MEDIOCRE coverage of President Bola Tinubu’s recent diplomatic mission to Brazil has again triggered good reasons the president should solidify his recent remarkable executive appointments at the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA). I have personally interpreted the unexpected disruption to mean that the president means business, after all on restructuring of the national broadcasters to serve Nigeria’s overriding public interest.
There is a little doubt that the President who has been widely criticised for tapping too many mediocrities into even his cabinet, is beginning to turn over a new leaf by his surprise talent hunt of Rotimi Pedro and Stella Din Jacob for the NTA’s Boardroom and Newsroom operations.
And so, Nigeria’s leader should be encouraged to complete the good job he has begun at the NTA so that he would allow the iconic Madiba, (Nelson Mandela) to look down from wherever he is and feel satisfied that Nigeria is indeed living up to the dream of leading Africa and indeed the black race at this time that a brand new world order is fast emerging.
In 2007, Mandela had in an interview with a Nigerian senior public officer, Dr Hakeem Baba Ahmed charged Nigeria: ‘The world will not respect Africa until Nigeria earns that respect. The black people of the world need Nigeria to be great as a source of pride and confidence…’ This quote has remained on a marble as a buzzword and no leader has ever felt challenged by the powerful gauntlet the iconic South African leader had thrown in the year President Olusegun Obasanjo handed over to Umaru Musa Yar’Ardua.
Here is the thing, Nigeria cannot lead Africa and the black race without good leadership at home that will recognise the power of a robust, world class public broadcaster that will fulfill the promise of UNESCO’s 1977 McBride’s Commission’s report, Many Voices, One World.
The McBride Commission, established by UNESCO in 1977, aimed to address global communication disparities and promote equitable access to information. The Commission aimed to tackle media concentration and information imbalance between developed and developing nations.
The origin of concerns: In 1970s and early 1980s, there was a debate over media representations, communication and information flow. In 1964, an American media scholar, Wilbur Schramm wrote that the flow of news among nations is little and much attention is given to developed countries and little to developing ones as well as important events are ignored and reality is distorted. In other words, the scholar claimed that the world media served the western interest and people could only see the world from western perspectives through media.
From another radical perspective, in 1969, Herbert Schiller observed that developing countries had hardly any meaningful input into decisions about radio frequency allocations for satellites. Schiller pointed out that many satellites had military applications, though those satellites weren’t set for military activities. As example, Intelsat, which was set up for international co-operation in satellite communication, was also dominated by the United States.
In 1970s, developing countries started raising questions about this imbalance flow of communication and culture. First, they went to United Nation Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization (UNESCO) then International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for resolving these problems.
Responding to this question, in 1977 United Nation Educational, Scientific and Culture Organization (UNSCO) introduced ‘The International Commission for the study of Communication Problems’ popularly known as the ‘McBride commission’ for studying the communication problems in modern societies, particularly relating to mass media and news, consider the emergence of new technologies, and to suggest a kind of communication order to diminish imbalance flow of information as well as to further peace and human development.
Noble laureate Irish politician Sean MacBride (1904-1988) was the chairman of the committee. In 1980 the MacBride Commission produced a report titled ‘Many Voices, One World’ also known as ‘MacBride Report’, which identified the problems regarding world communication and suggested solution of those problems. The most important work of MacBride commission was proposing the idea of ‘New World Information Communication Order (NWICO).’ The United States was hostile to NWICO.
Allegations About Communication Order:
Developing countries criticised the imbalance flow of information and communication. They made some allegations about world media system and demanded to resolve those problems. The main allegations made by the developing countries then were:
*Broadcast mass media was dominated by few developed countries, America, England and France mainly. There was almost a one-sided flow of information from developed countries to poorer countries. Very little news flowed the other way, and often news about developing countries was distorted or rejected by media houses. Thus these countries were not represented in the media broadcasts.
These poor populations saw mostly American channels and were influenced by them. Their culture was not reflected in the media thus there were culture shocks, disparities and trends in developing countries started aping the ‘west’.
Most of the radio frequency almost 90% of the band was taken by the US. It was mainly used for military purposes. The developed countries were quickly sending satellites in space, and taking up the few positions in space where it was cheap and easy to keep satellites. In a few years when developing countries would need to send satellites these places would be filled up making it even more difficult for them to bridge the gap.
Many of these satellites sent up had military, commercial and analytic abilities, which allowed the developed nation to figure out natural resources of poorer countries.
The MacBride Report was written in a much different global context than we witness today. In 1980, the Cold War had a pronounced influence on geopolitical alliances, and the choice to be “non-aligned” was in reference to this great polarity. The MacBride Report, and the call for a “new world information and communication order” created a huge political reaction aa scholars have noted.
In 1980s the world was divided into three Blocs. One was America leading Capitalist bloc another was former Soviet Union leading Socialist bloc and the rest one was Neutral bloc popularly known as non-aligned countries, members of non-aligned movement.
MacBride commission report was published in 1980 with 82 suggestions named ‘Many Voices, One World’, 72 suggestions were passed unanimously but other 10 were opposed by several countries. Socialist bloc didn’t agree to deregulate the media on the other hand capitalist bloc had objections regarding the suggestions that proposed to reduce corporate influence over media.
Asa result of the MacBride report, UNESCO launched the “International Programme for the Development of Communication” (IPDC). According to website of IPDC, ‘it exists to strengthen the means of mass communication in developing countries, by increasing technical and human resources for the media, by developing community media and by modernising news agencies and broadcasting organizations’ (International Programme for the Development of Communication.
In 1983 Following the MacBride report especially for proposing ‘New World Information Communication Order’ (NWICO), U.S. government decided to withdraw its membership from UNESCO. In a letter dated December 28, 1983 from Reagan administration Secretary of State George Schultz to UNESCO director-general Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, the reasons for the U.S. withdrawal were given. Equal emphasis was given to issues of mismanagement and “the injection of political goals beyond the scope of the cooperative enterprise”.
What was clear to all involved was that the decision was made on behalf of big mass media and telecommunications industry interests in the United States. Stating that the U.S. government, “along with the American people generally” believe in UNESCO’s constitution, Schultz stated that “We plan to use the resources we presently devote to UNESCO to support such other means of cooperation”. A key effect of withdrawal was to undermine the legitimacy of efforts to articulate multilateral principles of global media governance that were not guided entirely by market logic.
After quitting from UNSCEO, Mark Fowler, Chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said our government believes “culture in general, including the media, should not give any special consideration or treatment by governments in comparison with other areas of commerce”.
The logic behind this view is that governments should play no role in the shaping or nurturing of culture, and that it is the marketplace alone that should govern culture. If only market governs the culture and communication industry then what’ll happen to the culture of the third world countries as they don’t control the flow of information. Market will govern all it supports Darwin’s view ‘survival for the fittest’. But we can’t simply let any culture destroy by competing with others as every culture has enormous impact. And most importantly in this competition every culture doesn’t have equal opportunity to compete.
As Wilbur Schramm pointed out that the flow of news among nations is little and much attention is given to developed countries and little to developing ones as well as important events are ignored and reality is distorted. Through news and different programmes, media is selling western culture and ideology to third world countries and creating cultural gap between west and third world.
There is therefore no question, the McBride’s Report hasn’t changed anything since the report too became controversial except that some countries including Qatar took the bull by the horns and established powerful media organs to counter negative narratives about them. The influential ‘Al Jazeera’ Qatar established in 1996 came in handy in 2022 when it played host to the World Cup, which would have been declared a failure or boycotted, but for ‘Al Jazeera’ artfully deployed to report the world, according to the Middle East perspective.
Doubtless, it is high time, Nigeria swallowed pride and vanity of provincial media presence and absorbed Dr. Akinwumi Adesina’s significant counsel to African leaders and media entrepreneurs in May 2024 on this score.
‘We need to counter negative stereotypes and uplift Africa’s image in the world’.
Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, out-going president of the African Development Bank Group, had in May 2024 made a fervent call to end negative stereotyping of the continent in the international media and to champion a more positive portrayal of Africa and its development.
Speaking at the All Africa Media Leaders’ Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, on May 9, 2024, Dr. Adesina, called for a more balanced coverage of Africa in the international media. He was addressing over 300 media owners and practitioners from across the continent. He noted that “despite the significant progress within our continent, the prevailing media narrative often focuses on negative stereotypes, overlooking the substantial advancements and resilience Africa demonstrates”.
Giving examples of several positive developments on the continent, he noted that 11 out of the 20 fastest growing economies in the world in 2023 were African. A more positive coverage he said, would be significant in addressing the misconceptions about the continent, which continue to discourage investment and hamper its progress…
The serial will continue until something happens…
- Oloja is former editor of The Guardian newspaper and his column, Inside Stuff, runs on the back page of the newspaper on Sundays. The column appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Mondays.