By NNN-APP,
New York : Stating that developing countries are routinely stigmatized by the developed world’s media, Pakistan has called for the creation of an Information Communication Technology (ICT) framework to serve as a “credible alternative” to the current one-directional system.
“The developed world’s near complete monopoly in this field has enabled it to aggressively promote, project and impose its world-view and values on the rest of humanity whose ability to present their side of the story is hamstrung by the ICT differential,” Shafqat Jalil, the Pakistani delegate, told an internal conference at Margarita Island in Venezuela on Friday.
“Countries from the South are often targeted by smear campaigns designed to coerce them into acquiescence over important policy matters,” he said in a speech to the 7th Nonaligned Information Ministers Conference, which was opened by President Hugo Chavez on July 2.
“Such propaganda even colours the perception of the peoples of developing countries about each other,” he noted. “The developing countries’ rebuttals or denials seldom get the focus that the contentious stories get. The true picture of the South that exists beyond the smokescreens as well as the ideas and aspirations of its people remain obscured.”
Referring to the series of parallel crises “financial, food, energy, environment” afflicting the developing countries, Jalil said, “Our media must highlight the perspective of developing countries on these challenges and initiate a global debate towards finding equitable solutions.
“We firmly believe that NAM Member States can accomplish much more by putting together an intra-NAM strategy to pool resources in order to resist the inequitable global state of affairs in which developing countries are routinely stigmatized and viewed through the prism of the other side’s viewpoint,” the Pakistani delegate added.