Maintaining the Vigil

News executives from 25 nations join to fight curbs on reporting

Freedom of the press is a goal enshrined in the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but for the citizens of most of the U.N.'s 158 member countries that pledge can seem hollow: governments may censor publications and broadcast outlets if they do not own or operate them directly; officials sometimes imprison journalists for what they print; bureaucrats frequently have the power to decide what information the international wire services can distribute within their nations' borders. Spurred by the Soviet Union, some Third World members and executives of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization have been trying for more than a decade to achieve the next step toward a regulated press: controlling what is reported about their countries to the rest of the world.

These plans for restraining press freedom are offered in the name of "protecting" journalists and improving coverage but would include government-enforced codes of conduct for news organizations, curbs on access to news sources and the licensing of reporters. Such ideas are expected to be raised again by Soviet and many Third World delegates next month at a UNESCO conference in Paris. The Western press is fighting back: last week representatives of 60 print and broadcast organizations from 25 countries, meeting at the Alpine resort of Talloires, France, agreed to condemn all "attempts to regulate news content and formulate rules for the press."

The journalists were pursuing strategies that grew out of a similar conference at Talloires two years ago. With the help of Western governments--led by the U.S., which threatened to withdraw its 25% share of UNESCO's budget--the 1981 conferees succeeded in getting the U.N. agency to defer major antipress proposals. Diplomats predicted that the second Talloires session would reinforce the journalists' counterattack: it drew 83 participants, vs. 63 in 1981, and included news organizations from the U.S., most of Western Europe, Japan and countries as diverse as Finland, India and Peru. Said Jean Gerard, U.S. Ambassador to the agency: "This makes UNESCO a little less anxious to take a confrontational tone." Still, Gerard believes that the agency has not sufficiently recognized the value of unregulated coverage: the U.S. will propose next month that UNESCO agree that a free press stimulates economic growth and that the press is the best "watchdog" of itself.

UNESCO Director General Amadou Mahtar M'Bow of Senegal and his agency, who were criticized at the 1981 conference, boycotted this session, which turned out to be far less acrimonious than the first. Although a vocal minority urged further censure of UNESCO or outright withdrawal by member governments, most of the assembled journalists concurred with the agency's complaints that Third World countries get little positive coverage in the Western press. In their report, the Talloires conferees said, "Efforts should be continued to improve the handling of news from the developing countries by the media of the developed countries." The report also, in effect, invited UNESCO and Third World governments to join the West in constructive development efforts: "Let us allow the communications revolution to proceed, without harassment, in recognition that, where the press is free, people are free."

The participants offered the Third World more than rhetoric: they published a directory of 231 exchange and training programs in 70 countries for journalists from developing nations. Two new U.S.-based opportunities were announced at Talloires: the American Society of Newspaper Editors will sponsor twelve Third World reporters and editors each year for six-week stints, and the new Alfred Friendly Foundation, financed by Friendly, former managing editor of the Washington Post, will underwrite ten six-month fellowships.

Still, the prevailing theme of the meeting was the continuing need for vigilance in the struggle against restrictions on reporting the news. Talloires participants, led by Keynote Speaker Walter Cronkite, cited numerous new threats to press freedom, country by country, and placed much of the ideological blame on UNESCO. Said Cronkite: "Over the years, these UNESCO deliberations have amounted to a prolonged assault on the idea of a free press and a genuinely free flow of information around the world." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.