Title
Department of Public Information Should Balance Goals of Broader Multilingual Coverage with Effective Blend of Traditional, New Media Use, GA PI/2051
Note
Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, UN Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, told delegates to the UN Committee on Information that he was very happy to have received their "new ideas." That was after he heard 24 mentions of the word Palestine, multiple praises for the UN Department's Palestine Section, Egypt and Lebanon condemn various (alleged) Israeli horrors, and Cuba denounce U.S. "aggressions." The subject of the meeting, by the way, was the free flow of information. In the enlightening exchange, Iran said it was very committed to freedom of speech and information flow; Cuba said there was no free speech in the United States. Lebanon said it was deeply committed to "lively social debate" (assuming it wasn't on Hezbollah holding its population as human shields.) China was a bit more straight forward, telling fellow UN members that "objective information" was its priority. Similarly, Venezuela thought a free press meeting was a good time to insist: "Media could potentially become harmful instrument."