Model Question and Answers for APSC | What are the aims and objectives of the McBride Commission of UNESCO? What is India’s position on these?

Ans: The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), which answers to its International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems, authored Many Voices, One World, better known as the MacBride report, in 1980. Seán MacBride, an Irish Nobel laureate and advocate for human rights and peace, was the inspiration for the MacBride report, which had the goal of analysing communication issues in contemporary societies, particularly those involving mass media and news, taking the emergence of new technologies into consideration, and proposing a form of communication order (the New World Information and Communication Order) to lessen barriers to furthering peace and human development.

The aims and objectives of the McBride Commission of UNESCO:

• The research listed a number of issues, including media concentration, media commercialization, and unequal access to communication and information.

• To reduce reliance on outside sources, the group recommended, among other things, that communication be made more democratic and that national media be strengthened. Internet-based technologies were then used as a tool to further MacBride's goals during the Commission's work.

• The MacBride study helped bring about significant improvements in media and communication in the 1970s and 1980s.

• They supported measures aimed at monopoly power, the deregulation of the telecom industry, and the comparative advantage, or dominance, of media and newspaper firms.

Even though the report had a lot of support around the world, the United States and the United Kingdom saw it as an attack on press freedom. In 1984 and 1985, they both left UNESCO in protest, but they came back in 2003 and 1997, respectively.

India accepted the news well. In order to resolve the issues, the Seminal Meeting of the Commission was held in New Delhi in 1979. India demanded equitable access and took action to bolster its own media. The Prasar Bharati Act of 1990 was passed to offer legal backing.