3rd-world communications an issue for UNESCO

Proposals for improving poor countries' communications and helping them put over their news and views may be the hottest issues at a UNESCO conference opening Tuesday. Debate on these issues and on the rights and responsibilities of the mass media have raged within the organization for more than a decade, with struggles between advocates of Western-style press freedom and supporters of government controls for ideological purposes.

One proposal -- an international communications program, to be directed by a 35-nation intergovernmental council -- seems certain to receive overwhelming backing from developing countries, which may regard it as a step toward what they describe as a new world information order to end domination of communications by rich industrial states.