The range of such discourse was aoplified with the transition from British to American world hegemony.The American agencies had resisted and eventually defeated the cartel practices of the old ring combination,of which Reuters was the cynosure.The American agencies propagated effectively the models of both co-operative and private ownership which,they claimed,would guarantee unbiased news (see,for example,Cooper,1942).They preached the Department,and which contributed to the formation of the `free flow of information` doctrine later adopted by the UN,and which informed the UN`s activity in the sphere of communications (Schiller,1976).In practice,it has been argued,the doctrine supported the rights of western media,especially those of the US,UK and France,to continue distributing their media products throughout the world,while most countries of the world lacked the means to establish any kind of reciprocity of influence.Even national agencies in the communist block,set up for the purpose of preventing the intrusion of western ideas,still subscribed to the services of the major western agencies.
The UN,through UNESCO,consistently endeavoured to encourage the spread and development of national news agencies,and of news-exchange arrangements between them,especially during the great wave of independence in Africa during the 1960s.Setting up a national news agency became one of the essential things,part of the `script`,of what it meant to be a `nation`.Through a national news agency,a state could lay down information links domestically and internationally which would facilitate the generation and exchange of news.National news agencies became the natural local business partners for the western-based international agencies:they provided a conduit,albebit government controlled,through which international news could be funnelled to local media,and domestic news released to the wider world.All this was assumed to contribute to national formation and national development although these assumptions were rarely tested.