United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan‘s deputy, Mark Malloch Brown, says “that although the United States was constructively engaged with the United Nations in many areas, the American public was shielded from knowledge of that by Washington’s tolerance of what he called ‘too much unchecked U.N.-bashing and stereotyping.'”
According to the NYT, he said: “Much of the public discourse that reaches the U.S. heartland has been largely abandoned to its loudest detractors such as Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.”
Here’s a top official of the UN publicly labeling Fox News a “detractor.” That’s certainly not fair and balanced, right?…
> Update: 10:30am: At a press conference last year, when asked if he thinks “Fox News has been waging a political campaign against the United Nations,” Malloch Brown said no. The transcript is after the jump…
Feb. 5, 2005:
Q: And another question is: I detected a slightly sarcastic reference to my colleague here in front. Do you think that some of the news media have politicized this? Do you think Fox News has been waging a political campaign against the United Nations?
Mr. Malloch Brown : No, let me be clear. You know, this report reflects that what Fox News and many others have said, which was that there were failings in this programme, is correct. Journalists should feel that the work that’s been done to expose shortcomings in the programme is confirmed. But what this report says is: there were faults. But some of the very, highly exaggerated accounts of what went wrong are, indeed, inaccurate and way beyond what the facts will bear. So, I hope this very substantial 200 pages of Mr. Volcker will rein this story back to the facts and away from some of the wilder speculation that has often characterized it. But, no, I think this report shows that journalists’ investigations of the UN were very much warranted.