Surveying the territory: Re-examining MacBride and theories of development

Abstract

In 1980, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco) published Many Voices, One World, more commonly known as the MacBride Report. The 16-member committee that shaped the report created a comprehensive document about the state of world communications. The report concluded with recommendations for balancing the international inequities the committee saw in communication structures and media flows.

Now, more than ten years after the MacBride Report, it is time to ask just how concretely the world has moved toward those substantive reforms. It is important, though, to view communications disparities as a part of the bigger question of global inequality and underdevelopment which affects all aspects of a nation's being. The question is not merely how many radios people own, but what does that tell us about their lives? Where does mass communication fit into the processes of nation-building and wealth generation?

If change has occurred, has it affected the applicability of prior research to the current state of the world? This study is an attempt to update the information and problems outlined in the MacBride Report. We attempt to find out, at the most basic level, if worldwide inequities have improved or worsened for some of the most common tools of mass communication: newspapers, television and radio. After outlining the current situation, an attempt will be made to apply some of the theories put forth by Lerner, Schramm, and others to see if they can give further insight into the problems.

For this study, we created a country data base following the country listing as used by Unesco in its reports, then entered information for each country which had data available. Variables included television, newspapers, and radios per thousand, literacy, income, urbanization, and life expectancy at birth.

After discussing overall issues of disparity, the data is applied to key theories of mass communication and development. It becomes apparent that little is known about the overall nature of the relationship. The question becomes one of, can any theory be applied to communication's role in development?