OCR Text |
Show A Free Press - Your Window to the World Someone is trying to fog up the window of which we look as a Free Press to see the world. The challenge to a free press worldwide has emerged in 1 981 with the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proclaiming the establishment of a "new world information order." A part of this thrust was the setting up of an interna-' tional commission to accredit journalists and see that they conform to a still-to-be-established code of ethics. What a chilling effect of the free flow of international news, for journalists to be subject to accreditation by a board of censors with a mandate to certify only those news reporters who "measure up." Of the 35 nations represented on the UNESCO council, only eight support free press principles. Emerging Third World and Communist bloc countries from a solid phalanx against what we in the American press have as a heritage from the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. Thirteen of the 18 centers of Western journalism professional news organizations already have their own codes of journalistic ethics. In most Third World and all Communist bloc countries the state either owns or controls the print and broadcast media. These are the nations favoring the imposition of licensing the codes of ethics on journalists around the world. Placing the UNESCO in a contradictory posture is a United Nations Charter provision in Article 19 espousing a universal declaration of human rights which says, "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." The guarantee of the United Nations charter of freedom of opinion and expression can hardly be fulfilled by a UNESCO proclamation seeking seek-ing to establish a "new world information order" calling for, among other things, the licensing of reporters. Our heritage of freedom of the press has helped to foster the technologies which, have greatly facilitated the national and international flow of news. Just as a free press has been "our window to the world" when our meaningful world was limited to news about the neighborhood, schools, city, county, state, and national government, now a free press through which we see the world must meet the challenge to keep open that window of information and vision. These new technologies can help with the free flow of information and UNESCO would do well to help cultivate this approach rather than establish hypocritical boundaries for the free press. In the vanguard of opposition to this hypocrisy are the journalists of some 20countries at a Voice of Freedoms conference in May at Talloires, France. Out of this meeting came the Declaration of Talloires, a nine point document sounding the international free press community's battle cry supporting' "the universal human right to be fully informed." "We believe that the ultimate definition of a free press lies not in the actions of governments or international bodies, but rather in the professionalism, vigor and . courage of individual journalists." journa-lists." "Press freedom is a .basic human rigfit. We pledge ourselves to concerted action to uphold that right." Robert E. Bailey Buhl, Idaho Herald 1981 President National Newspaper Association |