1 files changed, 76 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/geopolitics.review.otx b/geopolitics.review.otx
index e69de29..21e3031 100644
--- a/geopolitics.review.otx
+++ b/geopolitics.review.otx
@@ -0,0 +1,76 @@
+Book Review
+THE GEOPOLITICS
+
+OF INFORMATION
+
+Anthony Smith
+Oxford University Press
+
+B. P M¢non
+
+Echo: reansmutter-recesver stations. (Bell Labs).
+
+President Kennedy signing legislation to establish globe-circling
+system of communscation satellites (August 31, 1962). Left 1o
+;‘%ht: Congressman Oren Harris (D-Ark.), Senator Warren G.
+agnusan (D-Wash.), Senator Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.),
+Senator Richard Russel (D-Ga.), Senator Hubert Humphrey
+(D-Minn.), Joseph Beirne, President, Communication Workers of
+America, Congressman William L. Springer (R-IIL), Senator John
+0, Pastore (D-R.1.), unidentified, and FCC Chairman Newton
+N. Minow. (Bell Labs).
+
+12?7
+
+PI-l:.c first inkhing Lever had ot the geopoliucs of mformaton
+came when [ was six years old, in the “first standard™ at Miss
+B. Hartley's school in Calcutta. OQur textbook for geography,
+a lefrover from the then recently extnguished British Raj,
+described “hill stations™ as “places where white people go
+dunng the hot surnmer months.™ Miss Graham., our teacher, a
+leathery grey-haired white woman (whether Anglo-Indian or
+not was a matter of speculavion), had us underline all the
+important defimuons in the book. When she came to “hill
+stations” she bowed to the realities of independent India and
+had us underhne the sentence with the exception of the word
+“white.” The underlined definition read “hill stanons are
+places where people go during the hot summer months.” |
+thought nothing of this definition till my mother chanced
+upon it while supervising my homework. 1 heard her snort.
+She muttered something under her breath, reached for my
+pencil, and obliterated the entire sentence from the page.
+
+As far as [ can see, the call for a New World Information
+and Communicauon Order, for which UNESCO is regularly
+criticized in the Western press, is based on sentiments stmilar
+to those of my mother—a desire on the part of the leaders of
+the world’s poorer countries to protect their people from the
+subtle and not-so-subtle racial and cultural propaganda of the
+rich countries of Europe and North America. Most Western
+journalists, especially those who have taken an interest in the
+debate on this martter, will of course snort at my use of the
+word “propaganda.” For them it is but “free flow of informa-
+tion,” with good lads like themselves {(and increasing numbers
+of lasses) doing their objective best to report the world as it is.
+Artempts to discuss the imbalances in the flow of world news
+(with most of it going now from the rich countries to the
+poor), they see as a threat to the freedom of the press. And
+UNESCO, they think, “under the influence of communists
+and radical Third World governments™ is trying to “license”™
+journalists when it dares speak of acceptable standards. What
+most Western journalists fail to notice is thar such reactions
+provide the best example there is of the overtly propagandistic
+role of Western mass media. The popular fears and suspicions
+attached to the whole matter of the Third World's desire for
+change in the global order of things are not acadental. They
+have been deliberately fostered and are the defenses of an
+entrenched moral and economic value system. lris not hard to
+see that the fears raised by Western commentators on the
+martter of Third World demands for change are bogevs. They
+result either from a gross misunderstanding of facts or, in 2
+distressingly large number of cases, from deliberate distor-
+tions and lies. For the benefit of those inclined to dismiss this
+as (to use phrases I have heard in this regard) “wnreal,”
+“paranoid,” or “super-sensitive,” let me present here some
+concrete evidence, an annotated version of a “news story”
+thar appeared in The New York Times on 28 Junc.