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The Cold War battle over global news in East Africa: decolonization, the free flow of information, and the media business, 1960–1980*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 June 2015

James R. Brennan
James R. Brennan*
Affiliation:
Department of History, 810 South Wright Street, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the news business in Africa during decolonization. While UNESCO stimulated enormous discussion about creating independent ‘third world’ alternatives for news exchange, African countries such as Kenya and Tanzania sought to secure informational sovereignty by placing international news agencies within their control. Reuters and other international news agencies, in turn, adapted to decolonization by reinventing themselves as companies working to assist new nation-states. In the subsequent contest over news distribution, the Cold War, and inter-agency competition, Africa became a battleground for disputes between Reuters’ capitalist vision of news as a commercial product and UNESCO's political conception of news. Ironically, decolonization enabled Reuters to gain greater control over information supply across Africa, because African leaders viewed the capitalist model of news as better suited to their diplomatic goals and political views.

Keywords

communicationsdecolonizationEast AfricaReutersUNESCO
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , July 2015 , pp. 333 - 356
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

The author wishes to thank the guest editors, this journal's anonymous reviewers, and Jonas Brendebach for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article. The author also wishes to thank John Entwisle of Thomson Reuters for his invaluable archival assistance.

References

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32 UNESCO, News agencies, p. 65.

33 The contract is located in RA, 1/8713846.

34 RA, Central Registry Files (henceforth CRF), Box 157, C. J. Chancellor to H. L. Howarth, 17 April 1956; M. I. Fernandez to W. A. Cole, 4 January 1961; A. B. Nihill to Cole, 4 January 1961. The East African Standard Group, which paid £8,000 annually for its subscription during the mid–late 1950s, owned the East African Standard, the Mombasa Times, the Tanganyika Standard, and the Uganda Argus, each the ‘paper of record’ for the territory/colony.

35 RA, Box LN118, ‘Report to Board of Directors’, September 1962, p. 16.

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48 TNA, FO, 953/2043, R. Murray to J. H. A. Watson, 3 January 1961.

49 Boyd-Barrett, International news agencies, p. 178.

50 Read, Power of news, p. 339; RA, Box LN121, ‘Report of General Manager to Board of Directors’, 10 February 1965.

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52 RA, Oral History Collection, O/029, John Entwisle interview with Shahe Guebenlian, 13 November 1991.

53 Ibid.

54 RA, Box LN121, ‘Report of General Manager to Board of Directors’, 10 February 1965.

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58 RA, Box LN121, ‘Monthly report for Board of Directors meeting’, September 1963.

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60 RA, CRF, Box 157A, A. P. Crosse to General Manager, 18 May 1963; Guebenlian to General Manager, 12 November 1963; Crosse to Guebenlian, 14 November 1963.

61 RA, CRF, Box 157A, G. Lovell to Guebenlian, 30 September 1964. See Reuters’ 1974 proposal for Shihata in RA, 1/070291.

62 RA, CRF, Box 157A, Guebenlian to General Manager, 28 December 1964.

63 United States National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (henceforth NARA), Record Group (henceforth RG) 59, RAD 6 TANZAN, W. Leonhart to Department of State, 18 December 1964.

64 RA, CRF, Box 157, Guebenlian to C. Thetford, 11 November 1965.

65 RA, CRF, Box 157C, G. Lovell to J. Burgess, 14 October 1964.

66 RA, Box LN121, ‘Monthly report for Board of Directors meeting’, September 1963.

67 RA, CRF, Box 88B, Crosse to D. K. Rogers, 7 January 1964.

68 TNA, FO, 1110/1704, D. Sandys to M. MacDonald, 28 November 1963.

69 TNA, FO, 1110/1704, MacDonald to Sandys, 17 December 1963.

70 TNA, FO, 1110/1704, note on Kenya News Agency by the British Information Service, 13 December 1963.

71 TNA, FO, 1110/1704, J. R. E. Carr-Gregg to A. J. Brown, 14 December 1963.

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79 RA, CRF, Box 88B, J. T. Wolfe to General Manager, 10 March 1964; Guebenlian to General Manager, 3 November 1964 and 9 May 1966. Subscriptions typically ran at £12,000 p.a. for ‘developed’ African countries with a full-time Reuters staffer, and £5,000 p.a. for smaller countries without a full-time staffer. RA, Box LN118, ‘Report to Board of Directors’, May 1963, p. 7.

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88 RA, CRF, Box 157B, A. Hutchinson to M. Charvet, 19 Mary 1965. The Nationalist, unlike the Standard, also subscribed to AFP, AP, and UPI during the 1960s, although its circulation (8,000 daily) lagged behind that of the Standard (12,000 daily). RA, CRF, Box 157C, G. Lovell to J. Burgess, 14 October 1964.

89 ‘Future of our press’, Nationalist, 22 January 1966.

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104 Ibid., p. 67; Righter, Whose news?, p. 64.

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106 Ibid.

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110 RA, Box LN125, ‘Monthly report for Board of Directors meeting’, June 1975.

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