U.S. ‘backing moves to block free press’

Press, 23 November 1981, Page 8

U.S. ‘backing moves to block free press’

NZPA-Reuter Washington

The chairman of the International Press Institute has alleged that the United States, while publicly criticising a United Nationsbacked campaign for a “new world information order," was moving toward support of projects contrary to the aims of a free press.

Cushrow Irani, chairman of the Zurich-based institute, which monitors challenges to journalists and news organisations around Jhe world, said that American, support for the newly-created International Programme for., the Development of Communica-tions.-was.. "naive" 'and mistakenlv based on a fear of

“interfering in the internal affairs of other countries." The communications development programme now being organised in the United •Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation would give financial and professional support for press and broadcasting projects in developing nations. The development programme .was largely on American initiative, which the State Department’s Bureau for International Organisation Affairs, has supported in the hope that material aid to poorer nations would dampen criticism that Americans remain insensitive to the needs of the Third World’s press.

Mr Irani, who is publisher of the Indian daily, the “Statesman," and one of the Third World's most outspoken critics of the U.N.E.S.C.O. campaign, said that the United States was pieparing to give money to the international development programme through the Agency for International Development. Mr Irani was in .Washington to argue'at the State Department against such a move. Any contribution would finance only "propaganda,” he said. “Of the 14 or 15 detailed programmes the LP.D.C. has already each of them concerns itself with strengthening Government news agencies. ' They call

themselves news agencies, but they are in fact propaganda agencies, and not one of them will help in any way to further our objectives of a free press working independent of Government,” he said.

The State Department declined to comment on Mr Irani's assertion that the United States was about to give money to the programme. But State Department officials have said that no money from the United States would be contributed to projects that were found to be unacceptable by American standards. •

Beginning at a communications develooment orn-

gramme meeting in Acapulco in January and thereafter, American delegates intended to examine each project, officials said.

The Reagan Administration has gone on record in support of an amendment to the State Department budget that calls for a cut-off of contributions to U.N.E.S.C.O. if that organisation persists in any attempt to regulate .the world's press. The amendment, which was backed by the White House but not, initially, the State Department, was adopted by the House of r Representatives.- although . the bill to which it was. attached was subsequently defeated.