Like Toast in a Toaster

The subcommittee expressed the belief that the coverage of U.N. activities as it appears in the world press could be improved . . .

--U.N. Press Release

In other (and simpler) words, U.N. was getting a bad press. In these measured phrases of officialese, the U.N. Advisory Committee of Information Experts last week told the world so.

Earlier in the conference, Chile's Benjamin Cohen, Assistant Secretary General in Charge of Public Information, had said the same, with fewer dots and more dash. He lashed out at newspapermen for "distorting" U.N. news and giving a "fragmentary picture," put the blame on a "crisis-conflict" type of journalism. Secretary General Trygve Lie was gentler. "I wouldn't go as far as that," said Lie, diplomatically. "It depends a good deal on the individual paper and country."

What U.N. thought it wanted was less emphasis on "sensational" Big Power collisions and "more emphasis placed on information work on 1) constructive economic, social and humanitarian achievements of the U.N. and related agencies; and 2) public clarification of the functions and limitations of the U.N. under the charter."

Actually, U.N. just wanted to be understood and appreciated.

Just how could that be arranged? The committee offered one suggestion: that the U.N. secretariat be given more money (amount unspecified) to blow U.N.'s horn. The committee recommendations called for more U.N. movies; more U.N. radio programs; more U.N. reports in more languages; more U.N. information centers throughout the world, and the establishment of a worldwide U.N. press.

Unfortunately, there were some problems that more radio, more movies and more printer's ink would not solve.

"Crisis-conflicts" from the outside world kept popping up at Lake Success as abruptly as toast in a toaster. U.N. then sent such disagreeable matters to committee. Nobody had yet been able to make the result read like anything but disagreements in a committee meeting.

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