U.N. Journos Decry Move to Torpedo Rent-Free Offices
The United Nations is in danger of becoming irrelevant or even non-existent - specifically in the eyes of the developing world - because of a revived proposal to provide office space only to journalists who can afford to pay rent.
'Charging rent will drive most members of the press out of the United Nations,' warns Giampaolo Pioli, president of the U.N. Correspondents' Association (UNCA), which represents over 200 full-time reporters covering the world body.
The journalists most affected will be those from developing nations, writing either for their domestic news agencies or for daily newspapers back home, including from countries such as India, Egypt, Brazil, Lebanon, Morocco, Pakistan, South Africa, Afghanistan, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Vietnam and Cyprus.
Pioli told IPS the proposal, which has been floating around since last year, has resurfaced, triggering protests from the U.N. press corps and prompting a letter to Secretary- General Ban Ki-moon delivered Tuesday.
The letter, co-authored by Pioli and Louis Charbonneau of the UNCA Executive Committee, says that members of the U.N. press 'are not here on a free ride'.
'In addition to the salary expenses that news organisations pay to keep reporters at the United Nations, we incur substantial costs for the equipment and infrastructure that we maintain in our offices and studios to broadcast news about the U.N. to the world,' the letter says.
'For most of them, even a symbolic rent would be an unjustifiable expenditure given the severe financial stress our industry is under,' it adds.
The U.N. press corps has been granted rent-free offices for more than 60 years now, ever since the Secretariat of the world body moved to New York.
But the management is threatening to impose rent at the completion in late 2013 of a major renovation - dubbed the Capital Master Plan (CMP) - currently underway at the Secretariat.
The renovation, which is estimated to cost over 1.8 billion dollars, is being coordinated by Assistant Secretary-General Michael Alderstein and comes under the Department of Management headed by Under-Secretary-General Angela Kane.
Pioli says 'there is growing lack of confidence' in both Alderstein and Kane, and also other members of the U.N. management team, 'who, we feel, do not consider proper working conditions for a free and functioning press to be anything resembling a priority' for the United Nations.
Under the CMP, the office space for journalists will also be narrowed and more 'open' with one-third less space and with absolutely no privacy.
Asked about the proposed rent, Alderstein told reporters last year: 'The issue arose because we're spending tens of millions of dollars on rent (for the relocation of U.N. staffers to neighbouring buildings) that we never used to spend.'
'Just to make everyone aware, we value the correspondents and we also are aware, and everyone is aware, of the cost of the U.N. paying rent out in the field while the correspondents are not,' Alderstein said.
'I am not taking any position at this point as to the validity of it, but it has become an issue because of the amount of rent we are paying out in the commercial market,' he added.
In the letter to the secretary-general, UNCA says: 'The best way to further reduce television and radio coverage of the United Nations would be to implement the proposals the CMP and U.N. management have put forward for even less space and further lack of privacy.'
Instead of modernising and making it easier to do the kind of multimedia journalism that will be the norm in 21st century, it will be impossible for serious journalists to work at the U.N.
'Perhaps the problem is that the people making decisions on what to do with the press have little or no idea how we work,' the letter adds.
'We are not asking for much, just what we had before the move (to temporary offices in swing space due to the renovation) - that is, closed office spaces that are soundproofed, properly wired and adequately sized.'
'We ask you to stand with us and tell your management not to go down a road that will lead to the destruction of the U.N. press corps and transform the United Nations into just another international organization that only makes headlines when bedbugs are found there,' it says.
'We trust that because you have often spoken of the crucial importance of the 'fourth estate', you will stand with us and prevent the implementation of these measures, which will almost certainly drive many news organisations, big and small, out of the United Nations.'
Adlerstein, the letter says, 'promised us a four-month review of conditions in the swing space after which adjustments would be made. This promise, like most others, was never kept.'
© Inter Press Service (2010) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service