Great Media and Communication Debates: WSIS and the MacBride Report

Abstract

In 1980 UNESCO published Many Voices, One World, the report of its International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, also known as the MacBride Report, after the commission’s chair, Sean MacBride, the Irish statesman and peace and human rights activist.1 In 2004, in an acknowledgment of its importance in current debates about the evolution of information societies, Rowman & Littleaeld republished it. Many Voices, One World was a groundbreaking report and became a milestone in the discussions that had been ongoing since the 1970s. We examine its insights in the light of debates leading up and subsequent to the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva in 2003 and Tunis in 2005. We argue that many of the issues and dilemmas highlighted by the MacBride Report’s authors exist today. The record of WSIS participants in tackling these issues is unfortunately little better than that of those who sought to inouence debates about media and communication some twenty-ave years ago. Although there has been much talk in the intervening years, there are few signs that international debates and diplomatic mechanisms are fostering the equitable development of the media and communication environment that is so crucial for the emergence of information societies in the twenty-arst century. There is a profusion of smaller and larger initiatives aimed at reducing various social and economic inequalities including those associated with the media and communication industries. In our view, however, it is unlikely that the new institutional forums that have emerged since the WSIS will be equal to addressing sources of inequality in areas such as governance, anancing, media diversity, freedom of speech, and human rights. Nevertheless, and partly as a result of the WSIS dialogue, participants in civil society are becoming better informed about the issues involved. Whereas the WSIS, as the MacBride Commission before it, failed to galvanize private and public sector participants into action to promote the massive investment that is needed, the WSIS process did heighten the proale of core international media and communication issues in many key international forums. It also conarmed the need to address these issues through multilateral platforms that encompass all stakeholders, including civil society actors.