andersen-ottaway lecture

1992 Andersen Lecture
Federico Mayor
Director General of the United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)

UNESCO And A Free Press

Many of the older members of this distinguished audience may remember the refrain of a pioneering radio opera "The Lonesome Train" sung by Burl Ives. "Freedom is a thing that’s never ending, that needs to be cared for, that needs defending."

Across the Potomac we can see the illuminated monuments dedicated to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln. This exceptional site and the symbols around us represent the process of exploring, in times that have been hard and challenging, the means and potential of freedom.

Tonight, I intend briefly to explore the meaning and potential of freedom of the press with the context of the international organization I lead and to discuss with you, a gathering of those among the most expert and experienced in defending free-press principles both within the United States and throughout the world.

President (sic) Harold Andersen, I am very honored to be the lecturer at this sixth lecture dedicated to pay tribute to you.

Chairman Al Neuharth, President Charles Overby, Mr. Chairman (sic) Leonard Marks and distinguished members of the World Press Freedom Committee and The Freedom Forum, honored guests, ladies and gentlemen.

Thomas Jefferson, whose extraordinary monument glows not far from us, wrote at the height of his conflict with Hamilton and the Federalists:

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right. And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

In his famous letter to Carrington in 1787, Jefferson went on to underline what he meant by the role of the press: "But I should mean that every man should receive those papers and be capable to reading them."

I ask no pardon if, as director-general of UNESCO, I invoke Jefferson to bridge our cherished notion of freedom of the press and media with its essential preconditions: literacy, education for all, and scientific and scholarly free inquiry.

As regards culture, John Dewey’s philosophically imaginative dialogue with Jefferson, against the background of the world situation in 1939, begins with: "The problem is to know what kind of culture is so free in itself that it conceives and begets political freedom as its accompaniment and accomplishment."

In the American pragmatic tradition, John Dewey’s answer was to build democracy in all its aspects by action, by experience, by communication to, in his own words, "Make our culture generally a servant and an evolving manifestation of democratic ideas."

UNESCO’s founders, among them Archibald MacLeish and William Fulbright, were both Jeffersonian and pragmatic in their vision. I quote: "Of free and equal opportunities for education for all, in the unrestricted pursuit of objective truth and in the free exchange of ideas and knowledge." Words they helped inscribe in the organization’s Constitution, that were drafted in 1945 after the Second World War. In that same document they and their contemporaries called for the free flow of ideas by word and image.

This is exactly the Article Number One of UNESCO’s Constitution. In the preamble the founders of UNESCO give the mission, "To build peace in the minds of men through education, culture and the sharing of science." But to achieve this formidable aim they knew that only one key existed: free communication, free flow of information.

Few in this country or around the world know more about the ongoing struggle to defend these ideals than Leonard Marks and his colleagues in the World Press Freedom Committee.

Dana Bullen and Ronald Koven worked closely with him and with UNESCO in my own efforts to revitalize and reaffirm free press principles and democratic values after taking office in 1987.

As they know, I met the press immediately upon my designation by the General Conference, and I read out to the journalists as my basic program the passages I have just cited of UNESCO’s Constitution. I stated my intention to end the misunderstanding and controversies that have developed concerning the so-called New International Communication Order.

At the next General Conference, in 1989, UNESCO’s member states unanimously endorsed my proposals to put this matter behind us once and for all, buried very deep, Leonard Marks, once and for all.

UNESCO’s new strategy in communications based firmly on the democratic principles of the organization’s constitution has three aims: to ensure the free flow of information at national and international levels, to ensure wider and better balanced dissemination without any obstacle to the freedom of expression, and to strengthen communication capacities in developing countries especially through our International Program for the Development of Communication.

May I add, on a personal note, that this turnaround was not easy. While keeping for my memoirs, as it is said, the details of what happened in late-night negotiations, let me simply state that this was the first time in UNESCO, and perhaps in the United Nations system history, that an executive head had presented a counter-proposal to that of his executive board to his own General Conference.

More important, the adoption of democratic language and free-press principles led directly to action, to concrete, practical programs and results. The new communication program commits UNESCO to work for the development of free, independent and pluralistic media both in the public and private sectors.

The new policy commits UNESCO and its member states to work for journalists’ freedom, to report their fullest possible access to information. The public, private and other media in the developing countries are to be provided with the conditions and resources to strengthen and consolidate their independence.

As early as February 1990, the World Press Freedom Committee joined with other media organizations in working with UNESCO on an informal - as mentioned by Chairman (sic) Leonard Marks - East/West press meeting.

While Communist regimes still held sway in many Central and Eastern European Countries, UNESCO headquarters in Paris was host to more than 90 media professionals who discussed ways and means of providing much needed help to newly independent media.

UNESCO’s role as a catalyst helped launch bilateral public and private initiatives that continue to this day in former Communist countries. And this includes the creation, for example, of a center for the training of journalists in Warsaw, Poland.

The World Press Freedom Committee has played a major role in these networks, and I wish tonight to call particular attention to your Handbook for Journalists (of Central and Eastern Europe) and to Ron Koven’s tireless work, including his survey of news media needs.

One year later at Windhoek, Namibia, the United Nations and UNESCO organized a seminar on "Promoting an Independent and Pluralistic African Press." The Windhoek Declaration, signed by all participants including editors and journalists released from prison by international pressure, declared that an independent and pluralistic and free press was essential for democracy.

So important was the Windhoek Declaration, that its date of adoption, the 3rd of May 1991, is celebrated as International Press Freedom Day by major media organizations and by UNESCO.

Just last May I joined, as Leonard Marks has mentioned, with him and Lord McGregor of Durris in supporting the World Press Freedom Committee’s Charter for a Free Press that was adopted at Helsinki by the CSCE.

The process continues. In Alma Ata, Kazakhstan, only two months ago, a seminar was again jointly organized by the United Nations and UNESCO to promote the independent and pluralistic media in Asia. It enthusiastically rallied to the Windhoek principles. Therefore, I dare say that the Windhoek Declaration is considered today as the bench mark in the field of communication at the international level.

UNESCO, ladies and gentlemen, is fully committed to the advance of media and press freedom, freedom of the press for free people. This means leaving codes of journalistic ethics and similar issues in new and emerging democratic systems strictly within the purview of the media professionals themselves.

That is why UNESCO plays a catalytic role of placing new media groups coming forward in newly democratic settings into direct contact with such non-governmental organizations as the International Federation of Journalists in Brussels and the International Federation of Newspaper Publishers, the FIEJ, in Paris.

UNESCO’s ultimate purpose in the field of communication is to provide leadership within the United Nations’ system and to act, in all possible extent, as a moral authority in the international media community.

To this end, UNESCO is striving to become, firstly, an organization truly and actively committed to the fundamental freedoms, in particular to the freedom of the press; secondly, an efficient operational body in the field of communication development addressing in priority the needs of the newly democratic nations both in the East and in the South.

Should we agree that the future of the new democracies also depends upon the development and the strengthening of independent and pluralistic media, urgent and substantial increase of funds for communication development programs is of paramount importance.

We must do everything possible to persuade the international community to give a higher priority to communication development programs in the global development strategies of both the public and private development agencies and foundation.

The culture of democracy, like its twin the culture of peace, cannot come about by simple evolution. Hard choices have to be made, risks have to be taken, political and ethical will are at issue.

Just as the fall of Communism brings into question the historical inevitability of that system, so do the cultural and ethnic conflicts of the Balkans and other regions in Eastern Europe demonstrate that ethics, and not mere material circumstances, must guide a liberal, tolerant and pluralistic democracy.

We, in the democracies of North America and Western Europe, must not try to distill democracy into one or another feature we particularly value and insist on seeing a mirror image in another cultural setting.

Neither do I believe that it is right or proper for us to greet those emerging from the long tunnel of Stalinism or military rule or other forms of state dominance over private lives with only the free market as our incantation and test for democracy.

As Vaclav Havel recently wrote in the International Herald Tribune, one cannot force democracy to grow in the same way an impatient child pulls on a plant to make it grow.

UNESCO works in the fields of education, science, culture and communication because the founders of the United Nations system, and especially Senator Fulbright and Harry Truman, could not imagine peace surviving without democracy. And they quickly concluded that democracy could not survive and put down strong roots, without schools, teachers, scientists, artists, writers and journalists all working in or working toward a culture of democracy, a culture of civility.

That democratic culture will have to evolve within the larger culture, the esthetics, and the tastes of those who will make that democracy work in their everyday life. Democracy, as the main ingredient of daily life, as a force for equity and solidarity is not merely given. It is happening and being achieved every day by every citizen.

I considered these goals so important for international intellectual cooperation, that I am at this very moment establishing two commissions to think deeply and in an action-oriented way on culture and development. These are commissions chaired by former UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar and Education for the 21st Century, a commission chaired by Monsieur Jacques Delors, the president of the European Community Commission.

Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, you in this room are the women and men of the American dream. It is a dream, but also much of a reality based on tolerance and openness, classrooms and laboratories, small towns and wider worlds. You founded UNESCO, I believe, to share that dream.

The United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984 because some felt UNESCO had departed from its original goals. Those reasons for withdrawal have not existed now for at least four years.

The U.S. General Accounting Office studied UNESCO last year and found our management, administration and budgeting systems reformed. Congressional hearings and studies by private groups like the World Press Freedom Committee have found a similar process of reform to have operated in redirecting the program and reaffirming the basic values of UNESCO’s constitution.

When we are addressing the world-wide imperatives of literacy, access to knowledge, its quality, its sharing, when we pursue democracy, tolerance and inter-ethnic dialogue, when we redouble our efforts to preserve hand in hand with other United Nations institutions and non-governmental organizations, our cultural and natural heritage, we need the U.S. back.

But from my watchtower, where I see how the poorest of the poor in this world survive, I feel that you (in the U.S.) miss their presence and their voice in the world house of all cultures, to create all together a new design for the future, the future with a human face. Come to UNESCO, leaders of the professional and the scholar communities, of the Congress, of the new Administration, and see for yourselves what we have accomplished and what we are doing, what is our vision and the aims that guide our action. Thank you very much.