100 SOCIAL SCIENTIST countries publish no newspapers at all, 13 have only one each, as a rule the print order of many papers does not exceed 10,000. Television is nonexistent in 30 Asian and African nations. Further, 18 African and 16 nations have no news agencies of their own. Asia, Africa and Latin America, where about two-thirds of the world population lives, account for only 5 per cent of the world's television sets and 12.5 per cent of the world's newspapers. The prevailing illiteracy in all the developing countries has become a major barrier to international communication. Millions of people in these countries live under acute poverty, hunger and disease. The question of communication for them and informing them does not receive high priority. A large chunk of the human race is cut off from the modern world of communication and information due to poverty and illiteracy. Thus, the debate on information imbalances and the new world information order has no meaning at all for them. As a result of the backward economic conditions, many people could not avail even the limited communication facilities. An annual subscription to a local paper costs a school teacher in Bombay the equivalent of his pay for 23 days. The figure for an average technician in Bangkok or Manila is 11 days. Most of the developing countries depend on the world telephone net work, even in this age of sophisticated satellite communication, which comprises of the cables laid on the ocean floor by Great Britain, United States and France in the nineteenth century. A distorted global communication network has resulted in the fact that Ivory Coast can call Zaire only via the Paris telephone network. A call from Kenya to neighbouring Tanzania is routed through London and a call from Bolivia to neighbouring Paraguay via New York. The United States, Japan and several West European countries control 75 per cent of all the newspaper editions published in the capitalist world. The hegemony is also exercised through the publication of encyclopaedias and other reference books which interpret the experiences and history of the third world countries in a deliberately biased and distorted way so that it serves the interests of imperialism. It is important to recognise the fact that the information industry of the capitalist world is essentially in the hands of the monopoly capitalists which fully control this sector through several giant multinational corporations. In the non-socialist world they control some 80 per cent of international broadcasting radio stations and 95 per cent of all television facilities. Almost 80 per cent of the information disseminated in capitalist and developing countries originates in the four largest multinational news agencies—UPI (United Press International), AP (Associated Press), Reuters and Agence France-Press (AFP). The emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) in the information industry constitutes the full blossoming of imperialism in