|
William F. Birdsall
When Jean d’Arcy identified the need for a right to communicate (RTC) in the late 1960s, it immediately struck a chord among those attempting to link human rights with recent developments in communications technology, in particular, satellite communications (d’Arcy, 1969). However, by the early 1980s, efforts within UNESCO to formulate a RTC collapsed. Since then individuals and organizations have attempted to keep the concept alive but its acceptance has been constrained by the historical baggage of the 1970s and 80s and the underlying problem of defining such a right.
The debate on human rights, as Alan McKenna relates, has been a discourse surrounding philosophical, legal, and political issues (McKenna 2005: 37). This characterization certainly applies to the extended philosophical and legal debate over a RTC, a debate that focuses on finding a definition embracing both universality and legalistic precision. However, this philosophical-legal approach to defining a RTC is at an impasse that persists to this day (Kuhlen, 2004).
As an alternative to the unproductive philosophical-legal approach that seeks a philosophically universal, legalistic definition, I propose the adoption of a cultural-rhetorical strategy embracing a vision of a RTC that encompasses cultural diversity and ambiguity in meaning. I will argue early proponents of a RTC favoured respect for cultural diversity and ambiguity in the conceptualization of a RTC over a legalistic formulation. However, as I will show, under the formal auspices of UNESCO, consideration of a RTC took a philosophical-legal route, resulting ultimately in the current deadlock between advocates and opponents of a RTC.
Returning to the work of the RTC pioneers, along with the ideas of Umberto Eco, I will propose a RTC be conceived as an ‘open work’ that is sensitive to local diversity and interpretation. It is hoped such an approach provides a way out of the impasse that has plagued efforts to achieve the entrenchment of a RTC.
Cultural diversity and a RTC
Jean d’Arcy proposed the need for a RTC because he believed the rapid developments in satellite communication would provide an abundance of communication channels never available before to individuals and communities. This abundance would allow for the development of personal, one-to-one global interactive communication by individuals. As well, satellite communication would provide access to global communication by local communities as a means of addressing the challenge of preserving cultural diversity against the dominance of powerful media monopolies.
For d’Arcy the potential of interactive, two-way communication at the local level reflected the horizontal, interpersonal oral traditions that prevailed at village, parish, tribe, and neighbourhood level. He envisioned a future leading to ‘societies drawn on a human scale (“microsocieties”…) where communication flows freely.’ He felt, ‘The very technology which once subverted these local, small-scale communities can now be applied to their revival’ (1983: xxiv; d’Arcy 1979: 122).
Jean d’Arcy never provided a precise definition of a RTC. Rather, he considered it initially a ‘hypothesis’ to be explored. Accordingly, he outlined potential lines of research to be tested empirically at the local and regional level (d’Arcy 1979: 6-9, 118). He believed any attempt to achieve an all encompassing international agreement would be more fruitful by starting through an open-ended, bottom-up approach with groups of neighbouring countries sharing a common culture. Based on his experience with the founding of Eurovision he expected legal international agreements would emerge gradually from the daily operational working together of smaller regional communities (d’Arcy 1969: 8).
Open-endedness versus legalism
In the 1970s, those involved in the early discussions of a RTC in the International Broadcast Institute (IBI), recognized political, social, economic, and technological changes called into question the traditional principles and vocabulary formulated in the field of communication including Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UHDR). For them, ‘The world has changed but the discussion still remains tied to a number of highly abstract, often purely legal if not legalistic concepts.’ They saw the need to approach the changes with multi-cultural conceptualizations ‘based on the assessment of the communications needs of societies and individuals’ (International Broadcast Institute Memorandum, 1975). Notes of the IBI discussions reflect their view that ‘Defining terms is like putting cart before the horse’ and that it was ‘Important to keep issue open.’
For d’Arcy, ‘A first step for this broader RTC concept [in contrast to Article 19] might be an attempt at describing or interpreting instead of immediately defining, and to test the applicability and validity of the various aspects of the RTC’ (International Broadcast Institute Working Group IV 1975). Other participants in the IBI discussions also cautioned against moving too quickly to a definition. It was pointed out that by defining a RTC too soon sets limits to the concept; what was first needed was a greater understanding of the concept (McKenna 2005: 282). Stan Harms argued that the RTC be conceived as a dynamic ‘open concept’ (Harms 1978: 3).
However, instead of an open-ended approach, what incurred was an effort to arrive at a universal definition of a right to communicate through a series of UNESCO meetings of experts. Jean d’Arcy and his IBI colleagues were active participants in this process but it never devolved to the local level they envisioned. Instead, the process, confined to abstract discussions by a relatively small body of experts, became entwined in the process of formulating a philosophical-legalistic definition.
As the debates on the RTC and New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) converged and intensified within UNESCO, the matter of definition increasingly moved further towards a philosophical-legal approach to defining rights. As a result of a round of consultation with UN National Commissions a panel of three consultants with legal expertise was formed to advise the UNESCO Secretariat on how to deal with the contention surrounding the RTC. Following their report the Secretariat then undertook a further consultation process with NGOs, some of which supported further action on a RTC while others objected. In the end, by 1985, the RTC quietly slid from the UNESCO agenda. Throughout these series of consultations how to define and establish such a right and its perceived connection with NWICO remained unresolved issues (McKenna 2005: 287-288).
Desmond Fisher, a participant in the IBI and UNESCO deliberations and whose status report for UNESCO on the RTC remains a seminal document (Fisher, 1982), has looked back decades later on the UNESCO experience. His comments reflect the change in the RTC discourse when it became enmeshed in the formalities of the UNESCO initiative. He observes:
‘Of course, the essential task for future workers on the concept of the right to communicate remains that of agreeing on a definition. However, it seems clear in retrospect that the approach taken under UNESCO guidance by the earlier group of experts in making that the immediate objective was mistaken. Previously, while the meetings were being arranged by the IIC [formerly the IBI], the experts could pursue several lines of approach simultaneously and ideological differences could be kept in the background. Once UNESCO had taken over the financing and running of their meetings, it set the agenda and steered the group of experts into a precipitate attempt to define the right to communicate, with the inevitable result of stirring up the ideological argument. It was a classic example of putting the cart before the horse’ (Fisher, n.d.)
The collapse of the UNESCO project was not the end of efforts to define and promote a RTC. But the initiative did not shift to the local or regional level, as d’Arcy might have hoped, but instead to the civil society sector of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), thereby, remaining at an abstract, international level of discourse. Like the earlier UNESCO initiative, these more recent efforts continued to delineate a RTC in philosophical-legal form, which continues to generate opposition from the mass media.
An example of a recent controversy is a draft Declaration on the Right to Communicate circulated by the NGO, Communications Rights in the Information Society (CRIS), in preparation for the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society. (I could not locate this document on the CRIS website but a CRIS response to criticism of the draft is available at http://tinyurl.com/abfy2). This extended and complex draft spawned renewed attacks from the media sector including a submission to the U. S. Department of State by the World Press Freedom Committee (United States, 2003).
Many in the traditional mass media sector saw the draft as a renewed attempt to revive NWICO and its perceived threat to freedom of the press. The RTC is characterized, in the words of the World Press Freedom Committee, as new code words for censorship (Bullen, 2002). By continuing to approach a RTC at an international, abstract, legalistic level within the context of the WSIS, all the old NWICO issues were cast up again; NGOs from all sectors locked in the past. (The ghost of NWICO not only continues to haunt the RTC at WSIS but also current efforts to reform the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) (see Cukier, 2005).
A RTC as an open work
It is interesting that at the time d’Arcy was conceiving the RTC, Umberto Eco, Italian literary and media scholar and novelist, was exploring the concept of literary texts as opens works. Eco’s concept of the open work provides a cultural context and conceptual reinforcement for an open-ended approach to the RTC. Like d’Arcy, Eco shared in the experience of the early days of European television when he took the position of Editor for Cultural Programs in the new Italian network, RAI. And like d’Arcy he gave intense consideration to the cultural implications of new communication media and information theory. Finally, Eco values ambiguity and open-endedness. For Eco, ambiguity is a very important device ‘… when, instead of producing pure disorder, it focuses my attention and urges me to an interpretive effort …it incites me toward the discovery of an unexpected flexibility in the language with which I am dealing’ (Eco 1979: 263).
Eco puts forth the concept of texts, music, and visual art as open works as opposed to the traditional closed conception of individual works (Eco, 1989). According to Eco, traditional literary texts and other works of art generate various responses but are essentially unambiguous in the direction of understanding the reader is expected to take as designed by the author. In contrast, the modern open work is deliberately ambiguous. For Eco a text can be an ‘empty form to which can be attributed various possible senses’ (his emphasis, Eco 1979: 139). Furthermore, he observes, ‘The multiplicity of codes, contexts, and circumstances shows us that the same message can be decoded from different points of view and by reference to diverse systems of conventions’ (139).
In literature and rhetoric, ambiguity can be conceived as a virtue, a useful stylistic device. This can also true of the law, especially with regard to constitutional rights. The scholar of rhetoric, Kenneth Burke, observes that a constitutional principle can only be considered universal when it ‘is raised to a sufficiently high level of generalization.’ It is only then that, ‘The strategy is… couched in terms sufficiently general to serve as a response to the “human situation” in general’ (Burke 1969: 365). It is ambiguity that allows a right to become accepted as a universal human right. At this level of conciseness and generality a right can be open to interpretation and reinterpretation over time and from place to place; it is, in short, an open work.
The law, then, is not so different from literature. (Indeed, Clarence Darrow, early 20th century American crusading lawyer, asserted that ‘Inside every lawyer is the wreck of a poet.’) It has been observed, ‘All forms of interpretation, whether of a poem, a novel, a statute or judge’s opinion, have one thing in common: the object of the interpretation is a text which must be read in order to understand its meaning’ (Abraham, 1976). In law, the ‘meaning is not found or revealed by a text, it is constructed from the text and is affected by the prior knowledge and understanding that readers bring with them to the text’ (McIver, Jr., Birdsall, and Rasmussen, 2003).
The enunciation of a human right is a rhetorical statement of principle, not a statement that can address every circumstance that can arise over time and place. Thus, the meaning of a right will arise over time through political debate, legislative action, and judicial interpretation. In this context, the law itself can be seen as an open work.
Controlled disorder
Eco’s concept of a text as an open ended, ambiguous work in progress reinforces an alternative path to the traditional philosophical-legal efforts to delineate a RTC. While advocating an open work concept of the RTC, it is important to keep in mind that Eco’s concept of the open work does not deny that texts have a ‘controlled disorder’ (his emphasis, Eco 1989: 65). Likewise, while early advocates of a RTC cautioned against moving too fast to a definition, nonetheless, they did try to provide a framework for considering such a right.
Jean d’Arcy saw a RTC as the crown of an ascending progression of freedoms (of opinion, of expression, of press, to communicate) that formed a fabric achieved through a people’s historical struggle at the national level (d’Arcy 1983: xxvi). In his discussion of a RTC as ‘an open concept’ Stan Harms set out a ‘working formulation’ whose components included existing rights enunciated in the UDHR as well as the possibility of new communication rights. He proposed a framework ‘…to provide the amount of structure required to focus and refine the concept, and, at the same time, to keep the concept open to new content’ (Harms 1978: 3).
As well, Desmond Fisher warned that, ‘It is hardly sufficient to introduce an important new concept like the right to communicate, declare it to be a basic human right, and expect it to be as generally and exactly understood as are other rights – to life, to liberty, to freedom of expression – that have been discussed for centuries and embodied for decades in a wide range of national and international instruments’ (91). To aid discussion of a RTC, Fisher proposed a framework consisting of a hierarchy of rights, freedoms, responsibilities, and entitlements (100; Fisher, 1982).
Jim Richstad, a colleague of d’Arcy, Harms, and Fisher, looking back to the early RTC discussions, notes that all the pioneers recognized that formulating and achieving a RTC could take decades but such a right should be within a structure that embodies participatory, interactive, horizontal, and multi-way communication. (Richstad, 2003).
Each of these individuals, then, recognized the need to keep the discussion of a RTC open to research, debate, and experience while providing a general framework within which to contain a ‘controlled disorder’. Nonetheless, some will feel threatened by an approach to a RTC that sees ambiguity as a virtue. Therefore, it is instructive to examine briefly the form of the rhetoric of accepted statements of human rights. What we find is that they are decidedly ambiguous.
The drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) were pioneers in the exercise of defining universal human rights in a global context and yet their work has endured to the extent that the UDHR has almost attained the status of international law. The drafting committee, consisting of representatives from a variety of cultural and political backgrounds, strove to formulate a statement of rights as concise as possible (Morsink, 1999). For example, Article 19 on free speech states:
‘Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression: this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.’
Other statements of free speech rights are similarly concise. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that everyone has the fundamental ‘freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication.’ The US Bill of Rights states that ‘Congress shall make no law …abridging freedom of speech.’ The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen states, ‘The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.’
Similar concise statements can be found in the constitutions of other nations (Fisher, 1977). As we see, ambiguity is the norm in international and national rights instruments. This ambiguity is a recognition that the definition of rights is forged through political processes over time in response to local needs.
The local struggle for human rights
The early pioneers of a RTC saw the need for experiment and research at the local level. They recognized human rights arise out of the confluence of a universal vision and struggle at the local level. Harvard law professor, Alan Dershowitz, argues that rights are not God given or natural rights but arise out of peoples’ response to wrongs confronting them. Dershowitz recognizes that ‘…arguments about rights tend to be made at levels of abstraction that maximize their persuasiveness and minimize their inconsistency’ (Dershowitz 2004: 190).
Echoing d’Arcy and his colleagues, Dershowitz advocates taking a pragmatic, bottom-up approach to entrenching rights through political processes at the national level that address real wrongs in the context of the time and place. He declares ‘Virtually every newly recognized right – whether it be the right to leave a country or the right to marry a person of the same sex – has been invented by human beings based on the wrongs they experienced or observed.’ He makes a convincing case that ‘This dynamic process will continue until the end of human existence’ (191).
Based on the failure over a period of thirty years to achieve agreement on defining a RTC, the Canadian constitutional lawyer Merrilee Rasmussen asserts:
‘It is now clear that the right to communicate cannot be defined in specific terms, but must be understood … more generically so that it can adapt to the fast pace of changing technology. It is also clear that the generic nature of a right to communicate can only attain specific meaning in the context of individuals and communities’ (Rasmussen 2004, 137).
A cultural-rhetorical approach suggests that a RTC should be advanced at the international level that is concise but deliberately open to interpretation. A RTC as an open work will be more specifically defined and implemented at the national level in accordance with national needs and culture. This approach acknowledges that while rights rhetoric may be stated in general terms, the implementation and interpretation of a right can differ from country to country and over time, reflecting the ongoing unique ‘rights talk’ of a nation (Glendon, 1991).
Conclusion
The international enunciation of a general vision of a right can play a valuable role in advancing human rights at the national level, as demonstrated by the impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. However, in the end, human rights must be entrenched at the national level and will only happen if there is bottom-up political struggle and political will at the national level for such a right. The pioneers of a RTC recognized the need for research and experience at the local and regional level that addresses real situations. It is only recently that a younger generation of scholars is undertaking such work. As an example, Aliaa Dakroury is examining specific current Canadian public policy issues in the context of a right to communicate (Dakroury 2005a; Dakroury 2005b). Carolyn Cunningham explores the digital divide in the United States within a RTC framework (Cunningham, 2005).
At the present time, when there is international debate over the meaning and implications of globalization, multi-culturalism, individual and collective intellectual property rights, the commodification of information, and the concentration of mass media ownership, a culturally sensitive, open-ended RTC strategy is more relevant than ever before.
As people gain a better understanding at the local level how these developments can impinge on their privacy, compromise their intellectual freedom, deny access to information and participation in communication, and foster media concentration, a critical mass of issues will drive the need for a RTC at the national level. It is then that citizens will look to the vision of a RTC as an open work that can be interpreted in response to their national needs.
References
Abraham, Kenneth S. (1976). ‘Reading Law and Reading Literature’. ALSA Newsletter. (November 1976): http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/lpop/etext/lsf/abraham1.htm
Bullen, Dana (2002). ‘Advocating a “Right to Communicate”.’ In New Code Words for Censorship: Modern Labels for Curbs on the Press. World Press Freedom Committee, Reston, Virginia. Pp. 93-97.
Burke, Kenneth (1969). A Grammar of Motives. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cukier, Kenneth N. (2005). ‘Who Will Control the Internet’. Foreign Affairs. 84 (November/December): http://tinyurl.com/dwsqu
Cunningham, Carolyn (2005). ‘The Right to Communicate: Democracy and the Digital Divide’. Paper presented at the Telecommunications Policy and Research Conference, September 24, 2005. http://tinyurl.com/azoor
d’Arcy, Jean (1969). ‘Direct Broadcast Satellites and the Right to Communicate’. In: Right to Communicate: Collected Papers. L. S. Harms, Jim Richstad, and Kathleen A. Kie. Editors. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1977. pp. 1-9. Originally published in EBU Review, 118 (1969): 14-18.
d’Arcy, Jean (1979). ‘The Right to Communicate’. In Crisis in International News: Policies and Prospects. Jim Richstad and Michael H. Anderson. Editors. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 117-136.
d’Arcy, Jean (1983). ‘An ascending progression’. In The Right to Communicate: a New Human Right. Desmond Fisher and L.S. Harms. Editors. Dublin: Boole Press. pp. xxi-xxvi.
Dakroury, Aliaa I. (2005a). ‘Who owns the medium owns the message? The ambiguity of the right to communicate in the age of convergence’. Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture. 5(Spring): http://www.reconstruction.ws/052/drakoury.shtml.
- Dakroury, Aliaa I. (2005b). ‘Whose right to communicate: Al-Jazeera or CRTC?’ Global Media Journal. 5(Fall): http://tinyurl.com/daxlr
- Dershowitz, Alan (2005). Rights From Wrongs: A Secular Theory of the Origins of Rights. New York: Basic Books.
Eco, Umberto (1979). A Theory of Semiotics. Bloomington, Indiana.
Eco, Umberto (1989). The Open Work. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Fisher, Desmond. n.d. ‘Right to communicate: a new beginning’.
http://tinyurl.com/a6tj7
Fisher, Desmond (1977). ‘The right to communicate: a philosophical framework for the debate’. In Evolving Perspectives on the Right to Communicate. Jim Richstad and L. S. Harms. Editors. Honolulu: East-West Communication Institute, pp. 89-103.
Fisher, Desmond (1982). The Right to Communicate: A Status Report. Paris: UNESCO.
Glendon, Mary Ann (1991). Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. New York: The Free Press.
Harms, L. S. (1978). ‘The Right to Communicate Concept. The Unesco Commission for the International Study of Communication Problems’. Papers submitted to the ‘MacBride Commission.’ Henry Hindley fonds. MG 30 E516, Vol. 6, File 6.5. Library and Archives Canada. Ottawa, Canada.
International Broadcast Institute. 1975. Memorandum concerning ‘Communication Rights and Duties. Henry Hindley fonds. MG 30 E516, Vol. 6, File 6.5. Library and Archives Canada. Ottawa, Canada.
International Broadcast Institute Working Group IV. Working Notes on Working Committee IV, IBI/Cologne, September, 1975. Henry Hindley fonds. MG 30 E516, Vol. 6, File 6.6. Library and Archives Canada. Ottawa, Canada.
Kuhlen, Rainer (2004). ‘Why are communication rights so controversial?’ Media Development. (3). http://www.wacc.org.uk/wacc/content/pdf/401
McIver, William J., Jr., William F. Birdsall, Merrilee Rasmussen (2003). The Internet and the Right to Communicate. First Monday, 8(December): http://firstmonday.dk/issues/issue8_12/mciver/index.html.
McKenna, Alan (2005). ‘The Concept of Participation in the Information Society: a Realisable Human Right, a Possible Legal Claim, or Mere Empty Rhetoric?’ Unpublished Ph. D. Thesis. Kent Law School, University of Kent, Canterbury.
Morsink, Johannes (1999). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Origins, Drafting, and Intent. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Rasmussen, Merrilee (2002). ‘Identity, culture and the right to communicate: Aboriginal peoples in the Canadian constitution’. http://www.righttocommunicate.org/collections.html.
Richstad, Jim (2003). ‘Right to communicate in the Internet age’. In Claude-Jean
Bertrand. Editor. An Arsenal for Democracy: Media Accountability Systems.
Hampton Press, Cresskill, NJ.
United Nations (1986). Setting international standards in the field of human rights. General Assembly. Resolutions. http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/41/a41r120.htm.
United States (2003). World Press Freedom Committee Response to State Department’s Request for Comments on WSIS Documents. U. S. Department of State. http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/othr/20101pf.htm.
William F. Birdsall (PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison) held a number of senior university library administrative positions including University Librarian, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia. He is currently a library consultant including recently serving as the Principle Investigator of the Canadian Association of Research Libraries study: ‘Optimizing the Transformation of Knowledge Dissemination: Towards a Canadian Research Strategy.’ Contact:
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
|
