CENSORSHIP AND THE REGULATION OF EXPRESSIONabroad, but also on the images that news agencies
project about them. This concern is compounded
by news agency values that typically stress large-
scale violence and disruption—’’coups and earth-
quakes’’ as the saying goes—and ignore the cultur-
al achievements and developmental efforts for
which these countries would like to be known.
Those who control international news flows
view their position of dominance as a desirable
and natural outcome of free-market practice. Those
in developing nations view the imbalances as a
form of de facto neo-imperialism. This view finds
its historical roots in the late-nineteenth and early-
twentieth centuries, when three European news
agencies, Havas (France), Wolff (Germany), and
Reuters (England) carved the world into three
areas of monopoly control, ones that built upon
their respective colonial empires. Some insight
into the present-day perspective of developing
nations can be gained by examining how news
about the United States was communicated in the
early part of the century. During those years, the
‘‘Ring Cartel’’ prevented AP from sending news
about the United States beyond its borders. Ac-
cording to Kent Cooper, the AP manager who
fought to dismantle it, the cartel decided ‘‘what the
people of each nation would be allowed to know of
the people of other nations and in what shade of
meaning the news was to be presented.’’ It was
Reuters who ‘‘told the world about Indians on the
war path in the West, lynchings in the South, and
bizarre crimes in the North.... The charge for
years was that nothing credible to America was
ever sent’’ (cited in Frederik 1993, p.39). To those
in developing nations, it is the AP who now plays
the role of cartel.
Several proposals have been advanced to cor-
rect the imbalance in international news flows.
Notable are those advanced through the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Or-
ganization (UNESCO) during the late 1970s and
early 1980s. These calls for a ‘‘New World Infor-
mation Order’’ (NWIO) generated immediate and
prolonged controversy, and provoked the United
States to withdraw from UNESCO in 1985. The
contours of these debates are as intriguing as they
are complex, reflecting sharp differences in news
values, international economic principles, and the
very definition of ‘‘free speech.’’ Whereas NWIO
supporters liken the values of developmental jour-
nalism to current trends in the United States, such
as ‘‘civic’’ journalism, its detractors suggest that
the values of developmental journalism cater to
the needs of local authority. And whereas NWIO
critics argue for a ‘‘free flow’’ of information across
international boundaries, NWIO supporters advo-
cate a ‘‘balanced flow.’’ Although these issues re-
main unresolved, promising developments include
the rise of regional news agencies, programs such
as CNN’s World Report, in which locally produced
broadcasts gain worldwide exposure; and pros-
pects that the Internet will facilitate the interna-
tional communication of locally produced news.The increasing global dominance of U.S. mov-
ies and television programming have prompted
the European Economic Community and Canada,
among other regional and national entities, to
seek ceilings on imported cultural goods as excep-
tions to free trade principles in international trade
agreements. These demands reflect the belief that
when applied to the area of expression, free mar-
ket principles support forms of ‘‘soft’’ or ‘‘de facto
censorship’’ in which locally produced speech is
driven from the marketplace of ideas (cf. Frederik
1993). More generally, these demands reflect the
growing tension between the ongoing course of
globalization and the threats to cultural sovereign-
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