Diplomacy at work

Using the very old and very democratic theatre of the United Nations to help bring peace to a country in the throes of war is often a long, arduous, and sometimes even fruitless process - just ask any of the bleary-eyd UN representetives who have just spent the past few weeks hammering together a peace accord for the Israel/Lebanon conflict. With the United States currently somewhat over-stretched fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, everyone agreed that the UN would be the perfect world body to handle this conflict, and that it would be best to have non-US soldiers perched on the frontline when trying to keep Israel and Hezbollah from each others' throats. Both noble sentiments, to be sure. But the bickering and fighting over the exact wording of the Israel/Lebanon resolution was something of a constant source of either agony (if you were a member of the Arab world), bloody frustration (if you were a close observer of the conflict, and happened to be on the side of peace) or of little consequence (if you happened to be a conservative). The UN Security Council did eventually come to a consensus last Friday, which called for both Israel and Hezbollah to cease fighting, but the process took far longer than it should have, and more people were killed thanks to the delay. Almost a week ago, The New York Times reported the difficult diplomacy ongoing inside UN Security Council.

It all came down to an almost one-hour fight over the wording of one passage in the final communiqué.

While other countries were pushing for a statement that said the group would work toward an “immediate cease-fire,” Ms. Rice insisted on “work immediately” toward a cease-fire. That may be a small point to most people, but it is a huge one diplomatically since it shifts the burden away from an immediate cessation of violence and more toward diplomacy, a shift that also buys Israel more time to keep up its campaign.

Agreeing to use the UN Security Council to help broker a peace deal or prepare a peacekeeping force may be a last resort in the game of international brinkmanship, but that's nothing compared to what we have to sit through once the Security Council actually convenes and begins to brainstorm the exact structure and wording of a resolution. Each country, or rather each country's delegate, armed with a littany of fellow diplomats, comes to the table with their own perfect resolution, which suits their country and its interests to a tea. The attitude brought to the Security Council by its permenant members - the UK, France, the US, Russia and China - is similar to that of a South-East Asian trinket hawker: optomistic, but still willing to bargain to get a sale. Each country knows it's not going to get its resolution through the way they'd like it, but they're equally conscious not to give too much of its resolution away. Some countries - mainly the God-fearing, flag-flying variety - push harder than others in an effort to make sure their resolution, or something as close to it as possible, is chosen. And it's those stubborn countries, who are often fixated on just one or two words, and how those words may be interpreted, that are so often the source deadly delays. Because when it comes to the UN Security Council, it's the words themselves that are so often the difference between life and death.

The UN may have some things in the wrong place - a few corrupt officials here and there, aided by more than a few corrupt businessmen around the globe - but it's still one of the best options for keeping and enforcing the peace we've got. Sometimes it works well, and international diplomacy is able to stemm a what would have been a long and bloody war (the first Iraq war); and sometimes the process is impeded by handwringing while hundreds, or hundreds of thousands die waiting for the UN to assert itself (the Kosovo war). Either way, the UN is a safety net worth keeping. And on this occasion at least I'm glad the Security Council and the countries represented inside it - specifically the United States - had the foresight to catch Israel and Lebanon before they fell too far.

Reporting the News (Corp)

In the business world, profit result time comes but once a year - twice if you count the intermediate half-yearly results, and about 52 times if you count the regular, almost weekly profit "updates". But never mind the mind-numbing frequency of information required in a deregulated economy, finance reporters still manage to pull out their pokadot ties and extra-fine pin-stripe suits and make a party out of the auspicious annual event. It's a chance to listen to analysts wax on about your favourite company, and a chance to listen to your favourite finance pundit give their honest account of the market's honest account of how well any given company has performed. But as if it wasn't already tough enough trying to pick your way through information about the various blue chips, how much they've made, and whether the market thinks they should have drawn more blood, we're forced to decipher and unravell how well our national media companies have performed. Unless you're lucky enough have a business degree it's almost impossible to get something even close to an objective idea of how well the papers are moving into the new media market.

The most obvious and noxious offender, at least as far as I can tell, is News Limited, although the Murdoch media conglomerate is by no means the only one guilty of the practice. So don't be fooled by Mark Day's attempt at impartiality - "News to surf net to more records", written with the help of Nic Hopkins, and published in Thursday's Australian. Don't let the title fool you, what follows is a legitimate news report, in so much as it has a lead - penned by Day, with a little help from the folks in the News Limited PR department; an extrapolation of the lead - less Day, more News PR; followed by another 500 words or so of salient information, most of which comes from the people at News PR. Don't worry about reporting the market's reaction to the $5.1 billion profit, just add some congratulatory adjectives, a few select quotes from Murdoch and News Corp's chief operating officer Peter Chernin and you have yourself a business story suitable for the front page of The Australian's Media section. This sort of approach is not at all surprising if you're at all familiar with the News modus operandi, which states that every News Limited newspaper, magazine, website, television station, television show and film - and there are literally hundreds of them littered all around the globe - should be able to advertise the company or any of its subsidiaries whenever the chance presents itself. When you own as many media outlets as News Corp does, or you have your fingers embedded in as many media pies as Mr Murdoch, there's a huge opportunity to not just to report the news but to twist it your way.

As I said at the top, this is not just an affliction that affects Murdoch or News, but something that eats away at the credibility of every media company - including the ABC, who has at least a fleeting interest in seeing its commercial competitors fall flat on their faces. But it's just that News Corp casts such a wide net - a net that reaches across the entire globe, and now across the internet thanks to the recent purchase of MySpace. No doubt this will soon extend beyond the confines of this planet, but hopefully not for a few years at least. And sure, when pressed, and when they look deep into their souls, most media companies - at least the ones who concern themselves with the fourth estate - will probably admit they're more interested in earning cash than in their civic responsibility, or the notion of a free, fearless and responsible press. It's just that Rupert Murdoch doesn't need to be pressed, prodded or even asked before he's willing to admit it is the money that is keeping him in the game. Nobody with a claim to serious journalism would have even considered placing topless women inside the fold just to sell a few British tabloids, now would they? But Murdoch doesn't make a claim to pursue serious journalism; never has, and probably never will.

Debating with a bunch of 12-year-olds

One of the most telling tidbits of knowledge I learnt before I started out on my path towards professional journalism concerned the Australian tabloid press, a topic which I knew little of at the time, and probably know even less about today. I don't know where I heard it, but according to my source, all Australian tabloids were written with such simple language and sentence structure that a 12-year-old child should be able to pick one up, read it and understand what's happening around the world. This is, I was told, a conscious effort by editors and journalists alike to ensure everyone with a fifth-grade education could pick up a copy and become an informed member of the community; newspaper sales, of course, were secondary. But there are, and it may come as a shock, depending on whether you're a regular Herald Sun reader or not, some concerns I have with this approach, because the choice to frame news and debate around a 12-year-old's vocabulary does have its side effects.

I have to admit that I often enjoy picking up a copy of our nation's largest selling rag, Melbourne's Herald Sun, and navigating my way through all the partisan headlines ("$1 a word for Labor mate" was today's gem) and eye-grabbing pictures, before I finally come to rest on the opinion pages and begin to read. In truth, there really isn't much point picking through the scarce number of words the lay-out subs manage to squeeze on a page in between the ads and the pictures that make up the "news" section of the paper, so I flick through and head straight to the opinion section, and usually to Andrew Bolt. But today being Monday, there is, of course, no Andrew Bolt to entertain me, so when I went down to my local coffee shop looking for a fight I was forced to read Bolt's ideological shadow, Paul Gray. Gray has adopted some of Bolt's best, or should I say most effective techniques of subtle persuasion, his stock standard being the ability to polarize almost any discussion into a debate about the left versus the right, or us versus them, where the left is invariably anyone who disagrees with him.

Today Fidel Castro is Gray's ideological weapon of choice with which to bludgeon the greenies, peaceniks and free-thinking liberals; but it could just as easily have been homosexual rights ("Are gays in God's plan?") or the appeasement of North Korea ("They kept train that carried the food"), all of which Gray has used before. Almost any situation or debate can be framed as a fight between left and right, neocon and hawk, dictator and freedom-fighter, and let's be honest here, this style of argument is an easy way to fill a column - I know that when I was in fifth grade I found things easier to undertand if it was a case of good versus evil (no offence to fifth graders intended). Throwing all nuance out the window, Gray's work, along with many on the left, as well as the right, demonstrates a lack of respect for their audience, and a real reluctance to move past the us versus them mentality of the Cold War. This is Gray's incisive analysis on the progression of liberalism throughout the 20th century, as he tries to prove a point about North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Liberal intellectuals in the 1930s refused to denounce Stalin, even praising his "egalitarianism", while millions were being deported into the Soviet gulag.

Liberal politicians insisted Hitler could be negotiated with, even as he prepared for "the final solution."

Liberal-minded hippies eulogised Chairman Mao and carried his Little Red Book as China's people were being crushed by the madness of the Cultural Revolution.

This standard liberal mindset resists all notions that the West should use its strength to overcome certain leaders, such as Kim Jong-il, in the interests of protecting humanity.

Those pesky liberals Gray speaks with such damning authority about, with their "standard liberal mindset" and hatred of US power, are often just as bad as commentators like Gray, likely to tag anyone who argues, or disagrees with them as a fascist, a conservative (ouch, what a slug) or any number of words that seem to have lost their true meaning in this tit versus tat ideological war. Far too many people today use the word fascist to describe our Prime Minister, a description which is more than just offensive, but plain childish and intellectually lazy to boot. Part of the reason for this is that the debate is often being carried out in the public arena of the tabloid press, each paper (Murdoch papers, anyway) with a commitment to keep anything they print at the reading level of a 12-year-old. The left and the right do exist, but they don't come in the one-size-fits all shape Gray and his sparring partners on the other side of the debate would like us to believe.