Development Journalism in Third World

Cultural Globalization or Cultural Imperialism:

In Latin America, a school of thought defined the failure of Third World development in terms of dependency. Dependency theory viewed the world as a single system and found "imperial centers", notably the United States, which controlled the flow of goods, services, and capital between themselves and nations on the periphery of the system. Economic development at the periphery, which included most of the Third World, was used to strengthen the dominance of the center nations and to maintain the peripheral nation's position of dependence.

In this theory which sees Communication as Imperialism, twentieth century multinational of transnational corporations (MNCs or TNCs) performed the same functions as eighteen and nineteenth century imperial armies. It was the MNCs and TNCs that came, saw, and conquered through the manipulation of wants, needs, and desires and made the Third World believe that development could come only through the continuation of the existing global system.

Because dependency theory argued that domination was maintained through persuasion rather than armies, mass media or communication. TNCs-were especially important. The articulation of a cultural/information imperialism component of dependency theory was the work of a North American, Herbert Schiller. His explanation of cultural domination in the early 1970s spread from his home base at the University of California at San Diego to universities, development centers, and occasionally even government offices at around the world. His influence seemed to expand even as American economy and military power declined in the 1970s because he argued that the West, especially the United States, was all-powerful in information, the coin of the new information age, and that information was increasingly the business of the MNC's and Tic's.

Dependency theory and its corollaries also relieved people and Third World governments from responsibility for their actions. Why were "Dallas" and Disney cartoons as popular in the Third World as they were in the United States? Not because of the universal appeal of fantasy programming, but because the communication TNCs first created the demand for it, then sold the programs to satisfy the demand. Why did Third World countries rely so heavily on the Western news agencies? Not because the Western agency files were fast, reliable, and interesting, but because the TNCs that controlled the news prevented the development of alternative organizations to challenge their hegemony.

Cultural imperialism scenario focuses on the model of centre-periphery relationship and historical patterns of domination. The western cultural tastes and practices are becoming global ones. From clothes to music, food, films, television, architecture etc.The complex web of interconnections, crosscutting and overlay of communication paths and flows binds in all cultures. The key aspect of this tradition is the cultural mixing and hybridization rather than direct cultural imposition from the developed world. The emphasis on transculturation, hybridity and indigenization is important in understanding the hegemonic cultural influence.

Information Flows: Imbalanced across the world

In mid-1980, Europe broadcast 855 hours yearly to Africa and Africa broadcast 70 hours to Europe. The third world criticized the old communication and information order in terms of 1) the global economic imbalance between the North and the South, 2) the Western monopoly of global news services with their content focused mainly on developed countries-when developing countries were mentioned , coverage tended to be miss-informed and disparaging or centered on conflicts, ethnic wars, floods, famines 3) the dominance of news and entertainment programming which, because it reflected often-alien Western values was deemed imperialist.

 The real problem remained: how to reduce the wide and expanding gap between the information rich west and the information poor Third World where most still lived in poverty and ignorance.

Western media, particularly the "Big Four" news agencies from the United States, Britain, and France, had little time for development news and even less for protocol news. Of all the Western institutions that came under attack in the new world information order debate, it was the major Western news agencies that took the most criticism.

The " Western model" of development was merely a smokescreen for a new style of colonialism in which multinational communication organizations, operating behind the façade of freedom, served as advance strike forces for a coalition of political and economic interests intent on maintaining exploitive control of Third World resources. But the denunciations of this new "cultural imperialism" that permeated so much of the UNESCO debate in the 1970s came later. The problem with national development efforts around 1970, two decades after the Second World War and nearly a decade after mass communication promised so much, was that they had produced so little.

New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO):

The above mentioned issues particularly the issue of imbalanced information flow culminated in the call for a New World Information And Communication Order (NWICO).Because information was acknowledged to be a new medium of wealth, attention turned toward a declaration on a new world information order (NWIO). Regional meetings in Latin America, Africa, and Asia in the early 1970s came to identical conclusions about the new order, all phrased in language derived from the ideology of dependency. Because of cultural imperialism, the Third World deserved to receive vast quantities of information resources form the information-rich West. And those resources should be used to create and authentic Third World communication appropriate for "Third World reality", a recurring phrase that suggested somehow that reality was different in the developing countries.

In 1976 UNESCO convened the Mac Bride Commission to study global communication issues and come up with some solutions for ameliorating the North-South devide.Officially called the International Commission for the study of Communication Problems; it was chaired by Irish Ambassador, Director of Amnesty International and Nobel Peace laureate Sean Mac Bride.

The Mac Bride Commission's final report Many Voices, One World, was released in 1980.Amongst its 82 recommendations were those devoted to eliminating the media imbalances between countries; protecting the rights of journalists; reducing commercialilism in the media; use of the media to aid oppressed people; and the freedom of the press and freedom of information. The report has recommended: ...the outmost importance should be given to eliminating imbalances and disparities in communication and its structures and particularly in information flows. Developing countries need to reduce their dependence and claim a new more just and more equitable order in the field of communication.