Page 14 - PR COMMUNICATION AGE AUGUST 2015 SAMPLE

lar and there has been a concentra-
tion of media ownership and domina-
tion of news flow. Rupert Murdoch
owns many stations in Australia,
America and other places as well and
concentration of ownership has limited
free voices in media market.
1980-2000 years of news
agencies domination
There used to be five news agencies
AP, UPI, AFP, Reuters and TASS domi-
nating the world information flow
greatly.
AP or Associated Press is an American
news agency with head quartered in
New York owned by newspaper pub-
lishers in North America disseminates
18 million words a day. Financially
strong, it has bureaus in 150 countries
and it is an English language news
agency and also has sizable presence
in Latin America.
United Press International or UPI, al-
though financially not as strong as AP,
is an American news agency with head
quarter in New York disseminating 12
million words a day. It is also owned by the west of cultural imperialism and
newspaper publishers in North
America.
Agence France Presse or AFP is a
French language news agency with
head quarter in Paris disseminating 3
million words a day and is strong in
Franco phone Africa. It is a co-opera-
tive form of agency receiving subsidies
from French government.
Reuters is a British agency with head
quarter in London disseminating 1.5
million words a day and is strong in
Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
10 PR COMMUNICATION AGE August 2015
colonies of Britain. It is a English lan- need to balance portrayal and balance
guage news agency and has bureaus in
many countries around the world.
TASS is now Itar-TASS and it used to
exist in erstwhile Soviet Union, but af-
ter disintegration of Soviet Union, it
exists in Russia now. During Soviet
days, it used to tell about Soviet Union
to foreign countries and disseminated
foreign countries' news to Soviet
Union. There used to be a feature
agency called Novosti in former Soviet
Union in those days.
New world information
order
As a result of debate on information
flow, there exists an imbalance in flow
of information between developed
west and developing south and this
came for discussion in the UN and
other forums as UNESCO.
The US and west have more commu-
nication infrastructure and more facili-
ties and gets better portrayed in the
media compared to other countries.
Third world and other countries blames
cultural domination
as a result of this and
although US and
other countries deny
it there exists cultural
domination, of some
sort. India is por-
trayed as a country of
snake charmers, fire
walkers and the like
and west gets better
portrayal.
As a result, there is a
flow of information between devel-
oped north and developing east or
South and New World Information Or-
der debate has come about. This de-
bate has been going on in international
forums, UNESCO as well as other places
and this issue has dominated discus-
sions till 2000.
McBride Commission
A commission was constituted to go
into the information flow under Irish
foreign minister Sean McBride. It con-
sisted many members from India and
other countries and submitted its re-
port accepting that there has been an
imbalance in the flow of information
but no serious recommendations were
made. The US and UK had complained
that UNESCO was coming under third
world countries influence and under
Marxist influence and rejected. It also
said that the UNESCO under leadership
of M'Bow has been spending lavishly
and withdrew funds.
Non Aligned News Agency
Pool
Non aligned nations led by India and