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The ‘emancipation of media’: Latin American advocacy for a New International Information Order in the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 July 2019

Vanessa Freije*
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Box 353650, Seattle WA, 98195-3650, USA
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Abstract

Throughout the 1970s, journalists and leaders in the Global South organized around the concept of a New International Information Order (NIIO), premised upon the self-determination of news access and production. Though largely forgotten today, the NIIO constituted a key platform of the ‘Third World’ solidarity movement. Latin America was a prominent site for NIIO activism, and this article examines the regional and local meetings that frequently brought together governing officials, reporters, and academics. Focusing on the shifting expectations of exiled Latin Americans living in Mexico City, the article explores the domestic political factors that eventually attenuated enthusiasm for the NIIO. By the late 1970s, Latin American advocates argued that repressive governments could not be trusted to safeguard socially responsible information initiatives, such as regional wire services. Moreover, they underscored that national democratization was necessary before global inequities could be resolved.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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Footnotes

Thank you to the many friends and colleagues who have read and improved this article, particularly Daniel Bessner, Dexter Fergie, Patrick Kelly, José Antonio Lucero, Christian Novetzke, and Corinna Zeltsman. Thank you also to the organizers of the Communicating International Organisations in the 19th and 20th Centuries Workshop, European University Institute, Florence, Italy, where I first received valuable feedback. Research for the article has been supported by the Dartmouth College Society of Fellows, the U.S.–Mexican Studies Center at the University of California San Diego, and the Fulbright-García Robles.

References

1 The term later evolved to be the ‘New World Information and Communication Order’ (NWICO), which is now the more commonly used of the two phrases. However, I employ the ‘New International Information Order’ to reflect the language utilized by advocates in the 1970s.

2 Notable exceptions include Cmiel, Kenneth, ‘Human rights, freedom of information, and the origins of Third-World solidarity’, in Bradley, Mark Philip and Petro, Patrice, eds., Truth claims: representation and human rights, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002, pp. 107–30Google Scholar; and Brendebach, Jonas, ‘The end of the new order: global policies on media and means of communication at UNESCO 1960s to 1980s’, PhD thesis, European University Institute, 2017 Google Scholar. Most work on the NIIO has been written by participants involved in the debates as they unfolded. See, for example, Righter, Rosemary, Whose news? Politics, the press and the Third World, London: Burnett Books, 1978 Google Scholar; and Gerbner, George, Mowlana, Hamid, and Nordenstreng, Kaarle, eds., The global media debate: its rise, fall, and renewal, Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1993 Google Scholar.

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106 See, for example, Alexandra Hall, ‘South America: a panorama of media democratization’, NACLA, 45, 3, Fall 2012, p. 53.

107 Ibid., p. 54. In 2009 and 2011, respectively, Argentina and Bolivia passed laws that banned media monopolies and reserved a certain share of broadcasting concessions for community news outlets and underrepresented groups, including indigenous peoples.