New York City, March 26, 2005

This article is written while I had in mind the March 15, 2005,
SustainabiliTank book review of “A Public Betrayed: An Inside Look at
Japanese Media Atrocities and Their Warnings to the West”
(please link to “Gamble&Watanabe), and as I received on March 18, 2005
a
five point e-mail from “ACCURACY IN MEDIA” (AIM) - the Washington based
US
oldest media watchdog group - on this later..

A Kisha Club is something we thought was peculiar to Japan. They call
it a
Press Club but it is very different from the western idea of a Press
Club,
which is a social club. The Kisha is in effect a Japanese device for
transfer of information to the public at large helped by creating a
favorable “in-house” operation for that purpose.

The Kisha is a select membership grouping allowed to a particular area
of
the sponsoring organization’s building. The main worry of the members
is
that all of them get the information at the same time - this is the
level
playing field. The result, as described in the reviewed book is that
if you
belong to the Kisha you are certain not to get the scoop - and if you
do not
belong to the Kisha you do not get the story.

Now let us look at the operation of the United Nations outlet to the
press -
part of the UN Department of Public Information. To become accredited
you
must belong to what the DPI considers the bona fide press. If you are
a
free-lance writer or you belong to a large or small outlet that is part
of
an NGO, a movement, a political organization, a professional group, a
scientific organization etc.- you are not allowed to the press floor.
Magazines have difficulty being defined as press - some outlets may
reach
many more readers then conventional daily papers, but this may not be
considered acceptable. Just like the Kisha.

A main concern of the journalists, and the official spokespeople, is
the
level playing field of access to the information in the format of a
press
conference. Some journalists I observed for years have never attempted
to
go to the UN basement to listen to the actual deliberations - they
would
rather sit in their cubicles and get the press releases to send
dutifully to
their employers. When someone manages to speak to a source directly
and
come up with a scoop, it is considered unfair. Some important events
happen
in the building but the Secretariat does not deem to be in their
interest to
make the information available to the press and through them to the
public,
so the information is not provided to the spokesperson and it most
probably
will not reach the public - this, obviously, unless some unusual outlet
makes it its business to follow a lead. Sometimes, no amount of effort
will
pry open the information, and this is not because of an unwillingness
of the
spokesperson. Simply, the Secretariat does not want you to know - they
may
think it is not in their interest for you to know. A case in point was
my
attempt to obtain the list of countries that sponsored the UN General
Assembly Special Memorial Session on the Holocaust. At the Secretariat
they
did not want to put to shame those that did not participate among the
sponsoring Member States and made sure the list was not made available
- and
to the hell the idea that perhaps even the legality of an event, 60
years in
the making, was being questioned (please see SustainabiliTank - Oil
Barrel/Holocaust).

While I was thinking about above conditions, I was hit, like all other
UNCA
members (the UN Correspondents’ Association), with the five Questions
of
the “Accuracy in Media”:

1. Do you believe Journalists covering the UN should receive
   payments
   from he UN?

2. Besides Mr. X, who acknowledges getting paid by the UN, do
   you
   know of any other UN correspondents getting paid by the
   world
   body?

3. The UN refuses to disclose which journalists have received
   money
   from the UN and in what amounts. Would you join AIM in
   calling
   for the UN to disclose this information?

4. Do you believe UNCA should prohibit its members from
   receiving
   money from the UN?

5. Should journalists covering the UN accept money from
   organizations, such as the UN Foundation, which promote the
   UN?

The first four questions I found purely shocking. This is much worse
then
the kisha. There you get just small presents and some free
transportation
or tickets to a show. Is it true that at the UN, in order to put
forward
the point of view sponsored by the central powers, you actually get
paid for
this in a clandestine way? Do the UNCA leaders know about this? Is
this
the journalistic profession or something much older? Is it true or AIM
is
just out on some vendetta? I clearly expect UNCA to step into this
fray.

Regarding the fifth question - that is something completely different.
If the UN Foundation, The Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund, the Ford
Foundation,
one of Mr. George Soros’ foundations, or anyone else, wants to fund
someone
to be a journalist to bring information openly to a specific sector of
the
world readership - in favor of the UN, or alternatively, in disfavor of
the
UN - power to them who have the money. This sort of activity I clearly
do
not condemn - only the direct, self serving, funding of the praising of
a
point of view of the host who provides the space and the rules of the
game
for his kisha. The rule of honesty is that it has to be in the open
and the
funding known. This does not apply to the UN because here this is the
job
of the DPI itself. Anyone writing for the DPI, or in the name of the
DPI,
for UN publications, is clearly a direct employee of the UN and this
discussion does not touch him. At least some decorum should be in
place.

Now for some ideas. In order to avoid the Kisha syndrome, I would
suggest
taking out the UN Press Conference room from its location to a secure
area
outside the building, and allowing a greater variety of journalists to
participate in the process of bringing out the news about the UN
activities.
Those running the conference should rather be professional
press-administrators, perhaps even of former UNCA members, and funded
not
by the UN, but rather by a specially organized foundation. This could
contribute immensely to the prestige of the UN and should have been
part of
the Secretary-General’s proposals for the renewing of the organization.

Further note # 1, posted March 29, 2005: I did not realize, that
already
after three days, we will be faced with an important example.

The Spokesman for the Secretary-General said at the March 28 noon press
briefing that the following day the Volcker led “Independent Inquiry
Committee Into The UN Oil-for-Food Programme” will present its second
interim report to the SG at 9am, the following day, March 29, and there
will
be the possibility for “stake-out” (that is the UN journalistic
possibility
to ask questions in the corridors) both before Mr. Volcker going to see
the
SG, and when he comes out; following this we will have a noon press
briefing
as usual, and a press conference at 2:30 pm on the report. When I came
the
following day at noon, I found about 10 people waiting in S-226 but
nothing
happened. I asked one of the DPI people, and was told that a press
conference of Mr. Volcker is in progress in the Helmsley hotel, but he
did
not know which one. I went up to the third floor and was able to watch
live
with a UN employee, on BBC and CNN, parts of the PC. The lady knew to
tell
me that it was the 42-nd Street Helmsley and I walked over and got the
report. Many UN correspondents knew about the event from their sources,
some
did not. At 2:45 pm we had a PC with the SG who allowed three
questions -
one from the president of UNCA and one each from two additional
journalists,
then left to work on the UN reform; the SG Chief-of-Staff took over
and
answered questions for a long time. Under the circumstances, I would
say
that this event was handled with decorum, but this is not the issue
here.

When Toyota has a PC in its Kisha it is quite clear - they do not have
to
provide a podium for their competition - but the UN is something else,
and
this was not even competition. The words that come to mind are the
need of
“transparency”. Correctly, Mr. Volcker was probably not interested to
have
his PC within the frame of the UN outlet to the press. At his PC there
were
present journalists that are not part of the UN accredited
correspondent’s
guild - I watched on TV how a free-lance correspondent asked a question
and
I met afterwards a writer from a magazine that has no UN
representation.
What was said there was not exactly what was presented at the PC at the
UN.
The best correspondents were in both places, some big organizations
left one
of their representatives behind at his beat at the UN, while someone
else
was at the Hotel, others, like me, did not know at all that there was a
PC
outside the UN complex but were able to read the report on the web. My
observation here is that the Spokesman should have announced that there
is
a PC outside the building and made available a TV hook-up for those
that
prefer to stay at the UN. This was an event that will have serious
impact
on the UN and not making it available by the UN to the correspondents
that
cover the UN is, in my opinion, in the spirit of a Japanese Kisha.

Further note # 2, posted April 1, 2005: Since last note, the noon
briefings of the Spokesman turned out to be a 15-20 minutes briefing on
issues ranging from the killings in Darfur, Congo, Baghdad, Beirut, to
releases dealing with the Security Council and the General Assembly;
then,
disregarding all that was presented, a barrage of questions from a
well trained battery of correspondents interested in follow ups to the
Volcker Committee report.

The questions are very direct and the Spokesman can present only what
has
been released to him, and the best he can do is to turn to the
Secretariat
for advice. Yesterday, in desperation he even said something like -
look,
you have heard the Secretary-General’s point of view, you have been
given
Mr. Volcker’s point of view, it is for you to decide - I am speaking for
the
UN. Today, the Spokesman gave us at the briefing a long list of
answers to
questions that were asked yesterday. The fact that he could not be
more
specific is clearly not his fault. He did not get even something as
simple
as the full list of the one dollar per year UN employees - the
conditions of
their employment had to be referred to legal opinions and should be
released
next week. It is obvious that Mr. Volcker raised many more questions
then he
answered in his second interim report and the journalists follow this
track.

Does the Secretariat wish the press operation operate like a Kisha? My
answer now is inclined to be yes.

Do the journalists pursue all the leads? Yes, but hunting individuals
will
take a long time to reach the full problem, which seems to be much
bigger
then the sins of individuals.

To me it seems that the Freedom House report that proved - a majority
of
humanity is represented at the UN by delegations that did not result as
an
end product of free elections - brings to the UN, because of the UN
quota
system, a major part of a Secretariat staff - and some of the rest of
the
staff - that do not have a background in Democracy. True, as some
pointed
out to me, that even the White House in Washington may operate at times
like
a Kisha; also true that every large organization may have problems like
the
UN has, but then the UN was built with ideals in mind and its main sin
is
against these ideals. What a let down? Perhaps not just because of
the
fact of its own doings - but because of our realization that the
institution
itself has failed our dreams.