"Twenty months of pandemic shutdown radically changed UN reporting"
Thalif Deen
Thalif Deen, Senior Editor & Director, UN Bureau, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is a former information officer at the U.N. Secretariat and served twice with the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions. He was cited for excellence in U.N. reporting, both in 2012 and 2013 and shared the gold medal at the annual awards presentation of the U.N. Correspondents Association (UNCA). A Fulbright scholar with a Master’s Degree (MSc) in Journalism from Columbia University, he is the author of the 2021 book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That”— a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes. The book is available on Amazon.
You are a veteran journalist who has covered UN affairs for decades. Could you share a few of the lessons you have learned over the years as a UN correspondent? And when it comes to following and covering UN news, what has been the most difficult part of your job?
The United Nations has long been described as “the Glass House by the East River.” But unfortunately, the glasshouse is more opaque than transparent—particularly for news reporters.
For scores of journalists covering the UN for their newspapers — thousands of miles away from home — one of the most coveted datelines is “Reporting from the United Nations.”
Some of these correspondents come from developing nations, including India, Indonesia, Egypt, Brazil, Malaysia, Bosnia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon, while others came from the Western world, including Italy, France, Germany, UK, and the US, plus Russia and China.
The political reporting at the UN is focused on military conflicts, civil wars, genocide, human rights, peacekeeping, nuclear disarmament, and war crimes—mostly underlying its primary mandate, namely, maintaining international peace and security.
But at IPS, our coverage was primarily on the UN’s socio-economic agenda, long neglected by the mainstream media and international wire services. We aimed to fill that gap.
Our editors also insisted that all analytical pieces –whether on poverty and hunger eradication, sustainable development, climate change, or universal health care -- should have at least two sources quoted by name (primarily, NGOs, human rights organizations, think tanks, academics, or former senior UN officials),
When we ran an internship program – with most of the interns coming from US universities and also from Germany, Italy, Sweden, Brazil, Spain, India, Sri Lanka, Australia, Indonesia, UK and the Netherlands—I would cite a New Yorker cartoon where the wicked Queen in the Snow White fairy tale, would stand before the magic mirror and ask: “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, who is the Fairest of Them all?”—“And I want two sources quoted by name.”
And I would also repeat a piece of advice given in Journalism school: “Even if your mother says she loves you, double-check the story.”
The most difficult part of the job was that journalists, rarely if ever, were able to get any on-the-record comments or reactions from ambassadors, diplomats, and senior UN officials because most of them follow the advice given to Brits during war-time censorship in the UK: “Be like Dad, Keep Mum.”
As Winston Churchill once remarked: “Diplomacy Is the art of telling people ‘to go to hell’ in such a way they ask for directions.” But as a general rule, most ambassadors and diplomats avoided all comments, particularly on politically sensitive issues, with the standard non-excuse: ”Sorry, we have to get clearance from our capital.” But that “clearance” never came.
Still, it was hard to beat a response from a tight-lipped Asian diplomat who once told me: “No comment” – “And Don’t Quote Me on That” (which, incidentally, is the title of my recently-released book: a satire on the UN with scores of anecdotes, from the sublime to the hilarious, and available on Amazon)
And most senior UN officials, on the other hand, never had even the basic courtesy or etiquette to respond to phone calls or email messages—or even an acknowledgment. The lines of communications were mostly dead.
When I complained to the media-savvy Shashi Tharoor, a former Under-Secretary-General for Public Information and a one-time journalist and prolific author, he was explicit in his response when he said that every UN official – “from an Under-Secretary-General to a window-washer”—has the right to express an opinion in his or her area of expertise.
But that rarely or ever happened.
Thalif Deen is the author of the 2021 book on the United Nations titled “No Comment – and Don’t Quote Me on That”— a satire peppered with scores of anecdotes. The book is available on Amazon.
A Brazilian diplomat once gave me an exclusive inside story, but warned it was “not for attribution and strictly off the record.” But being familiar with New York City’s cultural scene, he added: “Off, Off, Off the record. Like Off, Off-Broadway.”
Still, there have been rare instances of UN officials, mostly former UN officials, who have no qualms about providing on-the-record comments. As I was doing a wrap-up of the historic, two-week-long Earth Summit in Rio in June 1992, I approached Dr. Gamani Corea, a former Secretary-General of the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and a member of the Sri Lanka delegation, for a final comment on the disappointing results of the much-ballyhooed conference.
“We negotiated the size of the zero,” he said, with a tinge of sarcasm, as he held out his fingers to indicate zero. Not surprisingly, that made the headlines. But that comment would come only from an ex-UN official.
As a UN correspondent, how has covering UN affairs changed your view of the UN and its role on a global scale?
The UN’s biggest shortcoming is its failure to resolve some of the longstanding political issues, including Palestine, and more recently the military conflicts and civil wars in Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Ethiopia, and Myanmar, amongst others.
In most of these conflicts, the five veto-wielding permanent members (P-5) of the Security Council, namely the US, UK, France, China, and Russia, are sharply divided and protect their allies-- and their million-dollar arms markets because the P-5 is the primary arms suppliers to the warring parties in several of these conflicts.
Meanwhile, a new Cold War -– this time, between the US and China —is threatening to paralyze the UN’s most powerful body, even as military conflicts and civil wars are sweeping across the world. The growing criticism against the Security Council is directed at its collective failures to resolve ongoing conflicts and political crises in several hot spots.
The sharp divisions between China and Russia, on one side, and the Western powers on the other, are expected to continue, triggering the question: Has the Security Council outlived its usefulness, or has it lost its political credibility: a question which also changed my views on the UN and its political effectiveness?
The five big powers are increasingly throwing their protective arms around their allies, despite growing charges of war crimes, genocide, and human rights violations against some of these warring nations.
At the same time, the Security Council has come under heavy fire for the misuse of its veto powers, held by the Big Five, while discussions on the reform of the Council have dragged on for 20 years.
The bottom line is that the P-5 wants to hold onto the monopoly of the veto power. A proposal for the expansion of the permanent members, from five to ten, comes with a catch: if new permanent members are appointed, they should have no veto powers. The countries knocking at the Security Council door for permanent memberships include India, Brazil, Japan, and Germany. But the opposition to these candidacies has come from Italy, Argentina, Mexico, Pakistan, and South Korea. So, the reform of the Security Council remains deadlocked.
Meanwhile, the UN’s successes are in the field of humanitarian assistance, development funding, and environmental protection. A prime example: during September through November 2021, the UN and its NGO (non-governmental organization) partners provided 7.2 million people in war-ravaged Afghanistan with food assistance; reached more than 880,000 people with primary and secondary healthcare consultations; assisted almost 199,000 drought-affected people through water trucking; and treated more than 178,000 children under five for acute malnutrition, according to the latest figures.
What are some tips you can share with us for journalists who aspire to become correspondents covering the UN? And what message would you like to convey to the community of foreign correspondents in the US?
If you are a UN correspondent assigned to cover the UN, particularly the Security Council, you can rarely make any headway unless you build strong personal relationships with ambassadors, diplomats, and senior UN officials. It may take months or years, but it pays in the long run.
I was just fortunate in building up relationships with several diplomats and ambassadors, mostly from South Asia and Southeast Asia. From a regional perspective, being a Sri Lankan helped.
As a general rule, all ambassadors keep their foreign ministries updated and briefed on closed-door decisions taken either by the Security Council or the 134-member Group of 77, the largest single coalition of developing nations that significantly influence the UN’s socio-economic agenda.
The messages from ambassadors to their home countries are usually designated both “classified” or “non-classified.” The ambassador, with whom I had a strong personal relationship, routinely blind copied me some of the non-classified messages, mostly political gossip which found its way into our weekly column “Through the Grapevine.” I just considered myself lucky.
What are some of the memorable moments in your coverage of the UN?
When UN ambassadors and delegates congregate in the cavernous General Assembly Hall at voting time, they have one of three options: either vote for, against or abstain.
The most intriguing, however, is a fourth option: to be suddenly struck with an urge to rush to the toilet. The frantic attempt to leave your seat vacant -- and consequently be counted as "absent"-- takes place whenever the issue is politically sensitive.
When delegates are unable to vote with their conscience—or don't want to incur the wrath of mostly Western aid donors or are taken unawares with no specific instructions from their capitals-- they flee their seats.
At a lunch for reporters in his townhouse bordering Park Avenue in Manhattan, Ambassador Francesco Paolo Fulci, an Italian envoy with a sharp sense of humor, described the fourth option as the "toilet factor" in UN voting.
And he jokingly suggested that the only way to resolve the problem is to install portable toilets in the back of the General Assembly Hall so that delegates can still cast their votes while contemplating on their toilet seats. But for obvious reasons, there were no takers.
In most instances, the various regional groups and coalitions—including the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Group of 77, the Latin American and Caribbean States, the African Union (AU), and the Western European and Others (WEOG)— take decisions behind closed doors ahead of voting. But even though the “herd mentality” continues in most UN voting, there are rare occasions of an unscheduled vote, taking delegates by surprise.
In the 1970s and 80s, the 116-member Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), founded in Belgrade in 1961, was one of the largest and most powerful political coalitions at the UN-led by countries such as Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Ghana, Indonesia, Zambia, Cuba, and Sri Lanka.
As a general rule, all 116 countries vote in unison on General Assembly resolutions rarely breaking ranks. A Sri Lankan ambassador once recounted a message transmitted from his Foreign Ministry in Colombo – primarily directed at newly-arrived delegates which read--- “If you are faced with an unscheduled surprise vote, and do not have any instructions from the Foreign Ministry, look to the right to see how Yugoslavia is voting and look to the left to see how India is voting. If both ambassadors are seen bolting from their seats, just follow them to the toilet.”
The United Nations is also rich in anecdotes --- circulating in committee rooms, the corridors of the Secretariat, and the UN’s watering hole: the delegate’s lounge.
At the height of the Cold War back in the 1960s, a Peruvian diplomat, Dr. Victor Andres Belaunde, characterized the United Nations as a politically wobbly institution that survives only at the will-- and pleasure-- of the five big powers.
Simplifying his argument in more realistic terms, he said: "When two small powers have a dispute, the dispute disappears. When a great power and a small power are in conflict, the small power disappears. And when two great powers have a dispute, the United Nations disappears."
And more appropriately, it is the UN Security Council (UNSC) that vanishes into oblivion, particularly when big powers clash, warranting a ceasefire, not in some distant military conflict, but inside the UNSC chamber itself.
When Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi visited the UN in September 2009, the London Guardian said he “grabbed his 15 minutes of fame at the UN building in New York and ran with it. He ran with it so hard he stretched it to an hour and 40 minutes, six times longer than his allotted slot, to the dismay of UN organizers”.
Incidentally, according to one news report, there were 112 different spellings of the Libyan leader’s name, both in English and Arabic, including Muammar el-Qaddafi, Muammar Gaddafi, Muammar al-Gathafi, Muammar El Kadhafi, Moammar el Kazzafi, Moamer, El Qathafi, Mu'Ammar, Gadafi, and Moamar Gaddafi, amongst others.
The Wall Street Journal ran a cartoon making fun of the multiple spellings, with a visiting reporter, on a one-on-one interview in Tripoli, told the Libyan leader: ”My editor sent me to find out whether you are really Qaddafi, Khaddafi, Gadafi, Qathafi or Kadhafi?”
Meanwhile, just after a band of mercenaries tried to oust the government of the Maldives, a tiny island nation with no army, navy, or air force back in the 1980s, I asked a Maldivian diplomat about the strength of his country's standing army. "Standing army?", the diplomat asked with mock surprise, "We don't even have a sitting army."
But news coverage of the UN also extends beyond the glasshouse by the East River – and to the widespread diplomatic community in New York city.
When Ambassadors and other lower-ranking diplomats arrive in New York, most of them experience "culture shock" being forced to adjust to New York city living-- including food, language, and apartment living.
In the 1970s, the New York Daily News recounted the story of a newly arrived diplomat from a conflict-ridden African country who was posted to New York following death threats against him by a rebel group in his home country. A few weeks after his arrival, he found a note slipped under his Manhattan apartment door with an ominous message: "The exterminator will be here tomorrow."
Panicked at the thought that the rebel group had extended its reach, he was about to rush to the nearest police precinct when he accosted the clerk at the reception desk in the lobby who told him: "Sir, the exterminator will be here not to kill diplomats, but to exterminate roaches, bed bugs and mice." That was one of the first diplomatic lessons in Manhattan apartment living.
What were some of the historical moments you missed out during your journalistic career at the UN?
When the politically-charismatic Ernesto Che Guevara, once second-in-command to Cuban leader Fidel Castro, was at the United Nations to address the General Assembly sessions back in 1964, the U.N. headquarters came under attack – literally. The speech by the Argentine-born Marxist revolutionary was momentarily drowned by the sound of an explosion.
The anti-Castro forces in the United States, backed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), had mounted an insidious campaign to stop Che Guevara from speaking. A 3.5-inch bazooka was fired at the 39-story Secretariat building by the East River while a vociferous CIA-inspired anti-Castro, anti-Che Guevara demonstration was taking place outside the U.N. building on New York’s First Avenue and 42nd street.
But the rocket launcher – which was not as sophisticated as today’s shoulder-fired missiles and rocket-propelled grenades – missed its target, rattled windows, and fell into the river about 200 yards from the building. One newspaper report described it as “one of the wildest episodes since the United Nations moved into its East River headquarters in 1952.”
As longtime U.N. staffers would recall, the failed 1964 bombing of the U.N. building took place when Che Guevara launched a blistering attack on U.S. foreign policy and denounced a proposed de-nuclearization pact for the Western hemisphere. It was one of the first known politically motivated terrorist attacks on the United Nations. After his Assembly speech, Che Guevara was asked about the attack aimed at him. “The explosion has given the whole thing more flavor,” he joked, as he chomped on his Cuban cigar.
When he was told by a reporter that the New York City police had seized a woman, described as an anti-Castro Cuban exile, who had pulled out a hunting knife and jumped over the UN wall, intending to kill him, Che Guevara said: “It is better to be killed by a woman with a knife than by a man with a gun.”
A second historical moment was the visit of Yasser Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). On his 1974 visit, he avoided the hundreds of pro and anti-Arafat demonstrators outside the UN building by arriving in a helicopter which landed on the North Lawn of the UN campus adjoining the East River. When he addressed the General Assembly, there were confusing reports whether or not Arafat carried a gun in his holster—“in a house of peace” -- which was not visible to delegates.
One news story said Arafat was seen “wearing his gun belt and holster and reluctantly removing his pistol before mounting the rostrum.” “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand,” he told the Assembly. But there were some delegates who denied Arafat carried a weapon.
Setting the record straight, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and Head of the Department of Public Information told me it was discreetly agreed that Arafat would keep the holster while the gun was to be handed over to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, later Foreign Minister and President of Algeria (1999-2019).
Incidentally, when anti-Arafat New York protesters on First Avenue shouted: "Arafat Go Home", his supporters responded that was precisely what he wanted—a home for the Palestinians to go to.
A memorable Soviet-US confrontation took place at the General Assembly Hall in October 1960 during the height of the Cold War, but this time it was between the USSR and the Philippines, considered a close US ally at that time. The Filipino delegate Lorenzo Sumulong, lashed out at the USSR, pointing out that “the peoples of Eastern Europe and elsewhere (under Soviet domination) have been deprived of the free exercise of their civil and political rights and which have been swallowed up, so to speak, by the Soviet Union.”
Incensed by the remark, the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, who was leading the Soviet delegation, hit back with a vengeance, describing the Filipino as “a jerk, a stooge, and a lackey,” and a “toady of American imperialism” –words that are rarely heard in the General Assembly or the Security Council these days.
But an equally legendary story was Khrushchev, on a point of order, removing his shoe and continuously banging it on his desk, to be recognized by the President of the Assembly. British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan who was at the podium, drew gales of laughter when he said: “Mr. President, I am waiting for a translation.”
In what ways has the COVID19 pandemic affected the way you report and pursue your reporting from the UN?
The 20-month long pandemic shutdown of the UN building, beginning March 2020, radically transformed the basic rules of reporting. The UN’s meetings were mostly via teleconferencing or via zoom. As a result, both UN staffers and journalist worked mostly from home.
Consequently, there were no one-on-one in-person interviews which were mostly via email or by phone. Fortunately, most transcripts of UN briefings and UN meetings were available online.
For your reporting, you have received awards and recognition from the UN and the United Nations Correspondents Association. What constitutes success for a journalist and a correspondent like you?
As the former UN Bureau Chief for IPS, I was cited twice for excellence in U.N. reporting at the annual awards presentation of the U.N. Correspondents' Association (UNCA). In November 2012, I was on the IPS team which won the prestigious gold medal for reporting on the global environment-- and in 2013, I shared the gold, this time with the UN Bureau Chief of Reuters news agency, for his reporting on the humanitarian and development work of the United Nations.
The awards focused on two of the non-political, socio-economic issues high on the agenda of our news agency: sustainable development and environmental protection.
