MEDIA: United Nations Projects 300 Million “Hits” on its Web Site

By Thalif Deen Reprint | | Print |

Thalif Deen

UNITED NATIONS, May 5 2000 (IPS) - The United Nations is projecting over 300 million “hits” on its web site this year, about seven times more than in 1997.

“The popularity of the UN web site (www.un.org) continues to grow at a phenomenal pace,” says Kensaku Hogen, Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information.

The number of hits have continued to rise: from 42 million in 1997 and 97 million in 1998 to 182 million last year.

Hogen says the United Nations now routinely receives more than a million accesses a day, with a projection of over 300 million by the end of this year. But these 300 million hits, however, have come mostly from 48 out of the 188 member states in the world body. Last year, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan admitted that about 90 percent of all accesses to the UN web site comes from industrial countries.

As a result, developing nations have urged the United Nations not to abandon the traditional media in favour of the information superhighway. In disseminating news to the outside world, the United Nations has been asked to strengthen its output through the radio and the print media despite its increasing emphasis on the Internet.

Addressing the UN Committee on Information Tuesday, Hogen said the Department of Public Information (DPI) would take a dramatic step this year towards direct dissemination of major UN news stories to radio stations around the world in all six official languages – English, French, Russian, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic.

So far, he said, more than 100 radio stations in 58 mostly developing countries, have expressed interest in the UN’s proposed new project.

Hogen told the Committee that the DPI had re-deployed about 1.8 million dollars to develop a UN international radio broadcasting capacity. “This would not have been possible without airtime partnerships established with local, national and international radio stations and networks in all regions,” he added.

Responding to fears expressed by several developing nations that the print media would be supplanted by the electronic media, Hogen said that his department plans to allocate about 90 percent of its resources to the traditional media.

But the huge allocation to the traditional media, he argued, would not undermine the United Nations’ commitment to exploit fully the powerful reach and impact of the Internet.

“While Internet access emanated principally from the industrial world,” he admitted, “the day is not too far distant when the medium will become a wide bandwidth channel for delivering top quality sound and pictures into living rooms around the world.” The United Nations is also planning to create its own news service to feed the world’s newspapers and radio and television stations, by the end of this year.

Salim Lone, Director of the UN’s News and Media Division, told IPS that the proposed news service is not meant to compete with international news agencies or wire services. He said the whole exercise would be regionally-tailored.

“We will provide additional information and backgrounders on stories already on news agency wires,” he said. These would include full texts of speeches made by delegates, UN reports and studies, and background information to supplement existing news stories – all of which will be tailored to the specific needs of each region.

All this information is to be transmitted via e-mail to news organisations, radio stations and TV stations, mostly in the developing world. “We plan to take the UN direct to each editor’s desk,” he added.

Lone said that some of the information provided will be on thematic issues – such as human rights, children, population, and development.

The UN Information Centres are currently compiling mailing lists of editors and reporters who have shown an interest in receiving the news service.

Addressing the Committee on Information, Ambassador Anwarul Karim Chowdhury of Bangladesh said that in the development of a new culture of communication at the United Nations, it is important to promote an overall positive image of the organisation.

“My delegation particularly commends the DPI for developing and maintaining a very useful and attractive web site of the United Nations,” he said.

But Chowdhury pointed out that UN information should more aggressively publicise the UN’s activities and accomplishments in the field of social and economic development, a major preoccupation of the world body.

Sustainable human development issues, such as poverty eradication, health, education, women’s rights and empowerment, as well as other social issues of relevance, should receive additional information.

More use of the radio and television, as well as the establishment of a UN news service, could serve that purpose, he added.

Chowdhury, however, said that UN press releases should bring out the intergovernmental aspect of the organisation’s work and deliberations. At present, he complained, press releases were too focused on the Secretariat’s role.