7:24 AM Aug 5, 1993

SERVICES ACCORD MAY FURTHER MEDIA IMPERIALISM

Geneva 5 Aug (Chakravarthi Raghavan) -- The acquisition of the Hong Kong based Star satellite TV company by Robert Murdoch, the media tycoon and the reactions against it in Asia, bring to the fore some of the old and new issues in this interface involving communication, culture, trade and political sovereignty issues.

Murdoch, it may be added, has been shedding and acquiring nationalities to ensure control of his media empire -- having acquired US citizenship without which he could not run TV enterprises there, an obstacle not faced in media ownership in many other places -- and proving the validity of Gresham's law not merely in currencies but culture too.

Over the last decade or more some of the communication/culture and trade and political sovereignty issues have been blurred in the neo-classical, neo-liberal philosophies behind which the US has been pushing for free trade in communications and using it as an instrument to further what Vincent Mosco, Professor of Journalism at Carleton University in Canada, has described as "Building a World Business Order".

Two recent publications which deal with some of these questions -- in the overall political context of the US attempts to bring in the old old order of transnational laissez faire capitalism under the garb of a New World Order are: "Transnational Communications", (1991) ed. by Gerald Sussman and John A.Lent (Sage Publications) and "Beyond National Sovereignty" (1993) ed. Karle Nordenstreng and Herbert I Schiller (Ablex Publishing Corporation) -- with a number of individual essays and contributions by many authors, involved in the New World Information and Communication Order issues and debates of the 1960s and 1970s, who have taken a fresh look at the issues in the light of the subsequent developments.

A common theme (against the background of overviews in both books on the nature of the new world order and its inherent crises) has been that many of the issues of culture and development raised by thoughtful communicators of the 1960s, and which got mixed up with the Marxist-Soviet ideologist views at UNESCO and elsewhere, have not disappeared but still remain valid and need to be tackled.

Several of these articles also bring out how the competencies and more democratic decision-making efforts in several of the international organizations have been side-railed by the United States in its drive to secure and create international regimes through the GATT and its Uruguay Round negotiations.

Mosco, in his chapter in Beyond National Sovereignty, points out how the theory of free trade in communications that the US got incorporated in the US-Canada Free Trade Agreement has been sought to be pushed through the GATT.

Audio-Visual services is one of the services covered by the Uruguay Round's proposed General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and, within that sector, the transborder delivery of such audio-visual services as one of the envisaged modes of delivery.

If countries, say the countries of Asia, agree to 'liberalize' this sector in their initial commitments on services trade and agree to permit transborder delivery, then service providers like STAR TV, can get a legal foothold, expand their market in each of the countries involved, and would be guaranteed earnings and repatriation of earnings -- whether by sale (license or other fees that users might pay) of the TV programmes and/or the advertisement revenues that could be generated.

So far, most of the countries that have put in "initial offers" have not scheduled audio-visual services as among the list of services they would liberalize, and even less of them for its delivery by transborder means. Those that have placed no limitations on transborder delivery, including countries like Japan, Korea or the Nordics, are also those where the common language is not English or other dominant ones and, given the smallness of their markets, would need both local expertise and more money for broadcasts in local languages.

While this also language problem also applies in Asia, in most of the South and South-East Asian countries, English is very much a major second language and the language of the elitists and consuming classes.

However, the US and others having an interest could push countries to make such commitments (in the negotiations ahead before the Round is concluded) or even, if they don't do it now, take it up in bilateral or further rounds of multilateral negotiations.

Any country, seeking to preserve its cultural and political sovereignty, would thus need to ensure that in the services commitments, audio-visual services, or atleast their transborder mode of delivery, are excepted and perhaps even reserve in their schedules the right to impose quotas on imported films and programmes and licensing for distribution or display by state or private sector channels and broadcasters, trade experts say.

Interestingly, Hong Kong, itself has not bound itself to allow transborder delivery of audio-visual programmes.

While the GATS would provide a framework of legal rights and obligations, there are some rules of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) relating to broadcasting, particularly TV broadcasting into other countries without their permission, though under the present leadership the ITU is trying to promote both private business interests in telecommunications and acting to promote the GATT.

Mosco has brought out in his contribution to Nordenstrang ed. book, how the US-Canada free trade agreement, which is also the model for the NAFTA, is being used and pushed as a model in the GATT and Uruguay Round. "If the Third World efforts in international communications has been one to build a NWCIO, the FTA is among a number of steps towards creation of a Western version of a new World Order," he says, adding: "But like many 'new and improved' products in a world of advertising illusions, the 'New' New Order presents little that is actually new. Rather it deepens and extends the pattern of the Old Information Order for an electronic age..."

In the Uruguay Round, a major US-EC difference has been over the issue of audio-visual services and cultural exceptions.

In contrast to the FTA, Mosco says, the EC has taken a different approach, albeit within a market model and its charter provides for some protection of public institutions, including public education, social welfare, occupational health and safety and national culture.

In the same book, in the chapter on "Television Marti: Open Skies over the South" (Television Marti is the TV programme beamed by US into Cuba, a cross-border delivery, though not using satellites), Laurien Alexandre, Dean of Academic Affairs of the Antioch University of Southern California, deals with US violations of international law in this TV broadcast invasion of Cuba.

He points out that the US actions clearly violated the ITU regulations and was also counter to several of the UN General Assembly resolutions and Declarations including those on inadmissibility of intervention and interference in the internal affairs of other states and the Declaration on the Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation Among States. Though these declarations are not treaties and don't have the same force, in areas where there is no treaty, UN Assembly Declarations are one of the sources of international law.

On the TV Marti broadcasts, the International Frequency Registration Board of the ITU ruled in April 1990 that the US broadcasts violated Regulation 2666 which requires that the power of stations utilizing frequencies in the 5060 kHZ to 41 mHZ bands (used by TV) should not exceed power necessary to assure a national service of good quality "within the limits of its territory" and all technical means should be used to reduce to the maximum extent possible radiation over territory of other countries "unless an agreement has been reached previously".

The IFRB though made clear that it had no enforcement authority, and the US has always functioned that it could pick the international rules and laws it would observe and disobey others, and did so in this case by stating that it disputed the IFRB interpretations.

But beyond all these, the problems faced by many countries in the face of unauthorized beaming of broadcasts, particularly TV broadcasts, over their territory particularly via satellites is lack of technical means to jam and interfere with them. But with such attempts at broadcasts, likely to be resorted to by private corporations, thus committing 'piracy' of national 'audio-visual space', countries might begin to look for technical solutions too.