The Third World Has a Point

The collapse of the Shah’s government took the American public by surprise. Why, people wailed, didn’t the CIA let us know the state of affairs in Iran so we could prepare ourselves to face this threat to our oil supplies and general strategic interests? The question might well have been, Why didn’t the American press, specifically its foreign editors and foreign correspondents—who are or can be just as well informed as the CIA, who in fact pride themselves on being right when the CIA is wrong—pass on the message to their readers? Whatever effect the Iranian revolution may have on American policies and positions, it has certainly given the news gatherers a black eye.

The point can be usefully made in connection with the recent row in UNESCO over the nature and quality of international coverage in the Western press—meaning the spread of unkind tidings about events in the Third World. While no one thought UNESCO would go so far as to recommend the censorship of such news, some Third World governments, puffed on by the Soviet Union and other Communist states, provoked the American journalistic community to mighty wrath.

NK

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Nicholas King

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The collapse of the Shah’s government took the American public by surprise. Why, people wailed, didn’t the CIA let us know the state of affairs in Iran so we could prepare ourselves to face this threat to our oil supplies and general strategic interests? The question might well have been, Why didn’t the American press, specifically its foreign editors and foreign correspondents—who are or can be just as well informed as the CIA, who in fact pride themselves on being right when the CIA is wrong—pass on the message to their readers? Whatever effect the Iranian revolution may have on American policies and positions, it has certainly given the news gatherers a black eye.

The point can be usefully made in connection with the recent row in UNESCO over the nature and quality of international coverage in the Western press—meaning the spread of unkind tidings about events in the Third World. While no one thought UNESCO would go so far as to recommend the censorship of such news, some Third World governments, puffed on by the Soviet Union and other Communist states, provoked the American journalistic community to mighty wrath.