By Tom Plate
What’s surprising about the probable confirmation of incumbent United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for a second five-year term is not its near-certainty! It is the virtual lack of controversy surrounding it.
This is to say that if you judged the former South Korean foreign minister’s first-term solely by the generally critical news media coverage of it, you might be led to conclude that his tenure has been a failure. And yet the probability is that the member states of the Security Council and the General Assembly will react to his formal announcement of candidacy this week with little dissent at all.
So the question we might want to ask is: Why in the world is that? Why do we read and see one version of reality in our news media, and yet the true reality would appear to be something quite different.
There are several reasons.
The first is that the vast percentage of the negative coverage of Ban’s first-term has come from the news media of the West. You can troll all day in the news media of Asia, for example, and be hard pressed to find much disapproval of this quiet man. To be sure, you might be tempted to dismiss this virtual negative-news blackout as homeboy favouritism. Or it just might be that much of Asia is actually pretty comfortable with Ban’s performance, noting that at least his administration has not been hit with the kind of embarrassing scandals that plagued the administration of his predecessor Kofi Annan. Absent as well has been the kind of dysfunctional antagonism from the permanent members of the UN Security Council that confined to one term the UN career of Annan’s predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
There is an additional, related reason. The fact of matter is that much of the non-Western world loathes us Western journalists and our constant sock-em-in-the-eye faultfinding approach to everything. Negative but honest journalism absolutely has its place but too much of it is depressing, like rank bad weather.
It might not even be too much to suggest that Ban’s chance for renewal only increased in the eyes of some Asian member states with each negative story in the Western press. Certainly Beijing, whose influence in this UN process these days cannot be overestimated, has had little but contempt for the general Western coverage of Ban’s work. Having agreed in 2006 to Ban’s candidacy in concurrence with Washington — a particularly useful example of substantive Sino-American cooperation at the highest level — Beijing was not about to have its judgment second-guessed by so-called news media experts anywhere, especially in the West. The enormous and disproportionate influence of the Western news media on the world media stage, even as it is being eroded daily by the free-for-all of the Internet, sometimes boomerangs. As, for example, it did in this case.
Yet another factor is the considerable loathing — in Beijing and elsewhere, but particularly in Asia — of the media’s insatiable appetite for what is usually termed charisma. Over and over and over, the Western media especially has correctly reported that Ban doesn’t have much of it, to which his many supporters retort: So what? How shall we define charisma and is it more chimera than content?
Questioning the value of charisma is particularly relevant in assessing Ban. While he certainly is not, as has been pointed out by one senior Western official who declined to be identified, “lightning in a bottle,” he has brought to the UN a number of other qualities that make you suspect that maybe charisma (however defined) is overrated.
And what might some of these qualities be?
For starters: basic and indeed advanced competence. Ban has been a professional diplomat all his life and his last non-UN job — that of South Korean foreign minister — is no joke (especially when you consider what lurks up north, and who else prowls around that difficult neighbourhood). Ban has also previously served at the UN in New York and had done so with distinction. Notably, he has not feared to put the UN behind the toughest issues, especially global warming.
This is why Ban is getting a second-term. He is a worker. And, as you may have noticed lately, the world sure does need a lot of work.
So guess what? Some people think a guy who works hard and is obviously honest and tries the best with what has been given to him (both genetically, and institutionally) deserves a pat on the back — and in this case five more years in office.
Makes sense to me.
This is to say that if you judged the former South Korean foreign minister’s first-term solely by the generally critical news media coverage of it, you might be led to conclude that his tenure has been a failure. And yet the probability is that the member states of the Security Council and the General Assembly will react to his formal announcement of candidacy this week with little dissent at all.
So the question we might want to ask is: Why in the world is that? Why do we read and see one version of reality in our news media, and yet the true reality would appear to be something quite different.
There are several reasons.
The first is that the vast percentage of the negative coverage of Ban’s first-term has come from the news media of the West. You can troll all day in the news media of Asia, for example, and be hard pressed to find much disapproval of this quiet man. To be sure, you might be tempted to dismiss this virtual negative-news blackout as homeboy favouritism. Or it just might be that much of Asia is actually pretty comfortable with Ban’s performance, noting that at least his administration has not been hit with the kind of embarrassing scandals that plagued the administration of his predecessor Kofi Annan. Absent as well has been the kind of dysfunctional antagonism from the permanent members of the UN Security Council that confined to one term the UN career of Annan’s predecessor Boutros Boutros-Ghali.
There is an additional, related reason. The fact of matter is that much of the non-Western world loathes us Western journalists and our constant sock-em-in-the-eye faultfinding approach to everything. Negative but honest journalism absolutely has its place but too much of it is depressing, like rank bad weather.
It might not even be too much to suggest that Ban’s chance for renewal only increased in the eyes of some Asian member states with each negative story in the Western press. Certainly Beijing, whose influence in this UN process these days cannot be overestimated, has had little but contempt for the general Western coverage of Ban’s work. Having agreed in 2006 to Ban’s candidacy in concurrence with Washington — a particularly useful example of substantive Sino-American cooperation at the highest level — Beijing was not about to have its judgment second-guessed by so-called news media experts anywhere, especially in the West. The enormous and disproportionate influence of the Western news media on the world media stage, even as it is being eroded daily by the free-for-all of the Internet, sometimes boomerangs. As, for example, it did in this case.
Yet another factor is the considerable loathing — in Beijing and elsewhere, but particularly in Asia — of the media’s insatiable appetite for what is usually termed charisma. Over and over and over, the Western media especially has correctly reported that Ban doesn’t have much of it, to which his many supporters retort: So what? How shall we define charisma and is it more chimera than content?
Questioning the value of charisma is particularly relevant in assessing Ban. While he certainly is not, as has been pointed out by one senior Western official who declined to be identified, “lightning in a bottle,” he has brought to the UN a number of other qualities that make you suspect that maybe charisma (however defined) is overrated.
And what might some of these qualities be?
For starters: basic and indeed advanced competence. Ban has been a professional diplomat all his life and his last non-UN job — that of South Korean foreign minister — is no joke (especially when you consider what lurks up north, and who else prowls around that difficult neighbourhood). Ban has also previously served at the UN in New York and had done so with distinction. Notably, he has not feared to put the UN behind the toughest issues, especially global warming.
This is why Ban is getting a second-term. He is a worker. And, as you may have noticed lately, the world sure does need a lot of work.
So guess what? Some people think a guy who works hard and is obviously honest and tries the best with what has been given to him (both genetically, and institutionally) deserves a pat on the back — and in this case five more years in office.
Makes sense to me.
American journalist Tom Plate, distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific affairs at Loyola Marymount University, is the author of the Giants of Asia series, which includes “Conversations with Mahathir Mohamad,” “Conversations With Lee Kuan Yew,” and "Conversations with Thaksin." He can be reached at platecolumn@gmail.com. © 2011, Pacific Perspectives Media Center.
Originally published June 5, 2011 in the Khaleej Times.
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