Free flow of information: Myths and shibboleths

Abstract

It is generally believed that the problem of international flow of information assumed importance and started attracting the attention of the UN and its agencies after the end of World War II.1 But the story began at least two years earlier. Schiller suggests that the genesis of the doctrine 'no barriers should prevent the flow of information among nations' is roughly conterminous with 'US global hegemony'.2 According to Schiller the concurrent emergence of 'the policy of free flow of information and the imperial ascendancy of the United States' was not fortuitous, the first element being a prerequisite for the second. By 1943 the US could see itself emerging from the conflict 'physically unscathed and economically overpowering'.3 The horrors of Nazi occupation and the Fascistic deployment of the mass media made the times particularly propitious to advance the concept of freedom of expression as an antidote to 'the indoctrination of national thought in the direction of hatred and mistrust'. Free flow of information thus came to be associated with hopes for peace and rehabilitation. The British controlled the oceanic cables at the time. It was their 'administrative and business organisation of news and information which held the colonial system together', promoting its advantages and insulating it from external assault. The Americans, therefore, had to penetrate the British worldwide communications network, and free flow of information was the instrument which they selected to dislodge the British from their dominant position. Soon the lines were drawn between Associated Press (AP) and Reuters. In a language remarkably similar to current Third World rhetoric, Kent Cooper, the AP Executive Manager claimed that by precluding the American agency from