order we give the old order a face Iift. Or so the Schiller 1 Harnelink thesis goes. Like all good stories, this one has a twist in its plot: despite the anti-NWICO position of the United States' press and politicans, American-based TNCs stand to gain a Iot from the NWICO initiatives.
Recent developments might cause some to question that plot line. In a new book on the churches and communications, Bluck suggests that the NWICO debate so upset the USA that in December 1983 it announced its withdrawal from UNESC0. 17 He implies that NWICO advocates nosed around the sacrosanct principle of press freedom too much, and that the USA responded by leaving the chief NWICO forum. He relates the two developments as cause and effect. This could have been what Leonard Sussman, director of the media-monitoring Freedom House had in mind when he told Inter Press Service reporters that the nebulous "ongoing discussion at UNESCO" on protectingjournalists had moved the American Congress to consider cutting off its contributions to the organization.1s But when the breakwas made it happened differently from what Bluck and Sussman suggest.
The events of 1983 do seem to run in accordance with the Bluckl Sussman interpretation and against the Schiller 1 Harnelink analyses. A fact sheet circulated by the US embassy in Paris, in February 1984, certainly listed UNESCO discussions on press freedom as one reason for the withdrawal. But the closer we Iook at those events, the more press freedom seems a pretext rather than a central reason for the withdrawal. For one thing, if the press issue had been central we would have seen more consensus on the move. A (leaked) confidential review of the prob lern, sent from Assistant Secretary of State George Newell to Secretary of State George Shultz on 16 December 1983, shows there was no consensus at all. And some people who read that leaked document conclude that the impetus came not from congressional Ieaders-as Sussman would have it-but from a small group of Reagan appointees in the State Department itseJf.19 Also revealing in this connection is the attitude of other western countries. Last November Ambassador Ernesto Thalmann, head of the Swiss delegation to UNESCO's twenty-second general conference, said that his country did not wish to see the organization deal with the free press issue. But in January Switzerland's national commission for UNESCO expressed regret at the US decision to withdraw, and cited among the disastrous consequences a reduced international cooperation in the field of communication. lt should also be observed that other countries with a strong free press tradition -like Britain, Canada, Australia, the Federal Republic of Germany, and the Nordic countries-have distanced themselves from the US move and have tried to persuade the USA to remain in UNESCO. If other countries had perceived the threat to press freedom as central, they might have followed the USA out of the organization. Instead they have decided to stay.
If the free press served as a pretext, for what was it a pretext? As everyone has had ample opportunity to observe, US politicians want to see the UN on what they consider the right track; they frequently play to crowd prejudices by attacking the UN system. Some highlights in that have been the USA's 1977-1980 absence from the International Labor Organization, and the 1983 exchange in New York when one US official offered to wave good-bye to the UN as it inexplicably sailed eastward into the sunset. And shortly after the announcement of the UNESCO pull-out rumors circulated in Geneva to the effect that the USA also planned to downgrade and reduce its participation in the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). Taken in this context, dissociation from UNESCO would deliver a messageto the UN system as a whole. UNESCO-because of the bad press it had gottenon the NWICO debate-presented an ideal opportunity for an attack that would be especially popular in the run-up to a presidential election. Obviously, Bluck takes no note of this broader context. Should one accept the Schiller 1 Harnelink analyses, however, this message would have been delivered at a price: the loss of an opportunity to create markets for US technology. Since their books predate the US announcement to withdraw, Schillerand Harnelink have no chance to fit these pieces into the puzzle. But, in point offact, they do fit: Newell's December 1983 memorandum to Shultz acknowledges that US standards and technological expertise frequently influenced UNESCO programs and created markets for US products and scientific equipment. But perhaps official participation had ceased to be as profitable as it once had been. People active in the UNESCO-sponsored International Program for Communication Development (IPCD) have linked the with drawal to the USA's inabilityto control that program. According to IPCD chairman Gunnar Garbo, speaking at the recent non-aligned movement media conference at New Delhi, the agency may have gone too far for some tastes.2° Garbo admitted that the USA and other western nations were willing enough to coordinate bilateral arrangements on communication technology, which we called trade/ aid schemes above. But they wanted to do this "without reducing the decisive power of the providers of resources". Quite likely those bilateral agreements could continue more efficiently on the outside and possibly represent what the USA called "other means of cooperation in education, science, culture and communication" in its announcement of withdrawal. To summarize: although UNESCO had offered a means of selling US technology in the past, those possibilities were decreasing and no Ionger enough to forestall US departure. The Americans could just as weil proceed via bilateral agreements where they would have their way, and not via UNESCOprograms that had become difficult to control.
This has taken us far afield. But the verification of the Schiller-Harnelinkthesis surely calls recent church remarks on the NWICO into question. Did the proponents of statements on the NWICO-Iike Bluck, for instance-like the sound of the new order but miss the hidden agenda? lt Iooks as though this was generally the case.

Where from Here?
lt is not yet time to write the post martern on the churches and the NWICO. Work on NWICO issues continues, and there are still possibilities for contribution. But what, if anything, can the churches bring to the international discussion in its present state?
At the outset this paper mentioned the importance of action. In their various programs churches experience first hand the difference between NWICO ideals and political/ commercial reality. Their attempts to make idealsreal areeloquent in their own right, and would !end credibility to what they had to say later. Referring to the NWICO Robert White ofthe Centre for the Study of Communication and Culture warns of a "strong tendency for this issue tobe a debate of words, a discussion among elites". 21 He goes on to say that "we must see the NWICO in concrete terms and encourage self-criticism ... so that what we are doing doesn't defeat the words we speak about democratic communication". The churches first should apply their teachingjvaluesjpriorities-or their perception of the NWICO-to their own communication activities. And there are various indications that they are trying to do just that.
A second contribution might come from the two thousand years worth of Statements the churches have made on communication-notjust from the sudden illuminations produced by those with a "will to declare". Statements have their place, but must be understood in an ecclesiological context where not only speaking but also hearing is essentiaJ.22 Earlier this paper mentioned the rather facile handling of Communio et Progressio in the rush toward bold new statements. That document obviously could never have pleased everyone: media practitioners and communication savants were bound to register discontent, if only because their professions demanded that of them. But given the laborious process through which Communio et Progressio came into being, we might say that it has at least earned a reading. With respect to the newer documents, they need a reading as weil. Recently Paul Soukup lamented the fact that very little exchange goes on between those presently at work on the churches and communication;2 3 there seems to have been even less exchange between people drafting statements.
Further formal contributions, on the other hand, might be more wary of hidden agenda in the various international machinations. The complexity of international problems has led many to question whether the churches have any competency in those areas at all. One could also ask whether the desire to find "signs of the times" or a fellowship among nations Ieads the churches to suspend their critical faculties when the time comes to address global issues. The way in which TNCs have profited from the NWJCO discussion should serve as ample illustration of malaise in the so-called international community. And the pressure exerted by the USA on the UN system-first UNESCO and now UNCT AD-could do with some (church) criticism.
But the final point here has to do with technology. As would be expected, church work on the NWICO started with communication and not technology. Starting with communication, however, puts us in the mesmeric hold of the media. lt gives us no help when we confront the real issue: TNC technology. Instead of taking a color television set as a means of communication, we have to learn to take it as the product of a firm interested in technological rationalization and not in communication at all. lnstead of applauding that television as another neuron in the universal nervaus system, we should examine it for its appropriateness -technologically -to the recipient country as weil as its sustainability. Among other groups, the ecumenical movement has a long history of work on the technology issue; it had explored questions like political and commercial control of technology long before the WCC took an interest in the NWIC0.2 4 But when Bluck setout in 1981 to Iist overlapping agenda he made r.o mention of WCC work on technology. This sort of oversight seems prevalent.