Global Policy Forum

By Michael Littlejohns

Posted December 6, 2001The American patriotism appears as a fashion in the US, spurred by the media, and perceived by some as an "unattractive jingoism with overtones of propaganda." This article discusses the UN's neutrality and objectivity, as well as the media's role in this extreme time.War is guaranteed to stir the patriotic juices.

Dec. 7, 1941, a "day that will live in infamy" and plunged the US into WW2 60 years ago this week-end, and now the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. Sept. 11, 2001 and America's military reprisal begun Nov. 7 share the same patriotic response in the citizenry. (The US-led UN "police action" in Korea produced considerably less fervor. The reaction to Vietnam? That was something else.)

Although differences have arisen about some actions on the home front that critics on both the left and the right call a potential threat to civil liberties, and some say may be unconstitutional, an overwhelming majority of Americans approve the Bush administration's decision to undertake military action in Afghanistan in the search for Osama bin Laden and destroy his al Qaeda terror network. Despite reservations at the UN and on the part of some of the allies, as well as Secretary of State Colin Powell's latest statement in Turkey that nothing is yet decided, Iraq still is thought by many people to be the next place in America's military sights once Afghanistan is squared away.

The US has had just about enough of Saddam Hussein's obduracy and deciding to go take him out likely would be a popular move domestically.

Visitors to the US from abroad say they're astonished to observe the patriotic emotion in the country since 9/11.

Newspapers, news magazines, radio and TV have maintained a constant drumbeat on a single theme; entire nightly newscasts are devoted to Afghanistan and terrorism, to the virtual exclusion of anything else. Similarly, the endless talking heads.

And all those flags. Here in New York, at entrances to apartment buildings, in the windows of smart stores on fashionable streets and of multimillion-dollar private dwellings, on all city buses and hundreds of thousands of private cars, the Stars and Stripes is ubiquitous. Befitting the self-proclaimed "tallest residential building anywhere", there's an enormous one at the 75-story Trumph World Tower right across from the UN.

President Bush started the fashion of wearing a small reproduction of the flag in his coat lapel and now no senior US official worth his salt dare be seen without his little personal emblem on display. New York Mayor-elect Michael R. Bloomberg wears his along with the city's Big Apple.

Online vendors, like Flag Emporium in Sonoma, Calif., whose business soared after Sept. 11, still can hardly keep up with the demand for flags of all sizes, as well as decals and pins -- including "friendship pins" that join a replica of the US flag to that of an allied country -- or, in one version, the UN emblem. (Kofi Annan has not succumbed to the craze; this latest Nobel laureate still wears his badge of peace, a small white dove.)

Is it really necessary to show the colors to demonstrate one's patriotic feelings? Probably not, but it's the fashion and who will quarrel. No fewer than 27 flags were counted flying briskly on a tow truck traveling up First Avenue the other day, a few blocks from the still closely-guarded UN.

Tom Brokaw, the NBC anchor whose evening news show leads the national ratings, is one high profile citizen who declined to wear a pin on camera. In the UN, although Americans form the largest single group of secretariat staff, relatively few of them are spotted sporting national emblems.

To some, so much showing the flag may be considered an unattractive jingoism with overtones of propaganda. That may be why UN workers, who need to maintain a measure of objectivity and neutrality while going about their international duties, are not in the main in display mode.

What's news and what's propaganda in this extreme time is exercising the UN, which knows spin when it sees it and has been known itself to practice the technique.

Kofi Annan's indomitable information chief Shashi Tharoor arranged a public forum Thursday to discuss the way media decision-makers (his term) determine how to cover major world events, like the war on terrorism and the latest crisis in the Middle East. Mary Robinson, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose reputation for blunt speaking without fear or favor is well known, and Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN's more cautious Afghanistan peace negotiator, were invited to take part on the official side.

Also lined up, from the media, were Ibrahim Helal, chief editor of the controversial Arabic TV outlet al Jazeera (Osama bin Laden's favorite channel, according to some Western critics); Steve Williams of BBC World News; Larry Register, vice president of special projects at CNN; Mathatha Tsedu of the state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation; Abdel Ban Atwan, editor in chief of al Quds al Arabi; and Barbara Crossette, Canada correspondent and former UN bureau chief of The New York Times.

Tharoor, an official from India who runs the department of public information with conspicuous success after it went through a bad period under barely competent Japanese leadership, appointed himself moderator, a task in which he demonstrated considerable skill in previous forums called to pontificate on the perceived vices and occasional virtues of the media.

The event, scheduled for television coverage and Webcasting worldwide, was arranged in collaboration with Commissioner Mary Robinson's office. Freedom of information is one of the human rights.

Was Sept. 11 an awakening for the media? Without question, yes. Will the current vogue in serious news coverage last? Who can say?

Many in the media share Tharoor's concern. How long will the networks stay away from stuff and nonsense, wonders Ken Auletta in his "Annals of Communication" article in this week's issue of The New Yorker. He notes that by mid-November -- some two months after the terrorist attacks on Manhattan and Washington -- network news show ratings were sliding and journalists worried "that their born-again bosses will start leaning on them to cut costs and produce more fluff." (There are already signs of a return on local TV news in the US to the former emphasis on crimes and crashes: "If it bleeds, it leads.")

The UN, which for most American editors (even those based in New York) is a foreign news beat, has a vested interest in promoting a demand for international reporting, including, of course, what goes on within its own walls.

In Shashi Tharoor, the Secretary General's spokesman Fred Eckhard and an unusually capable information staff at all levels, the UN is well served -- a point that the US delegation, which has been highly critical in the past, acknowledged publicly just a few days ago. It's a help that Annan is wonderfully cooperative with the media -- much more so than his predecessors.

He's on first-name terms with scores of media stars and their bosses. He seldom turns down an invitation to go on network television or an opportunity to get an Op-ed piece in the papers. It's not his problem that having to be circumspect, as a Secretary General must, is not the best way to make news.

From here on in, the UN is likely to be heavily involved in the aftermath to the war in Afghanistan as well as the continuing fight against terrorism. Some of the hundreds of journalists accredited to the Organization who show up only a few times a year, if at all, may discover that there's plenty going on that's worth reporting in the world's foremost global center.

Ken Auletta quotes Peter Jennings, the ABC anchor, as follows: "The country's definition of foreign news has changed forever. What we learned from this crisis -- from the airplanes that crashed on September 11th to the potential horror of a smallpox scare -- is that everything about this story is about globalization." Certainly, that's UN business.

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