Why Duplicate Communications Work on Development Summit? Who/What are Corkery Media Consultants?

07/09/2002

The name may not be the same. It could go by any other. The problem is the ambivalent attitude to the UN's own department of public information.

The case in point is the preparation for a forthcoming summit on sustainable development, ten years after that held in Rio. Other international conferences over the last decade have been handled well by an experienced professional team. Susan Markham who heads a unit dealing with such issues was always there to prepare the groundwork. Media Director, Salim Lone, has been at the forefront of raising development issues since his sterling work at Africa Recovery. The Information Centers in the field have always carried the brunt of the work doing much more with much less. Also available are development information officers in UNDP, UNICEF and other members of the UN system.

Why then bring in Media Consultants to promote the forthcoming UN conference on development. Clearly any help would have been welcome if those consultants made the difference. However a company reportedly favored by Ted Turner's UN Foundation was apparently charged - and charging a fee to alert the media and mobilize public information for the South African bound meeting.

By now just a couple of months before the deadline nothing remarkable has been achieved by that group reportedly named Corker Media Consultants. Eventually it is the information centers and colleagues at headquarters that will end up doing the real work while favored consultants receive their reward. As usual, if anything went wrong, in this imperfect world, DPI will be easily blamed.