Imbalance in the flow of information between North and South

In his book Media the Second God, Tony Schwartz, a television advertising specialist, states, “Godlike, the media can change the course of a war, bring down a president or a king, elevate the lowly and humiliate the proud, by directing the attention of millions on the same event and in the same manner.”

Media imperialism is at the moment of primary importance to all the states of the developing world. It is imperative that its various aspects are studied in detail.

Some sixty years ago, about the same time as Pakistan got its independence, George Orwell wrote his famous book Nineteen Eighty-Four. That classic novel with miraculous prescience depicted with a fair amount of accuracy, the events that were to unfold in the present era. In fact the thought control capacity of the powers that has gone much beyond the Orwellian fancies and fantasies and we have been so conditioned by it that we take it for granted and believe in his slogan “ignorance is strength”.

The tentacles of this brain washing machine of mass media of the developed countries are used to manipulate the developing world. To borrow again from ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, the invention of print made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further.

Orwell, goes on to predict that totalitarian regimes would rely on a ubiquitous “Oblong Metal Plaque Like a Dulled Mirror” to keep the citizens of Oceania brainwashed and obedient: “the instrument called television could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely”.

His prophecy couldn’t be more correct for television is here to stay and cannot be shut off but like other means of communication it has alternate uses i.e. it can also be used positively. It is one of the most effective means of communication since it has access to nearly every home and reaches even the remotest corners. Thus whoever controls it has a very powerful instrument in his hand for he can channelize the very thoughts of people.

Media Imperialism can be discussed in four postulates:-

• Imbalances in North/South dialogue
• Influence of intelligence agencies
• Emergence of Conglomerates & Media Monopolies
• Propaganda and media warfare

Information plays a paramount role in international relations, both as a means of communication between people and as an instrument of understanding and knowledge between nations. However, in the North/South dialogue, this flow of information is characterized by the following basic imbalances:-

• Quantitative Imbalance:- This imbalance is created by the disparity between the volume of news and information emanating from the developed world and intended for the developing countries, and the volume of the flow in the opposite direction. Almost 80 percent of the world news flow originates from the major news agencies of the developed countries while they devote only 20 to 30 percent of news coverage to the developing countries, despite the fact that the latter comprise almost three quarters of mankind. This results in a veritable de facto monopoly on the part of the developed countries. According to an UNESCO report, the ratio of information flow from north to south is 5:1 making us passive recipients. To illustrate this, statistics from Who’s on Time a book based on the study of Time’s covers from March, 1923 to January, 1977 reveals that publicity by this international magazine has been actually lopsided in favor of western countries in terms of sociological, economical and political issues as well as personalities. The given table (below) indicates personalities from various countries of the world, which appeared on the cover of Time for the aforementioned period. 

• Inequality in Information Resources:- The five major transitional agencies monopolize between them the major share of material and human potential while almost a third of the developing countries do not yet possess a single national agency. There is inequality in distribution of the frequency spectrum. The former control nearly 90% of the source of spectrum. In respect to television, not only do 45% of the developing countries have no television of their own while they have to watch a large number of programmes produced in the developed countries. President Julius Nyrere of Tanzania once sarcastically remarked that the inhabitants of the developing countries should be allowed to vote in the US Presidential elections because of the bombardment of information regarding US Presidential candidates to developing countries through US controlled media.

TABLE
PERSONALITIES FROM VARIOUS COUNTRIES APPEARING ON TIME COVER
COUNTRY	NO OF PERSONS	PERCENTAGE
United States	2,294	68.80
Great Britain	193	5.80
Soviet Union	12	3.75
France	85	2.50
Germany	82	2.40
China	52	1.60
Japan	34	1.00
India	2	0.75
Saudi Arabia	5	0.15
Turkey	4	0.12
Pakistan	2	0.06

• There is de facto Hegemony and a Will to Dominate:- Such hegemony and domination are evident in the marked indifference of the media in the west to the problems, concerns and aspirations of the developing countries, who are relegated to the status of mere consumers of information sold as a commodity like any other.
• Lack of Information on Developing Countries:- Current events in the developing countries are reported to the world via the transitional media who filter, cut and distort their reports and impose their own way. At times they present these communities in the most unfavorable light, stressing crises, strikes, street demonstrations, putsches and calamities even going to the extent of holding them to ridicule.
• The Survival of the Colonial Era:- The present-day information system enshrines a form of political, economic and cultural colonialism in which world events are covered only in so far as it suits the interests of certain societies; the criteria governing selection are consciously or unconsciously based on the political and economic interests of the transitional system and of the countries in which the system is established.
• Alienating Influence in the Economic, Social and Cultural Spheres:- Other forms of hegemony include monopoly on advertising, opposing social evolution and transmitting to the developing countries messages which are harmful to their cultures, contrary to their values, and detrimental to their development aims and efforts.
• Messages Ill-suited to the Areas in which they are Disseminated:- The news coverage of major mass media is designed to meet the national needs of the countries of their origin. They disregard the impact of their news beyond their own frontiers. They even ignore the important minorities and foreign communities living in their national territory, whose needs in matters of information are different from their own.

The imbalances have reached such a state that in a recent summit of UNESCO, when a new information order was presented stressing a change to correct the north/south imbalances, and providing an equal voice and share in the global village, USA, Britain and Japan walked out from the summit. They felt their monopolies threatened. Thus they stopped the order from being ratified.