I was among those who closely followed the proceedings of the 2023 Global South International Communications Forum and the Shanghai Academic Consensus and its call for a twenty-first-century New World Information and Communication Order. This order is obviously a reference to the original New World Information and Communication Order, which was adopted in 1980, based on the approval of what is called the MacBride Report. The MacBride Report was commissioned by UNESCO. A very eminent panel of journalists and intellectuals were involved in writing it, and it examined what it called the communication problems of the time. In fact, we have just crossed the 45th anniversary of its adoption as that happened during the UNESCO session in October 1980. The fact that it went completely unremarked on except maybe in this forum is a sign of the challenges we face and also the work before us.
It was a result of a long process, actually, this report. Because in the 1960s and 1970s, there was an attempt by countries of the Global South to build an alternative in the field of communications. This was especially through concrete collaboration between news agencies of Global South countries with a key moment being the formation of the Pool of Press Agencies of the Non-Aligned Countries. By 1981, 87 organisations were working together to exchange 40,000 words per day in four languages. But this was not just the exchange of information because they were building a process. The complementary efforts of the Non-Aligned Movement and the socialist bloc produced a process which analysed the material conditions in which information was produced and disseminated and sought to build alternatives. The MacBride Report is a great example because what it does is it examines every aspect of communication: who controls what you call the hardware, who trains the journalists, how is the unevenness in information affecting us, the fact that AFP, AP and Reuters still control so much of our information, what role do communities play in creating and producing and consuming news. It examined all of these aspects and came up with very concrete recommendations and solutions to build a freer, more just, more effective and better balanced international communications system. Reading the report today is an interesting experience. One is struck both by the idealism and the concreteness of the report and while some aspects, especially those about technology are outdated, other bits of analysis and recommendations are incredibly relevant.
So today in Shanghai, when you're talking about building a new order for this century, we need to also construct a similar process. And in this context, I'm trying to ask a few questions.
One of the key aspects of the Shanghai Academic Consensus, which is very important, is the question of building a united international communications front in solidarity against imperialism and neocolonialism. Over the past few years, we've seen this united front in action when journalists from the Global South, especially brave Palestinian journalists, are fighting back against western narratives, against western propaganda.
But in addition to that, we also need to ask some structural questions. Let me tell you a story. In the morning Kambale mentioned the undersea cables. Many of you may have heard about the 600-odd undersea cables that are responsible for 90% of internet traffic in the world today. Now there are only four or five companies in the world which have the ability to lay down these cables under the sea. In 2023, a news report came which talked about a particular huge and massive cable called SeaWeMe-6 undersea cable.
The Chinese company HMN Tech was supposed to get the contract for that cable, because of the fact that they offered a much cheaper price than the US company SubCom. But soon it turned out they did not get the contract. So what happened? US government officials went to the various companies involved in this cable project and warned members of the consortium of sanctions on the pipeline and offered them training grants, leading to a split among the consortium members and SubCom ultimately bagging the project. They gave inducements, they offered money, they spent millions of dollars to make sure that the Chinese company HMN Tech did not get the contract for the SeaWeMe-6 cable. This was not a commercial decision. This is a strategic decision, because the United States actually had an inter-agency initiative called Team Telecom. What was Team Telecom's goal? It was to make sure that undersea cables that reach the United States did not pass through China.
As of 2023, Team Telecom has disrupted four plans for undersea cables including those supported by Google, Meta, and Amazon. They would go to companies, they forced Google, they forced Meta to actually reroute the cables so that these cables don't come to or do not pass through China. This is a very important question for us to think about and address.
Let's take another example. One thing that Kambale mentioned is the internet blackout that took place in Africa last year. In March 2024, damage to undersea cables affected internet connectivity in many parts of Africa causing disruption to a cross-section of people. A question before these countries was what could be done to avoid such disruptions. The Ghanaian government's solution seems to have been granting a license to Elon Musk's Starlink with the following months seeing a spike in the number of Starlink connections. The person who benefited from that blackout was Elon Musk, because his Starlink got their license much more quickly. A huge number of people in many countries registered for Starlink.
When we are talking about building a united front against imperialism and neocolonialism through communication, we need to ask these questions. We are already talking about the platforms. We're already talking about Google and YouTube and Facebook. But we need to centre this question in our coverage, in our analysis about who controls the cables and satellites. That's very important. Discussions in many of these countries focused on the need for better resilience and digital sovereignty. It is clear however that unless the people have a say and a stake in the spine of the global communications network, these discussions will remain only theoretical. In the space of communications, the questions before us is how we extend our understanding of imperialism to the realm of technology and make it a core part of our coverage. The US-launched trade wars and the tech wars are also fundamentally communication wars.
Now the second question has to do with AI. There was a discussion about it in the morning. I found it very interesting and useful. I'm not going to talk about some of the concerns which are often talked about. The loss of jobs - it's a big issue, we need to talk about it. Hallucinations - again, a problem we can address. I'm looking at some of the positives. Now, it is undeniable that because of AI, there will be a huge increase in the number as well as depth of articles, videos, content. But I think from the Global South, we need to see the question of AI as not just a tool of content production, but a tool of content distribution as well.
An entire generation of people is not only using AI for information, but as a way of making sense of the world. Their social political formation is happening through AI. It means that when young people use it to ask personal questions, political questions, ideological questions, it's no longer like social media where we could set up our own accounts and try to push back. That's no longer possible. AI is a black box. What do media of the Global South do in a situation like this?
It's very important. Because, in a country like India where I come from, companies like Google and OpenAI, are offering their advanced models free for a year. OpenAI, Google, Perplexity are all giving advanced models free for one year for Indian customers. You can soon see that companies like OpenAI, just like Facebook and Google did, will go to policy makers and try to influence AI policy in all these countries. How do we as media of the Global South address this at a time when we don't have the ability to influence content creation?
I think the answer lies in something Tica was talking about in the morning when she talked about the experiences in Brazil, which is that the process of constructing education about AI has to be something media organisations are also involved in. The process of introducing young people to AI as a tool is something media organisations also need to take up. I know it's one extra task when there are already so many tasks. But without that it is very difficult, because the media of the Global South loses the space. There's no chance for them to push their agenda. So unless we are able to work with young people as they use AI, try to integrate our points, try to make them aware of the biases, try to make them aware of how news can be consumed, what is communication - it's a very difficult task for us.
The final question is also something connected to the Shanghai Consensus, where there was a call for establishing international solidarity in communications theory and practice. What is solidarity in concrete terms? To me, solidarity is a way of expressing our shared humanity. The journalists from the west tend to see us as either an amorphous mass or as individuals. Like when a western journalist comes to a Global South country and interviews a taxi driver. We are either seen as an amorphous mass or as individuals. We are not seen as members of communities. We are not seen as members of organisations. We are not seen as people who are constantly and consistently in struggle, who are building projects. So when it comes to creating solidarity in concrete terms, I think it is important to uplift those stories of construction.
Something very interesting is happening in the Sahel region in Africa right now. The people in countries like Mali and Burkina Faso and Niger are, in the face of great violence, trying to construct a project of sovereignty. Now you won't find that in the media of the global north. But when we are reporting about it, we need to talk about it in the context of the organisations, the people who are working in those organisations, how they're working with the governments, what are they trying to construct, how are they evolving. That process is so vitally important.
And I'd like to really point out the work done by my friends and colleagues in Peoples Dispatch and also Brasil de Fato, who have actually tried to do exactly that, who have tried to see the processes that are going on in the Sahel. What is their vision? What is the agenda? So that somebody sitting in Latin America or somebody sitting in the farthest corners of Asia sees those struggles and feels like this is my struggle, too. I think that kind of storytelling is very essential.
I'll probably end with a very similar story. Recently, the state I come from in India, Kerala, became the second region in the world after China to eliminate extreme poverty. It is a remarkable achievement in the face of great constraints. The State of Kerala is ruled by a government led by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) and this elimination of poverty was achieved after an extensive process of surveys, welfare measures, and community mobilisation.
The interesting thing is there was a lot of news coverage that came out after that, talking about the numbers, the schemes, the processes, all of which is very important. But the one story that struck me the most, which actually came in a mainstream organisation, was the story of a family. Both of them were visually challenged and they didn't have a house. They needed a house because they were in extreme poverty. They could not have that house because the land on which they were living was in the name of the man and his brother. Now, the problem was that the man's brother went missing 27 years ago. Nobody knew where he was. So as part of the drive to eliminate extreme poverty, government agencies, the community organisations, tracked the person and found him. They searched for the man, went to another province, finally found the man's brother working in a restaurant somewhere, brought him back, got him to sign. Then the house was built for the visually challenged family and their daughter. This anecdote, which appeared in a mainstream media outlet gave a minute yet powerful example of that process in action.
I think a story like that really brings in, in one small story, everything about a poverty alleviation drive: our aspirations, our humanity, our community, how we work, how governments and civil society and people work together. All of that so powerfully comes out. So when we are talking about such stories, I think it's very essential to bring them out.
I'll wind up now with just one last point, which is a line I really like by Antonio Gramsci, where he says that new intellectuals should be constructors, organizers and permanent persuaders. I think those three terms really define what we need to do as media of the Global South. Be constructors, organisers and permanent persuaders.
Thank you!
Watch the whole speech here: