IN JUNE 1978, Iranians in Tehran were coming out in massive demonstrations demanding the ousting of the Shah. Reporting on the news magazine TIME said: 'The Shah has a broad base of popular support, particularly in the army and a newly created industrial working class.'

During the next six months TIME was systematically contradicted. Iran was crippled by a succession of strikes by workers and security was paralyzed when a section of the army sided with the protestors. The Shah was exiled in January 1979.

The perception gap between Western reporting and Third World reality has perhaps never been better illustrated.

The abyss separating the two has become a subject of international debate among governments, politicians, journalists and proprietors of news agencies and newspapers. People from developing countries feel although they constitute the bulk of the world population, their news does not get enough space in Western newspapers. This press accounts for 62 per cent of the world's dailies. Most report on the immediate concerns of their public, not the problems of faraway countries. But global economics mean distant problems can come home to roost uncommonly quickly. The shutdown in the Iranian oil supply after the Shah's flight affected the lines at the pumps in New Jersey. Of course Western media should inform their readers more about the countries with which their food, their trade and their interests are so closely bound.

The news from the Third World that does make it into western newspapers tends to be a one-sided picture of misery, degradation and civil war, as if nothing else happens in that part of the world. Such editorial tendencies in the Western media look like an information apartheid. A 'newsprint wall' of indifference, ignorance and distortion is built up to keep the North and South apart.

But failure and dissension makes news, retort the Western newsmen. Gerald Long, the Managing Director of London's Times points out;'The prevalent school of journalism throughout the world is a journalism of exception. In other words, you don't report everything is fine today in Pakistan. You report when there has been an air crash.'

True, news items are usually chosen for their impact, ability to shock or entertain. But when applied to Africa, Asia and Latin America such a yardstick leads to a one-sided picture. Violent clashes in the streets of Paris splashed as a lead story will be noted with interest by readers who at the same time will not conclude that France is a country of perpetual violence. For they are aware of the other positive aspects of France - its culture, its political institutions, its economic development. It is not the same with a developing country, say in Africa. Day-to-day events of Senegal are hardly covered. A famine or civil war suddenly brings it into focus and can gravely distort the country's image.

The major news agencies of the West - Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International and Agence France Presse - who between them provide about 90 per cent of the total foreign news stories published, react defensively when accused of inadequate coverage of the Third World. 'We fail', says the Editor-in-Chief of UPI, H. Stevenson, 'to cover South Illinois for North Illinois. So what are we to do about Zaire?'

Learning to read between the lines in Marcos' controlled Philippines. Photo: Camera Press/Philip Boucas

Nevertheless the sense of injustice has prompted the developing countries to build up alternative and indigenous sources for disseminating news about their concerns. The Non-aligned News Pool is one such effort. The Inter Press Service is another. While the former is controlled by the governments of the non-aligned nations, the latter has been set up by a band of enterprising journalists determined to provide an alternative view of the Third World to readers both in the developing and developed countries.

Such efforts have been directed to readers of newspapers in the Third World - a South/South flow - so they learn about each other from each other instead of through the subjective filter of Western news agency reports.

Anyway, such newspapers cater to a smal minority. Literacy rates are low and readership is concentrated among the urban middle class and elite.

India is a typical example. The major dailies are owned by industrial houses - the Birlas, the Goenkas, the Jains who have business interests in a wide range of commodities from jute to electronics. When workers in their factories strike for higher wages, the event is blacked out or takes a tiny corner of a middle page. When the strike leads to a confrontation with the police, readers are bombarded with reports about 'workers disrupting production' and 'playing into the hands of extremists'. No explanation of why the strike occurred will sully the report. In other words, newspaper owners in India behave in the same way as Western news agencies - presentation of sensational news divorced from the historical and social context.

These industrial giants also put pressure on the government through their newspaper columns - employing editors known as 'rubber-stamps' willing to endorse whatever the owners dictate. Campaigns for reducing taxes on industrial houses, higher prices for their own products, licences for importing machines from the West and increased financial assistance from the government are all part of the editors' lobbying functions. Their influence on the government is not small. They corner about three-quarters of India's imported newsprint. A scarce commodity.

How is this newsprint used? The uninitiated would expect that it is used to print news, but studies have shown that the big newspapers devote 60 to 70 per cent of their space to advertisements and they account for up to 70 per cent of newspaper income. And so the tail wags the dog. 80 per cent of major advertisers are Western corporations who corner newsprint for the promotion of their produce. The press is little more than a vehicle for their message.

Lobbyists for their industrial owners depend on multinational advertisers for income and stories from Western news agencies - the Indian press is mediocre. But what is the alternative?

Admittedly nationalization of newspapers is not a happy substitute for private ownership. Along with India, many other third World governments often grope for increased control over the inflow and outflow of news in a bid to lessen the impact of 'biased' coverage by the West. At a symposium of non-aligned countries in 1976 the Director General of the Agence Zaire Press said that the role of journalists was 'help educate the masses and rally support for the government'.

In the face of economic failures and resulting mass protest movements, such governments frown on any criticism whether from the Right or the Left, from inside the country or overseas.

Indeed a large part of what the Western media projects about the Third World - hunger and poverty, state repression of the poor and political dissidents, communal conflict, corruption among the elite - does make up the stark reality. The ruling classes however, are quick to take offence whenever news of their failures are publicized. Both Western and local journalists, when they try honestly to depict this reality, have to face the brunt of the government offensive. Arnold Zeitlin, the Associated Press correspondent, was expelled from the Philippines in November 1976 when he wrote about how the government there was ruthlessly suppressing the Moro ethnic minority in Mindanao province. A Pakistani, Salamat Ali, was thrown behind bars when he wrote about a similar problem - the fate of the Baluchi ethnic minority in his homeland at the hands of the Pakistani soldiers. The socialist world is no better. In China the Reuters correspondent was held in house imprisonment for 27 months for having written critically about the Cultural Revolution.

The use of the media as an instrument for rallying the people for development, initiated at the beginning of socialist reconstruction both by Russia and China, has today degenerated into tight government control. As a result newspapers turn editorial somersaults following changes in state policy, rarely reflecting the opinion of the person-in-the street. What does the ordinary Russian feel about the Afghanistan adventure? How do the Chinese feel about the opening up of their country to Western technology and consumerism? Rest assured, Pravda and the Peking Daily will not give you the answers.

When looking for a flow of authentic and accurate information both within the developing countries and between them, there is little to choose between the private and government controlled press.

Read all about it! Lima, Peru. Photo: Camera Press

In fact the press might not be the right vehicle at all - altogether too elitist, too easy to control, too expensive to run. For literacy is low in many Third World countries, thus putting a limit to the papers' outreach. Running a newspaper or a magazine, however modest, is capital intensive. It needs a press, newsprint and other expensive inputs. For income it will have to depend on advertisements - mostly from business or government. Editors are few and easy to lean on.

In many countries vigorous efforts are being made to look for alternatives, more humble and capable of reflecting the problems and aspirations of toiling people. Posters and writings on walls are being used in parts of Asia for conventional journalistic purposes. The Wall of Democracy in Peking provided Chinese villagers with an opportunity to voice grievances which did not appear in the established dailies. That wall has been closed down but the practice has caught on. In the Philippines, the Moalboal Times is a daily newspaper 'printed' on a chain of 25 blackboards, expressing the interests of common folk.

Songs too, are useful. Most regions have a rich tradition of folk songs that easily adapt to modern themes. Thus in Sri Lanka, the 'Kavikola Karaya', or the seller of folk ballads has been a common feature at bus stands and village gatherings. Corruption in the village administration, nepotism of local politicians, links with the ruling powers can be exposed through such verses which help the villagers to identify their enemies.

Similarly in India, groups of young social reformers are drawing upon the traditional rural theatre to get across their message to the poor. The folk form of 'Yatra' in Bengal - an open-air informal dramatic performance, the 'Katha' of Andhra Pradesh - a folk theatre with a narrator and two or three performers; these are some of the village-based traditional media being used to explore local problems and convey something of the struggles of people in other parts of the Third World. 'Yatras' on Vietnam, Chile, Cuba draw crowds in far-flung villages of Bengal.

One of the important advantages of such alternative media is the participation of the audience in formulating the message. In the established media like newspapers, the message or information is handed down from the top, usually an office in the cities, to the people below. Readers are little more than passive consumers. On the other hand, practitioners of the alternative media can choose subjects for a play in consultation with the audience. It can be a burning problem of the locality like a dispute over a plot of land, or the misdeeds of the local bully, above all it can have relevance and interest.

This is what Bertolt Brecht meant when he spoke of the need for restructuring modern mass media communication from a one-way flow to a two-way flow (from the people to the people).

If the aim of the New International Information Order is to ensure a balanced flow of accurate information, these alternative groups - independent of both commercial interests and government control - can make a great contribution, although at present in a fledgling state, such alternative media can play an important role in the transformation of the Third World.

'If you consider this type of communication to be utopian,' Bertolt Brecht once remarked 'I ask you to think about the question why you think it to be utopian.'

ALTERNATIVE NEWS AND FEATURES is a group of social activists, acadenics and journalists in India who are unhappy with the present information flow. Through their monthly despatches them provide alternative material on topics ignored by the dominant media, to small Indian newspapers as well as other interested journals, institutions and individuals. Further details of their service available from Baljit Malik, ANF, 4A Bhagwan Dass Road, New Delhi - 11001, India.