CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2018
| Author | Westlake, Stephen John |
|---|---|
| Title | Human Rights Radios? Radio Free Europe, the BBC External Services and the "Helsinki Process", 1973-1978 |
| Summary | This thesis compares two transnational radio broadcasting organizations, Radio Free Europe (RFE) and the BBC External Services’ Central European Department (BBC CED), and their response to and engagement with the negotiation, signing, and implementation of the Helsinki Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe. The aim of this work is to demonstrate that between the opening of the initial negotiations of the CSCE in 1973 and the closing of the first CSCE follow-up conference in Belgrade in March 1978, both RFE and the BBC CED in different but related ways, underwent a transformation in the way in which they represented and justified their mission and purpose which was closely related to the ideas about freedom of information which were formulated within the so-called “Third Basket” of the Helsinki Final Act, pertaining to “Humanitarian and Other Fields”. Using archival sources from both RFE and the BBCXS’s collections, I argue that despite the existence of real differences between the two organizations in relation to their origins, locations, and perceptions of themselves in relation to the other, by the end of my period both organizations had evolved into “human rights radios”, an identity which continues to dominate their external and internal representations of their work to this day. |
| Supervisor | Siefert, Marsha |
| Department | History MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2018/westlake_stephen.pdf |
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