44

A history of UNESCO will likely establish a break between pre-1984 and post-1984–1985, when the United States and the United Kingdom left the agency. The event was quickly called the death knell for the New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) associated with the MacBride Report. Thirty years later, this report seems to have been erased from UNESCO’s institutional memory, as if the agency suffers from Werner syndrome. However, its spirit remains a full part of UNESCO’s animating philosophy. More than a NWICO, today the MacBride Report––cumbersome, ambiguous, dogmatic, and ultimately disqualified for calling for a structure as variable as possible that depends on the interests of actors––the MacBride Report merits attention a contrario: for the questions it raised, some of which remain current, and for the contradictory insights of the issues it offered. It came out of an early consensus conference and primarily reflected the audacity of an institution in which a worldwide public debate had found asylum. Temporarily.