CFSC Retrospective: Looking at the MacBride Report 25 Years Later

In this article, Mwakisha examines what has happened since the MacBride Commission Report was issued in 1980. That report, according to Mwakisha "detailed the inequalities existing in the flow of information between the North and the South, with the latter only on the receiving end and the former determining what information was best for the rest of the world." The report emphasised both receiving and communicating information as rights and "argued that Western cultural and financial dominance over the poorer nations through the media denied those countries any growth and development."



Many in the West, according to Mwakisha, have seen this report as a threat. And while the proposals in the report never took off, the issues raised still frame much of the communication/development debate today. James Deane of the Communication for Social Change (CFSC) Consortium is quoted as arguing for an independent forum to discuss strategies appropriate to today. "The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)," he notes "is the last place to have discussions on these issues because it is a government meeting."



CFSC's managing director, Alfonso Gumucio-Dagron, argues that things are worse now, in many ways, than at the time of the MacBride Report. He states that "The concentration of the information sector in fewer hands is greater, and through the privatisation of the frequency spectrum many national-state and public radio and television stations have virtually disappeared."



This article concludes with words from Steve Buckley, president of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC), who notes that while the Communication Rights in the Information Society (CRIS) campaign aims to create a more people-centred and democratic information society, the approach to implementation is too technological in a world where most people do not have access to the internet at home.