The New Nation - Internet Edition

Tom Plate

Some issues are complex, some are easy. This one is easy - but that doesn't mean it is not terribly important.

As matters now stand, accredited, professional journalists from Taiwan are once again being denied Press passes by UN authorities to cover the annual World Health Assembly of the World Health Organisation. This year's event takes place in Geneva on May 19th. The topic is "A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century".

A keystone to greater public-health security around the world is good and timely information. That is the news media's primary job, and there's no issue more needy of acute timeliness than health, especially with epidemics like SARS and the bird flu.

The reporters from Taiwan are not being denied accreditation because they are not competent journalists. They are being denied because they're from Taiwan, which is not a member of the UN because it is not recognised by the UN - or by most countries of the world, and for that matter the United States - as a separate, sovereign country.

In particular, China, with its UN Security Council veto, and growing clout on the world stage, takes umbrage at any official recognition of Taiwan, even of its journalists. It views this Taiwan-journalist controversy as just another semi-clever wedge move by Taipei to nail down the island's image as a permanently political entity separate and distinct from the mainland. Its strong feelings on the subject are well known to the UN's Department of Public Information, which has enough problems on its hands without trying to take on Beijing by accrediting the Taiwan journalists.

Even so, China and the UN are wrong on this issue, and the Taiwan journalists are right. Indeed, the latter is the strongly held view of almost every journalist I know, of the International Press Institute (IPI), of the prestigious and professional global network of editors, of the media executives and leading journalists in over 120 countries, and of the massive International Federation of Journalists (IFJ). I could bore you by running through the details in the various clauses of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (such as Article 19, or Article 2), which lean towards the journalists, but instead, let's appeal directly to Beijing, the UN and - most of all - to good old common sense.

Common sense first: Every additional journalist that covers this important world-health conference is a good thing for the world's public health.

The more we know - what to eat, how to care for others and ourselves, what symptoms to watch for and which to fear - the better will be the common health of mankind. If there's one thing the news media can do when it is doing its thing well, it is to spread the news - quickly and furiously. This is what news-persons do.

Now as to Beijing: First of all, your own public-information health record is less than exemplary. But you know this. So let's not rehash the mainland's Sars and Aids performance; besides, no nation is even close to perfect.

But China will not be receiving any public health Nobel Prizes any time soon. Another thing, Beijing: You deserve credit for your recent cozy overtures to the newly elected government of Taiwan's Ma Ying-jeou. And, for his part, this dashing candidate of the Kuomintang Party, which favours non-antagonistic relations with the mainland, has made it clear that he favours much warmer and closer ties with the Beijing behemoth.

Hello! This is a golden opportunity, Beijing, for you to make a grand and above-the-commonplace gesture, reverse your policy of opposing Taiwan journalists' accreditation in the interest of world public health, and look to the rest of the world like the reasonable government you can be when you actually want to be reasonable.

Besides, give the new guy Ma the sense of a small victory, and his new government may surprise you with what you get in return. And even if the Ma government - just now getting its act together - does blow the opportunity, you will look even better in the eyes of world public opinion.

Even some of the world's monks might cheer! As for the UN's embattled Department of Public Information: Look ladies and gentlemen, let us not kowtow to Beijing all the time.

Let's pick a spot once in awhile and make some noise. So here's a good soapbox for you to stand on: Maximising public information about world health and the workings of the World Health Assembly, the WHO's governing body. This means giving Press credentials to just about anyone who wants one, even to producers of web-pages hardly anyone has heard of - hey, maybe even to Taiwan journalists!

It's all for a good cause, the issue is anything but complicated, and - best of all - it's actually very important. It'd certainly be a healthy political development."