Montreal, September 1968: The Meeting of Experts We Almost

Never Heard About. Taking A Look Back at a Peculiar Report.

Franois Yelle, ICA, 2008

Abstract:

Montreal, September 1968, a special Unesco round table is held on mass media and
culture. It took three years before Unesco decide to release the document entitled Essais
sur les mass media et la culture. The round table was held a year before the well-known
Montreal Meeting of Experts and since 1969, it literally disappeared from the
literature in international communication research. As a matter of fact, this author has
not been able to find any reference to the Essais, in French or in English. Still, some of
the participants were then celebrities: Edgar Morin, Stuart Hall, Pierre Schaeffer.
Schaeffer was even named, in 1971, the president of the research commission of the
important International Council of Cinema and Television, an NGO in the Unesco
network. This paper goes back to this event that happened forty years ago, explores
what was said in the Essais, and tries to reconstruct its context.
Keywords: Unesco; Montreal; 1968; media theory history

Foreword

As researchers, we usually present communications that concern our day-to-day

work the work we get funding for and the main topic our colleagues usually associate
with us. Its not that I dont do historical work, though Im not a historian. I have in fact
been exploring historical matters for a few years now, looking at the evolution of meta-
discourses on communication studies in Canada, and more recently, on discourses about
media and mass culture in French-Canadian intellectual journals, from 1940 to 1970. As
you can see, Im interested in the history of ideas, particularly concerning
communication studies. This is why I set aside my regular work to examine a report that
I found by accident while writing my doctoral thesis a few years ago. Since then, I have
taught many courses, but those on communication and globalization, and the history of
communication studies, always bring me back to this peculiar document, in part for a
peculiar reason: I have not yet found any comments about its existence, except in
French-languageand occasionally English-languageworld academic libraries. The
report, from a round table held in 1968 in Montreal, was published by Unesco in 1971
and is entitled Essais sur les mass media et la culture1.

I intend here to present this report, to situate it in its disciplinary and political
contexts, and to examine its content and positions. At present, I have not been able to
make contact with the two participants who are still alive, but I do hope they will
answer my calls before next May. Unfortunately, I will not be able to consult Unesco
archives in Paris, nor those of participants who are deceased. My work is modest, as are
my intentions, but I perceive an opportunity to return to that recent timeand long lost
spiritwhen communications and media studies were emerging throughout the non-
American world, ten years after Berelsons famous death sentence, to reflect on the non-
event this report is now, and probably was then.

1- Presentation of the document Essais sur les mass media et la culture, Unesco,
Paris, 1971, 119 pages.

a) Its publication

The foreword is laconic: the document originated in a series of round tables, the
last on a September day in 1968 in Montreal, Quebec, in which nine experts
participated; their contributions are what make up the report. The reader will learn no
more, and will have to keep his questions for himself: how many round tables? When
did the process begin? Who or what was behind the formula? Who participated in the
previous encounters?

Lets go on. The last sentence of the foreword is unusual for a Unesco
publication of the time: Les opinions exprimes sont celles des auteurs et ne sauraient
engager lUnesco. (p. 5)2 First, it is important to clarify one point: it is not a document
from the Reports and Papers on Mass Communication series, which at the time was up
to 59 volumes. The cover, with black and orange letters on a deep grey background,
with Unesco in white on the bottom right border, reminds me of the pants my mother
bought me for Sunday Mass. Let me say that the pride I felt in my youth, wearing those
pants, was much easier to show than the embarrassment the well-known Pierre
Schaeffer reveals in the first paragraph of his Introduction to the document (I will return
1
In English: Essays on mass media and culture; its Unesco code is: 1971 SHC.70/D.62/F.
2
Translation: The opinions expressed are those of the contributors-authors and they do not engage
necessarily reflect the position of Unesco.
to this point later). Second, instead of being published in the months immediately
following the Montreal meeting, the volume only came out three years later. Yes, there
was at least one precedent 3, but the precise subject of that 1968 round table, a reflection
on mass communication research and the development of mass media around the world,
was at the time considered a matter of urgency for Unesco! As a matter of fact, at the
15th General Conference of Unesco, held two months later in Paris, the members of the
assembly authorized the organization to explore the field of communication studies, a
decision that led to the creation of a panel of experts mandated to reflect on the subject 4.
This new panel, often referred to as a watershed in international communication
research, was to take place in June 1969, again in Montreal.

b) Its participants

Essais sur les mass media et la culture contains one introduction and six
chapters. Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), who wrote the introduction, is known as the
inventor of musique concrte or musique lectro-acoustique in the late forties, and at the
time was director of the research department of the ORTF and professor at the CNSM in
Paris5. He participated in the round table and seems to have been designated its
rapporteur (he wrote the introduction), but we have no information confirming that he
played that role.

The participants accompanying Schaeffer were:

French sociologist Edgar Morin (1921- ), co-founder of three important

journals was considered one of the major intellectuals in France and the
Latin countries. I will return to Morin later;

Jamaican-born Stuart Hall, at the time director of the CCCS6 at the

University of Birmingham, and considered since the eighties as one of
the most eminent thinkers in cultural studies;

3
The document COM.66/D.64, entitled Communication in the Space Age: the Use of Satellites by the
Mass Media, was published in 1968, but resulted from a meeting held in Paris in 1965.
4
Nordenstreng, 1994; Halloran, 1997.
5
Schaeffer founded the Service de recherche of the ORTF and directed it from 1960 to 1975. The ORTF,
Office de la radiodiffusion et de la tlvision franaise, was the state institution (with both legislative and
executive powers) overseeing radio and television stations in France; the CNSM is a university-level
institution, specialized in research, as is the CNRS.
6
CCCS stands for The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. The Centre was founded by Richard
Hoggart in 1962.
 Tahar Cheriaa, who was then the director of cinema for the Tunisian
Ministry of Information, a consultant for Unesco between 1963 and
1974, and in the view of many specialists, the foremost expert on African
cinematography7;

Jerzy Toeplitz (1910-1995), who was still in 1968 the rector of the Lodz
Film School in Poland (his students included the filmmakers Andrzej
Wajda [Man of Steel; Man of Marble] and Roman Polanski [Rosemarys
Baby; Chinatown]), before being expelled by the government a few
weeks after the round table. He then moved to Australia where he held a
similar position until 1979, when he returned to Poland 8.

A small delegation from South America led by Rud de Andrade,

accompanied by Luis Pico Estrada and Daniel Hopen, on whom I could
find no information;

and finally, Roy T. Affleck (1922-1989), an important Canadian

architect, whose works are much present in Montreal (e.g. Place
Bonaventure, Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier), and who was celebrated for his
design of two major pavilions for the Montreal Exposition of 1967, Man
and His World.

The composition of this panel is perhaps surprising: there was no one from the
United States (hard to explain considering that at the time, communication studies were
American!); no Canadian experts in communication studies (Father OBrien, who
founded the first communication department in Canada in 1965 in Montreal, hadnt yet
received the call from Radio-Vatican; Dallas Smythe, a leading figure in Illinois, could
easily have been invited); and no one from the Nordic countries (they later played an
important role in subsequent Unesco panels on media studies). Most intriguing, in my
view, is the absence of representatives from, or intellectuals with, the IAMCR, which at
the time was the only international organization in media studies and also had close ties
with Unesco9. However, still in September 1968, Kaarle Nordenstreng was meeting
James Halloran in Salzburg, inviting him to join the IAMCR; a few weeks later,

7
Institut du Monde Arabe: www.imarabe.org; consulted in September 2007.
8
The New York Times, August 7, 1995: www.nytimes.com
9
IAMCR stands for the International Association in Mass Communication Research. The IAMCR was
founded in 1957. At the time (1968), the ICA was still named the NSSC, which stands for National
Society for the Study of Communication.
Halloran, director of the Centre for Mass Communication Research at the University of
Leicester was appointed by Unesco to write what would become the working paper
for the 1969 panel of experts in Montreal10. In 1972, James Halloran was elected as the
new president of the IAMCR, a position he kept until 1990.

c) Its introduction

Now lets consider Pierre Schaeffers introduction to the volume. His malaise is
revealed by the title he gave to this essai de synthse, and by its first two sentences. The
title was a two-headed beast, Pour une recherche dans les mass media ou Limpact du
cinma et de la tlvision sur le dveloppement contemporain (For a study of mass
media, or The impact of cinema and television on contemporary development). The
second title is not the logical development of the first, and the ou is not there to
propose a semantic equality; no, here the ou means that the author was still uncertain
about what title he could or should give to the piece. Schaeffers first sentence supports
this ambivalence: Le premier de ces titres indique mon approche personnelle dun
problme autrement insoluble (p. 9)11. The second title attempts to reconcile the
disparity inherent in the volume, and I think was not his best effort. However, I would
suggest that the first title be read as expressing what, in Schaeffers mind, that round
table should have been about in the first place. It is not by chance that Schaeffer seems
to have preferred Stuart Halls contribution over some of the others 12: Halls text, based
on the CCCS works of the time (which were oriented toward a comprehension of the
media transmission of culture outside the moral and static opposition of elite culture
versus mass culture) puts forward a reflection in which television is considered an
active cultural agent. It is important to remember that the CCCS members 13 were at
the time concerned with an emerging new multicultural reality in England and the
political and social redefinition of common values. Hey, it was the sixties! And I think
Schaeffers interest in Halls text derives precisely from its effort to propose a new
10
The working paper was titled Mass Communication in Society and constitutes the first part of the 1970
Unesco Report, N59, known as Mass Media in Society. The Need for Research.
11
Translation: The first of these titles indicates my personal approach to a problem that would otherwise
be unsolvable.
12
My personal interpretation is based on Schaeffers words: 1- Ils [the Birmingham experts] sont les
premiers, notre connaissance, honorer ce vaste problme dun dbut dapproche mthodologique. 2-
Au terme donc de ce progrs de la pense, qui consiste prfrer le schma fluant de Birmingham au
petit train de la culture, on trouve un problme autrement embarrassant.. p. 13.
13
Here are some of them in the late sixties: P. Cohen, P. Whannel, D. Hobson, D. Hebdige, P. Willis, and
of course S. Hall and R. Hoggart.
conceptualization of the cultural phenomenon of television, instead of yet another
enumeration of existing studies and paradigms in media studies. As for Schaeffers
second title, well, it tries to incorporate what Toeplitz did for Eastern Europe and what
Cheriaa did for the Arab world: first, a long enumeration of existing institutions in film
production and distribution; second, the effects and functions of cinema in their
respective worlds. It is important to stress that at the time, especially in the Arab world,
the television set was still an objet de luxe, while the first Arabic film was produced in
the early thirties14. And in Eastern Europe (Hungry, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland,
Yugoslavia, etc.) television was introduced very slowly, so that what Toeplitz defines as
mass culture, mainly TV-oriented, only started, as he says, in the early sixties15.

For the moment, let me set aside the South American contribution and Afflecks
off-topic paper; I will come back to them later.

d) Schaeffers discomfort

Lets continue with Schaeffers introduction, now that weve considered its title.
His second sentence clearly reveals Schaeffers position about the round table: his
introduction, he writes, is as objective as it should and could be, considering the fact
that the papers and their positions are almost impossible to reconcile or organize
coherently16, a situation not unrelated to the fact that the collection was published three
years after the Montreal event.

Inextricable confusion, indeed. We cant say Schaeffer didnt try to warn the
reader. Did he try to prevent publication of the volume? Or was the volume published
thanks to him, since he was involved in the Paris Experts Panel of 1971? 17

Well, it is hard to tell from here, but note that Schaeffer was chosen, that same
year, as the new president of the research commission of the Unesco International

14
Cheriaa, p. 78.
15
Toeplitz, p. 85.
16
He wrote: De plus, on trouvera dans les pages qui suivent lessai dune synthse ordonne et aussi
objective que possible des positions exprimes par divers experts internationaux et dont linextricable
enchevtrement semble avoir, jusquici, frein lutilisation. Schaeffer, p. 9 (my emphasis). (Translation:
Moreover, in the following pages I attempt to provide a methodical synthesis, as objective as possible, of
the positions expressed by various international experts, positions whose inextricable confusion has
apparently made them, so far, impossible to use.)
17
Which gave birth to the famous Proposals for an International Programme of Communication Research
(1971).
Council on Cinema and Television18. That probably made it easier to publish the
document That said, lets try to better understand why Schaeffer considered this
collection of essays so disputable.

Edgar Morins text is concerned with the necessity to reintegrate media studies
into the larger sociology of mass culture. Having recognized American media studies as
the most fruitful branch of American sociology during the forties and fifties 19, Morin
suggests that we seriously consider more recent studies that reveal, he writes, the new
spirit of the times20. Morin wishes us to consider mass culture as a system of its own,
forming part of the larger social system. He affirms the importance of going beyond the
Lasswell formula, to consider all elements of the formula as being inter-related.

With the exception of McLuhan, about whom he writes five pages, Morins
development on the new currents only presents French thinkers and approaches. These
are the now-forgotten sociodynamic model of Abraham Moles (1920-1992)21, Lvi-
Strausss structuralism, Barthess semiotics, Burgelins structural analysis, Barthess
visual analysis and Metzs structural film analysis. Though Morin closes his
development by exposing the limits of semiotics and calling for a cultural anthropology,
he is standing in the eye of the European structuralist/post-structuralist hurricane that
was blowing at the time22.

18
The Council was created for Unesco by J-B. Lvy in 1958. The Council is an NGO, member of the
Unesco network.
19
Edgar Morin co-founded the first French scientific journal about communication and media,
Communications, in 1960, with the sociologist Georges Friedmann (1902-1977) and the semiotician
Roland Barthes (1915-1980). At the CNRS, they create a Centre de culture et de communication, which
they later renamed Centre dtudes interdisciplinaires. Morins comment on American media studies of
the 40-50s was quite sincere: Communications published the first French translations of Lazarsfeld,
Wiebe, Katz, Riesman, but also Adorno & Horchheimer, in the sixties. Here is the site of the journal
Communications at the cole des Hautes tudes en sciences sociales, Paris:
www.ehess.fr/centres/cetsah/Communications/com.html.
20
In 1962, Morin published a book entitled Lesprit du temps (spirit of the times) that is a collection of
his sociological studies of mass culture since 1952.
21
Both an engineer and a philosopher, Moles wrote many books and introduced Shannon and Weaver in
France. His most important book is the one Morin refers to: Sociodynamique de la culture, La Haye:
Mouton, 1967.
22
Morins encounter with cybernetics, through Moless works, would lead him in 1969 to California on
the invitation of the Salk Institute [www.salk.edu/] in San Diego. Discovering within a few months
systemic theory, hippies, genetics, free love and the less hierarchical habitus of the Californian
universities (on his return to France, Morin immediately published a book on his California experience:
Journal de Californie, Paris: Gallimard, 1970.), he would give himself a new task: to reconcile the scatter,
to create a new method, a new paradigm, complexity theory, that would reunite biology and
anthropology, physics and sociology. Edgar Morin published six volumes of the Method, from 1977 to
2004, at Le Seuil ditions, and a few others on complexity theory. Since 1968, Morin has received up to
14 Honoris Causa Doctoral diplomas.
 The South American essay, which was given its own introduction by Rud de
Andrade, was written by Luis Pico Estrada and Daniel Hoppen. The title is identical to
that used by Toeplitz and Cheriaa, i.e. The cultural value of cinema and television in
(). However, these authors go beyond enumeration and the bureaucratic picture of the
state of the art: they place their essay inside cultural sociology, considering television
and cinema as cultural products, and adopting a political economy approach. For
Estrada and Hoppen, such cultural products participate in the reproduction of
conformity and social order. The expressions cultural imperialism or colonialism of
minds are not used, but they float between the lines. The Mexican domination is
named and commented, as is the existence of post-revolutionary Cuban cinema.

The observer from 2007 cant put aside his knowledge of the writings in the
early seventies of the Colombian<sic> intellectual Luis Ramiro Beltrn or those of the
Chilean-by-adoption Armand Mattelart. The melody and the beat are similar and they
echo the development of a new critical thinking in international communication studies
that would later find a receptive ear at the 1969 Montreal panel of experts, and again in
1971, in Paris, at the second panel of experts. This link between the cultural and the
political, as described and critiqued by Estrada and Hoppen, is considered by Schaeffer
to be a courageous attitude.

The last contribution is by the Canadian architect Roy Affleck, concerning the
experience of the 1967 Montreal Universal Exposition. Here, the architect suggests that
we consider the exposition as a medium, a psychic environment. Following in the steps
of McLuhan and Buckminster Fuller, Affleck develops a reflection that, curiously,
could be applied to the present-day development of technologies of instantaneity. His
objective is explained clearly: he calls for a general theory of the environment that
would be conceived outside the traditional disciplines. That being said, Affleck was in
the wrong place, with the wrong people, but at the right time.

Schaeffer was probably right to affirm that these essays, taken together, formed
an impossible mix. The disappointment he seems to feel at the beginning of his
introduction does not disappear by the end, and indeed by then it is not only the essays
that receive his criticism.
2- The situation and its larger context: the end of the sixties, Unesco, media studies
and the emergence of an international criticism of the free-flow doctrine of
information.

a) A chronology

Before exploring what history has left us in the comparative roles of the 1968
and 1969 Montreal events, I provide below a partial and selective chronological list that
combines Unesco documents, international communication research and political
events. This should not be read as an objective construction, nor does it pretend to be at
all exhaustive. For the purpose of this exercise, the chronology begins with the founding
of the ICA.

1949-1977
1949 Unesco: first issue of the International Social Science Bulletin, renamed International Social
Science Journal in 1959.
Schramm, W. (Ed.) Mass Communications. Illinois University Press.23
December: founding of the National Society for the Study of Communication *NSSC+24; in 1970
it would be renamed the International Communication Association [ICA].
1951 May: first issue of The Journal of Communication (Vol. 1, N 1, May), established by the NSSC.
Its first editor was Thomas R. Lewis (Florida State University, Tallahassee).
Diogne / Diogenes: journal established by the Conseil international de la philosophie des
sciences humaines [CIPSH/ ICPHS], with the support of Unesco. A journal published in French,
then translated into many languages.
1956 Unesco: Current Mass Communication Research-I. Reports and Papers on Mass
Communication, N21, Department of Mass Communication, Unesco, December, 60 p. 1957
Founding of the International Association for Research on Mass Communication (IAMCR).
1960 Spring: Daedalus, Vol. 89:
Mass Culture and the Mass Media. Seminar held at the Taminent Institute in 1959.
1961 Unesco: Mass Media in the Developing Countries. Reports and Papers in Mass
Communication, N33.
1962 International Social Science Journal, Vol. XIV, N2: Communication and information.
1964 Halloran, J. D. The Effects of Mass Communication, with Special Reference to Television: A
Survey. Television Research Committee, Working Paper N1; Leicester, UK: Leicester University

23
Emile G. McAnany wrote in 1988: Schramm helped to focus mass communications as a relatively
coherent field of inquiry by putting together the pieces of existing research into a useful framework in
those textbooks that trained most of todays mass communications academics; he also helped to create a
separate academic identity in departments of communication in the United States and to give a strong
research emphasis to the field. The early focus on mass communications still claims the largest
professional identity within the field. McAnany, 1988, p. 118.
24
W. Barnett Pearce identified in 1985 four causes that led to the founding of the NSSC: The NSSC
originated neither in speech nor rhetoric. Its origins were (1) the academic excitement based on
information theory and cybernetics, which many thought would provide a basis for the integration of
many disciplines around the shared theme of communication; (2) the military sponsorship of research in
communication, the results of which were often classified but which provided both opportunity and
reason to develop a new vocabulary about communication; (3) the opportunities for consulting and
organizational research in businesses, which were becoming increasingly interested in problems of
communication; and (4) the research opportunities presented by the booming industry of advertising and
public relations. The NSSC proved a viable organization, and provided an alternative intellectual home
for those frustrated by the limiting vocabularies in the associations dominated by speech and rhetoric.
Pearce, 1985, p. 271.
 Press; 83 p.
Schramm, W. Mass Media and National Development. Stanford, CA & Paris: Stanford
University Press & Unesco.
1967 Montreal, Quebec: Universal Exposition entitled Man and His World, April 28 to October 27.
1968 Prague, Czechoslovakia: The Prague Spring.
May 15-30, Paris: revolt in the streets. Sociologist Edgar Morin commented on the events
almost daily in the newspaper Le Monde.
Nordenstreng, K. Communication Research in the US: A Critical Perspective (pp. 207-216),
Gazette, 14.
September, Montreal: Unesco round table on mass media and culture. Participants: Edgar
Morin, Pierre Schaeffer, Stuart Hall, Tahar Cheriaa, Jerzy Toeplitz, Ruda de Andrade, Roy T.
Affleck. The essays would not be published until 1971.
November, Paris: Unesco, 15th session, General Conference. The assembly authorizes the
organization to pursue research in mass communication studies.
1969 Diogne / Diogenes, N68: Mass Communication and Culture. Contributors were: R. Ergman,
U. Saxer, R. Berger, E. Radar, R. Lilienfeld, J. Bensman, M. Griff and R.Meyersohn. The
Francophones were art historians, while the three Americans were sociologists.
The Sociological Review Monograph, N13, January, edited by Paul HALMOS: The Sociology of
Mass-Media Communicators, Keele: University of Keele; 248 p. With articles from: J.D.
Halloran, J.W. Carey, J.G. Blumer, D. McQuail, G. Gerbner, H.T. Himmelweit.
National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence. To Establish Justice, To Insure
Domestic Tranquility: Final Report of the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of
Violence. Washington, D.C: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Schiller, H. Mass Communication and American Empire. Boston: Beacon Press.
June, Montreal, McGill University: Meeting of Experts on Mass Communication and Society
organized by Unesco and the Canadian Commission for Unesco. The working paper was
commissioned from J.D. Halloran. Among participants: K. Nordenstreng, A. Edelstein, D.W.
Smythe, J. Meynaud, J. Bourquin, W. Hachten. The countries represented were: Switzerland,
Ecuador, USSR, U.S., Philippines, Japan, Senegal, U.K. Sweden, Lebanon, France, Germany,
Finland, Canada, India and Peru.25
July 20th: N. Armstrong and Apollo XI
1970 Unesco: Mass Media and Society: The Need for Research. Final report, Meeting of Experts on
Mass Communication and Society, Montreal, McGill University, June 21-30, 1969; 1st Part:
Introduction by James D. Halloran; 2nd Part: written by Pierre Navaux and Lakshmana Rao .
Paris: Unesco Reports and Papers on Mass Communication, N 59; 33 p.
1971 April 19-26, Paris, Unesco: meeting of the panel of experts on communication research.
Panelists were: L. Beltran, S.O. Biobaku, Nabil Dajani, J. Halloran, Tomo Martelanc, K.
Nordenstreng, Walery Pisarek, Y. V. L. Rao, P. Schaeffer, D. Smythe and E. Noelle-Neumann
(rapporteur).26
September, Unesco: Proposals for an International Programme of Communication Research,
Paris, September, 25 pages + appendices [COM/MD/20]. This publication presents the results of
the Paris meeting held in April. Nordenstreng asserts that more than 7000 copies of the
document were distributed around the world. Conclusion: communication research is necessary
for the elaboration of efficient communication policies.
Unesco: Essais sur les mass media et la culture. Paris: Unesco, 119 p. Proceedings of the round
table held in Montreal, in September 1968. Notes: 1- this document exists only in French; 2- It
took three years to be published.
1972 September, IAMCR, Buenos Aires, Argentina: James D. Halloran is named the new president of
the association, a position he would keep for 18 years.
November, Unesco: 17th General Conference. The Non-Aligned Countries Movement (77
countries) calls for equity in the global circulation of information.
1973 Schramm, W. & I. de Sola Pool (Eds.) Handbook of Communication. Chicago: Rand McNally
College Publishing Company; 1011 p.

25
Nordenstreng, 1994, p. 4.
26
Nordenstreng, 1994, p. 9
 Paris, Unesco, October: 2nd meeting of the panel behind Proposals D. Smythe, P. Schaeffer
and W. Pisarek are replaced .
Aller, Algeria: N-ACMs 4th Summit: a New World for Information and Communication Order
(NWICO) is called against cultural imperialism and the four most important press agencies of the
Western world.
1975 N-ACM gives birth to a new press agency pool from Non-Aligned countries. It is the
affirmation of the concept of continental/national sovereignty against the Free Flow of
Information Doctrine and the official manifestation of the New International World Order.

1977 Unesco: President A.M. Mbow mandates an International Commission for the Study of
Communication Problems; Sean MacBride, recipient of both the Nobel Peace Prize and the
Lenin Prize, is named in charge of the commission. In 1980 the MacBride Report is published
under the title Many Voices, One World.

b) The 1968 Montreal round table vs. the 1969 Montreal meeting of experts

Observers from other disciplines or fields of study would perhaps find it

surprising to look back at the 1968 essays, some forty years later. The well-known
clich that exclaimes, How young our field is! finds here its historical justification.
Indeed. But if the observer takes the time to look carefully at the bibliographies of
important mass communication research books of the time, he will discover a paradox.
For example, the critical bibliography compiled by Alphons Silbermann for Current
Sociology in 1970 lists a total of 981 entries; the extensive references in the 1970
Sereno and Mortensens reader in communication theory exceed our expectations; and
the 34-page-long bibliography in Davison and Yus book published in 1974 reveals
clearly that the field was

As much in expansion then as it is today. It may have been young, but it was
surely not empty or suffering from famine contrary to the title of a Herbert J. Gans
article in 197227.

However, the 1971 Unesco Report, the one issued by the Paris panel, described
the field as being composed of too many distant and at times irreconcilable data and
directions. The same evaluation was made by other actors in the field; in fact, that was
the belief of those who were to contribute to the emergence of what we still call the
critical paradigm in media studies. As Alan Hancock puts it in his contribution to the
book in honour of James Halloran:

27
H.J. Gans, 1972, The Famine in Mass Communication Research, The American Journal of Sociology,
Vol. 78. Cited in Davison and Yu, 1974, p. 1
 () when the Montreal meeting took place (note: he is referring to
the 1969 meeting), the research tradition of the communication sector
was mostly confined to the positivist U.S. research tradition of the
time (and especially to the work of Schramm, Lerner, and Rogers). As
a result, when an international panel of consultants that was formed
two years later put forward a set of Proposals for an International
Programme of Communication Research in 1971, it was working in
relatively unexplored territory. 28

In 1969, the unexplored territory was to be studied by scholars and experts

coming for the most part from outside the United States, and having close ties, as
Hancock and others have stressed, with the IAMCR. The only two American scholars
that participated in the 1969 meeting in Montreal were former journalists turned
university professors; they therefore had a special interest in international
communications and development 29. However, there was no U.S. participation at the
spring meeting of 1971 in Paris, which was composed of 11 participants including a
rapporteur.

The literature on the subject offers many personal testimonies on the role played
by important actors (including of course, J. Halloran), but also by institutional actors
like the IAMCR and Unesco. In fact, Unescos role in the development of an engaged
and socially activist program (Hancocks words) received high praise from many
intellectuals, since we must know that from 1969 to 1981, Unesco was a principal
actor in a rising international communication debate, many of whose features stemmed
from the proposals of the International Panel 30 (note: here Hancock refers to the 1971
Paris panel). Most versions of the narrative celebrate the 1969 Montreal meeting,
establishing it as the beginning of a new era in international communication research:

The Montreal meeting, the publication, and another Unesco

publication which stemmed from the meeting (note: the Paris Report,
1971), have been described by both those who were in favour of the
development (note: the new political and theoretical orientation) and
those who criticized it, as marking a watershed in international
communication research, particularly as far as Unesco was
concerned31.

28
Hancock, p. 24. However, the observer can find many ideas of the 1971 Paris Report in the introduction
Halloran wrote for The Sociological Review Monograph, 1969.
29
They were: William A. Hachten, subsequently professor emeritus at the School of Journalism and Mass
Communication at the University of Wisconsin in Madison (www.mssu.ed ); and Alex Edelstein (1919-
2001), late professor at the University of Washington School of Journalism (www.historylink.org ).
30
Hancock, p. 25.
31
Halloran, 1997, p. 28.
 On this point, namely the importance of the 1969 Montreal meeting in the
evolution of international communication thinking, most commentators (Halloran,
Hancock, Nordenstreng, Hamelink, etc.) affirm that there was a before and an after the
1969 Montreal meeting32. The before includes, I think, the 1968 round table. Explaining
why Unesco came to him towards the end of 1968 to prepare the working paper for
the 1969 meeting, Halloran simply presumes that key figures at Unesco decided that
they wanted something different from what had gone before 33. By specifying that
Unesco representatives came towards the end of 1968, Halloran gives us interesting
information that could concern Unescos reception of the September round table.
However, it isnt enough to suppose that he received that request after the Montreal
round table and that therefore Unesco representatives were less than pleased with the
round table essays; we can at best postulate that it is so, based on the first two sentences
of Schaeffers introduction. But we also know that Halloran and Nordenstreng met for
the first time at a meeting of the Council of Europe in September 1968 in Salzburg
(which later led to the invitation to Nordenstreng to participate in the 1969 Montreal
meeting), and that Halloran had not yet been contacted by Unesco. Therefore, without
his knowing it, Hallorans allusion to previous work for Unesco could, perhaps, be
applied to the 1968 enchevtrement dessais (confusion of attempts) about which
Schaeffer was so doubtful34.

I know, its a long shot. Were the Montreal round table and those before it ever
discussed by the people at Unesco? Did Schaeffer have to work to get the papers
eventually published? Was it his way of distancing himself from the Paris report for
which he was a panelist? Is that why he did not return for the 1973 Unesco Meeting in
Paris?

32
Halloran also affirms that the other meetings and reports that followed the 1969 Montreal meeting were
inspired by the new critical stance adopted then.
33
Halloran, 1997, p. 28. In 1994, Nordenstreng referred to a discussion he had with Halloran in which
Halloran recalls that Professor Jacques Bourquin, from Switzerland, had approached him about the
IAMCR prior to September 1968, but that the first meeting he attended was in Constance, in 1970. In
1969, at the Montreal panel of experts, Jacques Bourquin was one of the 18 official participants.
34
And as Hancock points out, Unescos involvement in communication research before 1969 was
marginal, the last being work in communication and education, by Schramm in 1964: Schramm, W.
(1964) Mass Media and National Development. The Role of Information in Developing Countries. Paris:
Unesco.
3- Conclusion: eclecticism, rigor, involvement and hope

In a 1998 text that can be found on the World Association for Christian
Communication web site, Halloran writes that we cant give up on international
communication research, that it is possible to build something rigorous out of an
eclectic framework, inside social science and far from the refuge(s) of ideology,
positivism or anarchy35. I refer to this call for hope and rigor because it makes me think
back to Schaeffers introduction.

In the first part of the present communication, I tried to show Schaeffers

discomfort over the difficulty to be faced by any reader who attempted to discern a
common link among all the essays. More than discomfort, we can also detect a sense of
bitterness and disappointment about such meetings of experts. To be more precise, these
sentiments do not concern the formula of the meeting per se, but the attitudes and
behaviour of the intellectuals-researchers-experts who attend such meetings. However,
Schaeffer (and here he shares with Halloran his faith in the future of research and the
good will of men and women) also believes that such meetings, though not at the time
the best way to achieve progress, could become an efficient and advantageous service to
the world. But how? In 1971, Schaeffer had been named president of the research
commission of the important International Council of Cinema and Television, an NGO
in the Unesco network. Though Schaeffer is not identified in the document as holding
that position at the time 36, his contribution to the volume gives the impression of
someone writing from a position of authority.

I make this point because Schaeffers conclusion to his 1971 contribution

concerns above all the role of scientists, the meaning of international research, the
utility of international conferences and panels. In a text that I have already cited a few
times here, Karl Nordenstreng recounts his own participation in the Montreal and Paris
meetings, and the only point on which he seems uneasy is what he sees (writing in
1994) as a nave trust in rational management by society 37. Curiously (or is it?),
Schaeffer regrets the absence of a true and profound belief in the potential of a common
work that could, perhaps, induce the experts and specialists to transcend their individual
priorities and recognize the gravity of the worlds inequities and the importance of their

35
Halloran, 1998, p. 7
36
Indeed, none of the participants in the round table was identified by his professional credentials.
37
Nordenstreng, 1994, p. 8.
function. For this to happen, the experts must stop believing that they are the avant-
garde, and start positioning themselves and their collaboration in the centre of things, as
true interdisciplinary workers capable of dealing within institutional contexts.

It seems clear to me that Schaeffer had already, at the time, stopped believing in
the academic contribution of experts in matters of communication. As a matter of fact,
his last sentence reads like an epitaph:

Non, il nest plus gure possible de sentretenir de cela de faon

acadmique, dy songer sans angoisse, de se concerter sans gravit
p. 22. (No, it is simply no longer possible to discuss it academically,
to think about it lightly, to deliberate without gravity...)

Bibliography

BELTRAN, L.R.(1976) Alien Premises, Objects, and Methods in Latin American

Communication Research (pp. 15-42), in ROGERS, E.M. (Ed.) Communication and
Development. Critical Perspectives. SAGE Contemporary Social Science Issues, N32,
148 p.
BELTRAN, L.R. (2004) Communication For Development in Latin America: A Forty-Year
Appraisal (14 p.), Southbound Penang, Development communicators and publishers,
Malaysia [http://www.southbound.com.my].
BERNARD, T. (1968) Official Guide Guide Officiel: Terre des hommes Man and his
World. City of Montreal, 256 p.
BOYD-BARRETT, O. (1997) International Communication and Globalization: Contradictions
and Directions (pp. 11-26), in MOHAMMADI, A. (Ed.) International Communication
and Globalization. SAGE Publications, 228 p.
DAVISON, W.P. & F.T.C. YU (1974) An Attempt to Structure the Field (pp. 1-10), in
DAVISON, W.P. & F.T.C. YU (Eds.) Mass Communication Research. Major Issues
and Future Directions. Praeger Publishers, 246 p.
GINER, B. (1995) Il sappelait Schaeffer (1 p.), in Intemporel. Bulletin de la socit nationale
de musique, N16, octobre-dcembre.
HALLORAN, J.D. (1969) Introduction: The Communicator in Mass Communication Research
(pp. 5-22), in HALMOS, P. (Ed.) The Sociological Review: Monograph N13, The
Sociology of Mass Media Communicators. University of Keele, Straffordshire.
HALLORAN, J.D. (1997) International Communication Research: Opportunities and
Obstacles (pp. 27-47), in MOHAMMADI, A. (Ed.) International Communication and
Globalization. SAGE Publications, 228 p.
HALLORAN, J.D. (1998) Social science, communication research and the Third World (9
pages), Media Development, 2, World Association for Christian Communication
[www.wacc.org.uk].
HANCOCK, A. (1994) Communication Policies, Planning, and Research in Unesco: From the
Seventies to the Nineties (pp. 21-38), in HAMELINK, C.J. & O. LINN (Eds.) Mass
Communication Research. On Problems and Policies. The Art of Asking the Right
Questions: In Honor of James D. Halloran. Ablex Publishing Corporation,417 p.
LAURIN, C. (1967) Official Guide Guide Officiel: Expo67. Maclean-Hunter Publishing, 352
p.
LEE, J.A.R. (1976) Towards Realistic Communication Policies: Recent trends and ideas
compiled and analysed (sic). UNESCO, Paris, 59 p.
McANANY, E. G. (1988) Wilbur Schramm, 1907-1987: Roots of the Past, seeds of the present
(pp. 109-122), in Journal of Communication, Vol. 38, N4; ICA.
MORIN, E. & . MAC (2004) La culture de masse. Le choc des annes 50 et 60 (pp. 5-18), in
Mdiamorphoses, N13; Paris: INA & Armand Collin.
NORDENSTRENG, K. (1994) The Unesco Expert Panel with the Benefit of Hindsight (pp. 3-
20), in HAMELINK, C.J. & O. LINN (Eds.) Mass Communication Research. On
Problems and Policies. The Art of Asking the Right Questions: In Honor of James D.
Halloran. Ablex Publishing Corporation,417 p.
NORDESNTRENG, K. (2004) Ferment in the Field: Notes on the Evolution of Communication
Studies and its Disciplinary Nature (pp. 5-18), in Javnost-The Public, Vol. 11, N3.
NORDENSTRENG, K. (2007) Discipline or Field? Soul-searching in Communication
Research (pp. 211-222), in Nordicom Review, Vol. 28, Jubilee Issue: Media Structures
and Practices. As Time Goes By Studies and Reflections from a Scandinavian
Horizon; Nordicom, 229 p.
PEARCE, W. B. (1985) Scientific Research Methods in Communication Studies and Their
Implications for Theory and Research (pp. 255-281), in BENSON, T.W. (Ed.) Speech
Communication in the 20th Century. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press;
475 pages.
ROGERS, E.M. (1976) Communication and Development: The Passing of the Dominant
Paradigm (pp. 121-148), in ROGERS, E.M. (Ed.) Communication and Development.
Critical Perspectives. SAGE Contemporary Social Science Issues, N32, 148 p.
SCHULMAN, N. (1993) Conditions of their Own Making: An Intellectual History of the Centre
for Centemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham (19 p.), in Canadian
Journal of Communication, Vol. 18, N 1
SERENO, K.K. & C.D. MORTENSEN (Eds.) (1970) Foundations of Communication Theory.
Harper & Row, Publishers, 371 p.
SILBERMAN, A. (1970) La sociologie des communications de masse. Tendances actuelles de
la recherche et Bibliographie. Current Sociology / La sociologie contemporaine, Vol.
17, N3. Mouton & Co, 124 p.
UNESCO (1970a) Les moyens dinformation dans la socit. Ncessit de dvelopper la
recherche. UNESCO, tudes et documents dinformation, N59, Paris, 36 p.
[French translation of UNESCO 1970b] UNESCO (1970b) Mass Media in Society. The Need
for Research. UNESCO, Reports and Papers on Mass Communication, N59. Paris, 35
p.
UNESCO (1971a) Essais sur les mass media et la culture. UNESCO, Paris, 119 p.
UNESCO (1971b) Propositions pour un programme international de recherche en matire de
communication. UNESCO, 10 septembre 1971. Paris, 25 p. + annexes. [French
translation of: UNESCO (1971) Proposals for an International Programme for
Communication] VON MORPURGO, p.
(1998) A half-century of the International Social Science Journal (pp. 309-318), in International
Social Science Journal, N157, UNESCO & Blackwell Publishers.
WOLTON, D. & E. MORIN (2004) Edgar Morin: la communication hier et aujourdhui.
Entretien avec Dominique Wolton, fvrier 2004. (pp. 77-83), in Herms, 38; Paris:
CNRS.