Waking up already awake

By Prof Dr Sohail Ansari  "When you hear Allah's messages disbelieved in and mocked at, sit not with them until they enter into some other discourse." (4:140;).

Waking up already awake

·        Waking up some one already awake is convincing the person who ‘believes to refuse’ as he sees his practice profitable and waking up someone asleep is convincing the person who ‘refuses to believe’ as he sees his beliefs logical.

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New World Information and Communication Order

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO or NWIO) aka the MacBride Commission is a term that was coined in a debate over media representations of the developing world in UNESCO in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The term was widely used by the MacBride Commission, a UNESCO panel chaired by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Sean MacBride, which was charged with creation of a set of recommendations to make global media representation more equitable. The MacBride Commission produced a report titled "Many Voices, One World", which outlined the main philosophical points of the New World Information Communication Order.

History[edit]

The fundamental issues of imbalances in global communication had been discussed for some time. The American media scholar Wilbur Schramm noted in 1964 that the flow of news among nations is thin, that much attention is given to developed countries and little to less-developed ones, that important events are ignored and reality is distorted.^[1] From a more radical perspective, Herbert Schiller observed in 1969 that developing countries had little meaningful input into decisions about radio frequency allocations for satellites at a key meeting in Geneva in 1963.^[2] Schiller pointed out that many satellites had military applications. Intelsat which was set up for international co-operation in satellite communication, was also dominated by the United States. In the 1970s these and other issues were taken up by the Non-Aligned Movement and debated within the United Nations and UNESCO.

NWICO grew out of the New International Economic Order of 1974. From 1976-1978, the New World Information and Communication Order was generally called the shorter New World Information Order or the New International Information Order.

The start of this discussion is the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) as associated with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) starting from the early 1970s.

Mass media concerns began with the meeting of non-aligned nations in Algiers, 1973; again in Tunis 1976, and later in 1976 at the New Delhi Ministerial Conference of Non-Aligned Nations.

The 'new order' plan was textually formulated by Tunisia's Information Minister Mustapha Masmoudi. Masmoudi submitted working paper No. 31 to the MacBride Commission. These proposals of 1978 were titled the 'Mass Media Declaration.' The MacBride Commission at the time was a 16-member body created by UNESCO to study communication issues.^{[3][unreliable source?]}

Among those involved in the movement were the Latin American Institute for the Study of Transnationals (ILET). One of its co-founders, Juan Somavia was a member of the MacBride Commission. Another important voice was Mustapha Masmoudi, the Information Minister for Tunisia. In a Canadian radio program in 1983, Tom McPhail describes how the issues were pressed within UNESCO in the mid-1970s when the United States withheld funding to punish the organization for excluding Israel from a regional group of UNESCO. Some OPEC countries and a few socialist countries made up the amount of money and were able to get senior positions within UNESCO. NWICO issues were then advanced at an important meeting in 1976 held in Costa Rica.

The only woman member of the Commission was Betty Zimmerman, representing Canada because of the illness of Marshall McLuhan, who died in 1980. The movement was kept alive through the 1980s by meetings of the MacBride Round Table on Communication, even though by then the leadership of UNESCO distanced itself from its ideas.

The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity of 2005 puts into effect some of the goals of NWICO, especially with regard to the unbalanced global flow of mass media. However, this convention was not supported by the United States, and it does not appear to be as robust as World Trade Organization agreements that support global trade in mass media and information.

Issues

A wide range of issues were raised as part of NWICO discussions. Some of these involved long-standing issues of media coverage of the developing world and unbalanced flows of media influence. But other issues involved new technologies with important military and commercial uses. The developing world was likely to be marginalized by satellite and computer technologies. The issues included:

·         News reporting on the developing world that reflects the priorities of news agencies in London, Paris and New York. Reporting of natural disasters and military coups rather than the fundamental realities. At the time four major news agencies controlled over 80% of global news flow.

·         An unbalanced flow of mass media from the developed world (especially the United States) to the underdeveloped countries. Everyone watches American movies and television shows.

·         Advertising agencies in the developed world have indirect but significant effects on mass media in the developing countries. Some observers also judged the messages of these ads to be inappropriate for the Third World.

·         An unfair division of the radio spectrum. A small number of developed countries controlled almost 90% of the radio spectrum. Much of this was for military use.

·         There were similar concerns about the allocation of the geostationary orbit (parking spots in space) for satellites. At the time only a small number of developed countries had satellites and it was not possible for developing countries to be allocated a space that they might need ten years later. This might mean eventually getting a space that was more difficult and more expensive to operate.

·         Satellite broadcasting of television signals into Third World countries without prior permission was widely perceived as a threat to national sovereignty. The UN voted in the early 1970s against such broadcasts.

·         Use of satellites to collect information on crops and natural resources in the Third World at a time when most developing countries lacked the capacity to analyze this data.

·         At the time most mainframe computers were located in the United States and there were concerns about the location of databases (such as airline reservations) and the difficulty of developing countries catching up with the US lead in computers.

·         The protection of journalists from violence was raised as an issue for discussion. For example, journalists were targeted by various military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s. As part of NWICO debates there were suggestions for study on how to protect journalists and even to discipline journalists who broke "generally recognized ethical standards". However, the MacBride Commission specifically came out against the idea of licensing journalists.^[4]

Response of the United States

The United States was hostile to NWICO. According to some analysts, the United States saw these issues simply as barriers to the free flow of communication and to the interests of American media corporations. It disagreed with the Macbride report at points where it questioned the role of the private sector in communications. It viewed the NWICO as dangerous to freedom of the press by ultimately putting an organization run by governments at the head of controlling global media, potentially allowing for censorship on a large scale. From another perspective, the MacBride Commission recommendations requiring the licensing of journalists amounted to prior censorship and ran directly counter to basic US law on the freedom of expression.

There were also accusations of corruption at the highest level of UNESCO leadership in Paris. The US eventually withdrew its membership in UNESCO (as did the United Kingdom and Singapore) at the end of 1984. The matter was complicated by debates within UNESCO about Israel's archaeological work in the city of Jerusalem, and about the Apartheid regime in South Africa.^{[citation needed]} The United States rejoined in 2003.^[5]

Global news flow

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Global news flow (also referred to as international news flow) is a field of study that deals with the news coverage of events in foreign countries. It describes and explains the flow of news from one country to another.^[1]

Studies on global news flow typically attempt to understand why certain countries are more newsworthy than others..^[2][3] Along the years it has been found that the economic power of countries plays a particularly crucial role in their news prominence^[4] as well as the presence of international news agencies.^[5] Thus, the US has been found to be very prominent in news mentions around the world (18%), followed by China, Western European and Middle Eastern countries (about 3-5% each).^[1]

The unequal representation of the world and the under-representation of developing countries have been already of a great concern at least since the 1950s, since they influence the way people perceive the world and the image of countries.^[6] This problem was later addressed in the MacBride report, and his set of recommendations for a New World Information and Communication Order. The unequal representation of the world has been also linked to the World System Theory, and the unequal economic structure of the world.^[7]

Recent empirical studies^[4][8] show that among online news websites and news aggregators the unequal representation of the world has been perpetuated and even further intensified. Economically powerful countries, as well as their opponent countries (mainly in the Middle East and Asia) get the most news coverage around the world.

Media imperialism is a theory based upon an over-concentration of mass media from larger nations as a significant variable in negatively affecting smaller nations, in which the national identity of smaller nations is lessened or lost due to media homogeneity inherent in mass media from the larger countries.^[1]

History and background[edit]

The Media Imperialism debate started in the early 1970s when developing countries began to criticise the control developed countries held over the media. The site for this conflict was UNESCO where the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) movement developed. Supported by the MacBride report, "Many Voices, One World", countries such as India, Indonesia, and Egypt argued that the large media companies should have limited access to developing countries. This argument was one of the reasons for the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore leaving UNESCO.

In 1977, Oliver Boyd-Barrett's "Media Formation Model" framed media imperialism as the relationship between different national media systems, particularly through power imbalances, and the relationship they have to historical political systems. It emphasized the industrial arrangements of media in wealthier nations and the imposition of those arrangements as “models” for foreign markets, with the most powerful producers becoming normative in their financing, structure and in the dissemination (and to some extent, content) of their products.^[2]Boyd asserted a typical arrangement in which news agencies, adopted the structures, roles and “task behaviors” of their parent companies who are also providing financial support.

Later during the 1980s and 1990s, as multinational media conglomerates grow larger and more powerful many believe that it will become increasingly difficult for small, local media outlets to survive. A new type of imperialism will thus occur, making many nations subsidiary to the media products of some of the most powerful countries or companies. Significant writers and thinkers in this area include Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky, Edward S. Herman, Armand Mattelart and Robert W. McChesney. However, critics have responded that in most developing countries the most popular television and radio programs are commonly locally produced. Critics such as Anthony Giddens highlight the place of regional producers of media (such as Brazil in Latin America); other critics such as James Curran suggest that State government subsidies have ensured strong local production. In areas such as audience studies, it has been shown that global programs like Dallas do not have a global audience who understand the program the same way (Tamar Liebes and Elihu Katz, The Export of Meaning: Cross-Cultural Readings of 'Dallas'. 2nd ed. Polity Press, 2004).

The United States' corporate media coverage of events has been seen to limit the freedom of the press. Integrity can be lost among media giants. This combined with the control and flow of information reduces the fairness and accuracy of news stories. American news networks like CNN also often have large international staffs, and produce specialized regional programming for many nations.

Media Imperialism is not always an international occurrence, however. When a single company or corporation controls all the media in a country, this too is a form of Media Imperialism. Nations such as Italy and Canada are often accused of possessing an Imperial media structure, based on the fact that much of their media is controlled by one corporation or owner.

In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi operates Italy's top TV stations with the Mediaset empire, and the public broadcaster RAI has been subject to political influence. Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders has warned of formal political influence in stifling the media. In April 2013 comedian Beppe Grillo accelerated the debate within Italy about the independence of media from political interests, releasing poll results showing that out of 95,000 responses 99 percent wanted a public broadcast channel free from political meddling, and 52 percent wanted more investigative journalism about domestic issues. He wrote in a blog post, 'a part of the Italian population is living in a gigantic Truman show, and responsibility for this is entirely due to Italian journalists, with the usual few exceptions...RAI has to be reorganized and transformed into a public service following the model of the BBC without any connection to the parties...' ^[3]

A media source which ignores and/or censors important issues and events severely damages freedom of information. Many modern tabloid, twenty-four-hour news channels and other mainstream media sources have increasingly been criticized for not conforming to general standards of journalistic integrity.

Academic imperialism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Academic imperialism is a form of imperialism where there is an unequal relation between academics, where one group dominates and the other is dominated or ignored. Early theories of academic imperialism date to the 1960s.^[1]

Definitions[edit]

Academic imperialism has been defined either in the context of certain disciplines or subdisciplines oppressing others,^[2] or (more often) as part of the political imperialism, focused on inequality between academia in the First World (the West) and Third World.^{[1][2][3][4][5]}

Within disciplines[edit]

In the intradisciplinary context, an example of imperialistic behavior was the dismissive attitude of the 1920s-1930s adherents of behavioral psychology in the United States towards non-behavioral psychologists.^[2]

Internationally[edit]

In the international context, academic imperialism began in the colonial period when the colonial powers designed and implemented a system of academia in their colonial territories.^[3][4] C. K. Raju claims academic imperialism emerged thanks to adoption of racist thoughts among native colonial elites.^[6] Academic imperialism is blamed for "tutelage, conformity, secondary role of dominated intellectuals and scholars, rationalization of the civilizing mission, and the inferior talent of scholars from the home country specializing in studies of the colony."^[3] In the modern postcolonial era, academic imperialism has transformed itself into a more indirect form of control, based on Western monopoly on the flow of information in the world of academia.^[7] Syed Farid Alatas calls this "academic neo-colonialism".^[7]

Relation to academic dependency[edit]

International academic imperialism generates academic dependency, or the dependency of non-Western scholars on Western academia.^[8] In non-Western countries, science is still dependent on institutions and ideas of Western science, which are often transplanted from Western countries.^[8]

Syed Farid Alatas lists the following six aspects of academic dependency:^[9]

·         Dependence on ideas;

·         Dependence on the media of ideas;

·         Dependence on the technology of education;

·         Dependence on aid for research as well as teaching;

·         Dependence on investment in education;

·         Dependence of Third World social scientists on demand in the West for their skills.

Specific examples of academic dependency include the fact that most major journals are based in the Western countries and carry works by scholars located at Western universities; and that scholars in the Western countries study the entire world, whereas scholars in the non-Western countries focus on their own societies.^[10] Another example is the dominance of English language in the world of international academia.^[4]

Manufacturing Consent

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1988), by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky, proposes that the mass communication media of the U.S. "are effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function, by reliance on market forces, internalized assumptions, and self-censorship, and without overt coercion", by means of the propaganda model of communication.^[1] The title derives from the phrase "the manufacture of consent," employed in the book Public Opinion (1922), by Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).^[2]

Chomsky credits the origin of the book to the impetus of Alex Carey, the Australian social psychologist, to whom he and co-author E. S. Herman dedicated the book.^[3] Four years after publication, Manufacturing Consent: The political Economy of the Mass Media was adapted to the cinema as Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), a documentary presentation of the propaganda-model of communication, the politics of the mass-communications business, and a biography of Chomsky.

Propaganda model of communication[edit]

Main article: Propaganda model

Five filters of editorial bias[edit]

The propaganda model for the manufacture of public consent describes five editorially distorting filters, which are applied to the reporting of news in mass communications media:

1.  Size, Ownership, and Profit Orientation: The dominant mass-media outlets are large companies operated for profit, and therefore they must cater to the financial interests of the owners, who are usually corporations and controlling investors. The size of a media company is a consequence of the investment capital required for the mass-communications technology required to reach a mass audience of viewers, listeners, and readers.

2.  The Advertising License to Do Business: Since the majority of the revenue of major media outlets derives from advertising (not from sales or subscriptions), advertisers have acquired a "de facto licensing authority".^[4] Media outlets are not commercially viable without the support of advertisers. News media must therefore cater to the political prejudices and economic desires of their advertisers. This has weakened the working class press, for example, and also helps explain the attrition in the number of newspapers.

3.  Sourcing Mass Media News: Herman and Chomsky argue that “the large bureaucracies of the powerful subsidize the mass media, and gain special access [to the news], by their contribution to reducing the media’s costs of acquiring [...] and producing, news. The large entities that provide this subsidy become 'routine' news sources and have privileged access to the gates. Non-routine sources must struggle for access, and may be ignored by the arbitrary decision of the gatekeepers.”^[5]

4.  Flak and the Enforcers: "Flak" refers to negative responses to a media statement or program (e.g. letters, complaints, lawsuits, or legislative actions). Flak can be expensive to the media, either due to loss of advertising revenue, or due to the costs of legal defense or defense of the media outlet's public image. Flak can be organized by powerful, private influence groups (e.g. think tanks). The prospect of eliciting flak can be a deterrent to the reporting of certain kinds of facts or opinions.^[5]

5.  Anti-Communism: This was included as a filter in the original 1988 edition of the book, but Chomsky argues that since the end of the Cold War (1945–91) anticommunism was replaced by the "War on Terror" as the major social control mechanism.^[6]

Government and news media[edit]

Editorial distortion is aggravated by the news media’s dependence upon private and governmental news sources. If a given newspaper, television station, magazine, etc., incurs disfavor from the sources, it is subtly excluded from access to information. Consequently, it loses readers or viewers, and ultimately, advertisers. To minimize such financial danger, news media businesses editorially distort their reporting to favor government and corporate policies in order to stay in business^{[citation needed]}.

Further developments[edit]

·         In 1993, the documentary film Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992), directed by Mark Achbar and Peter Wintonick, partly based upon the book, presents the propaganda model and its arguments, and a biography of Chomsky.

·         In 2006, the Turkish government prosecuted Fatih Tas, owner of the Aram editorial house, two editors and the translator of the revised (2001) edition of Manufacturing Consent for "stirring hatred among the public" (per Article 216 of the Turkish Penal Code) and for "denigrating the national identity" of Turkey (per Article 301), because that edition’s introduction addresses the Turkish news media’s reportage of governmental suppression of the Kurdish populace in the 1990s; they were acquitted.^[7][8]

·         In 2007, at the 20 Years of Propaganda?: Critical Discussions & Evidence on the Ongoing Relevance of the Herman & Chomsky Propaganda Model (15–17 May 2007) conference at the University of Windsor, Ontario, Herman and Chomsky summarized developments to the propaganda model, followed by the publication of the proceedings of a commemoration of the twentieth publication anniversary of Manufacturing Consent in 2008.

·         In 2008, Chomsky replied to questions concerning the ways internet blogs and self-generated news reportage conform to and differ from the propaganda model. He also explained how access to information is not enough, because a framework of understanding is required.