Abstract

In 1987, a technical memorandum issued by the United States Office of Technol ogy Assessment predicted that the news media eventually will gain access to remote imaging technology, and certain tradeoffs will be necessary because of the possible threats to national security and foreign policy. In 1989, an officer of France's SPOT Image Corp. told a U.S. Congressional subcommittee that its satellites were well adapted for commercial news gathering, because: "SPOT can take pictures of any location in the world regardless of political or physical limitations." The first test of this claim came during the opening days of the Persian Gulf crisis in August 1990 when SPOT officers in France and the United States denied requests by the news media for satellite images of the Kuwait-Iraq region because of the volatility of the crisis. Representatives of the Western news media have argued for the unrestricted use of space for news gathering. Journalists insist that to inform the public subsumes all other concerns and if news media access to satellite images are restricted, the media will press ahead on plans for their own MediaSat. These issues will require dialogue between leaders of the news media, satellite agencies and government representatives to identify policy conflicts and workable alternatives.

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