New system overhaul on agenda for UNESCO

The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization's committee for culture and communication will discuss a controversial report prepared by a commission headed by former Irish Foreign Minister Sean MacBride, then consider a proposed program for improving communications in developing countries. The MacBride report attacks censorship, defends journalists' rights to free access to news sources, and calls for effective legal measures to ensure that transnational organizations, such as international news agencies, conform to national laws and development policies. The report and the program for improving communications in poor countries have met wide approval from third-world countries as a move toward a new world information order to end the current dominance of rich industrial states.