Past challenges to Journalism: Great ideas of the Seventies and Eighties revisited
Past challenges to Journalism: Great ideas of the Seventies and Eighties revisited

Summary/Abstract: This paper focuses on the particular role of the mass media research in transformation of the post-Yaltan world political system, in 1960–1990 and in particular in the seventies. The role of the inspirer, organizer and transmitter of the idea of solving social and political problems with the use of the mass media was played by the UN and UNESCO. They made communication research one of the most important and politically most infl uential disciplines among social sciences. The conference in Montreal, organized by Unesco in June 1969, has become the foundation stone for the worldwide political career of mass communication research. Very active participation of media researchers in the world discourse on communication contributed later to the adoption, by the UNESCO General Conference, in 1978, of the “Media Declaration”, and, in consequence, to the MacBride Commission and the creation of its Report, then to the “International Program for the Development of Communication” (IPDC). Communication research in the seventies contributed, arguably, to the acceptance of the compromise solutions of the 3rd basket of the Final Act of the CSCE, which opened the first legal clefts to the uncontrolled two direction flow of information in the Soviet monolith hermetic system. In this regard, one can say that Everything started in Montreal in 1969 – the paper concludes. The paper was presented on the plenary session of the International Conference “Matters of Journalism: Understanding Professional Challenges and Dilemmas”, organized by the Polish Communication Association and the University of Gdańsk, in Gdańsk 14 September, 2012.

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