Critics have noted a heavy imbalance in the control of publishing and non-print media – in scholarship, art, commerce and journalism alike – favouring the industrialized nations. UNESCO's ‘New World Information Order’, launched in 1978, was an early attempt to adjust the imbalance. By the 1980s the problem was being acknowledged, even in the news industry. However, proponents of the New World Information Order were unable to envisage anything but a Soviet-style statist solution, and this led to the withdrawal from UNESCO of the US in 1984, followed by the UK, citing anti-Western bias. With the introduction of new, more powerful and intrusive media, the gap between information haves and have-nots is expected to widen. Some prospect for change is offered by the increasing influence in the world arena of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with information. NGOs such as IFLA and FID carry out many joint projects with UNESCO. A coalition of several such bodies will present a symposium in January 1997 on the economics of global information, with special reference to the Internet. Now that the future of unregulated capitalism to achieve a just information order has been widely acknowledged, and the statist solution has been discredited, library and information associations are turning to the NGO solution.
