When Good Intentions Can Cause Trouble   

The women's conference platform urges government to "encourage" the media to treat women better. That's not government's job.

Coverage of the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in September expended plenty of ink and video on controversies over reproductive freedom, sexual orientation and inheritance rights that kept delegates debating far into the night. Details of the logistical problems and oppressive surveillance by Chinese police at the parallel conference in rain-soaked Huairou were plentiful.

But another story from Beijing went largely unreported. It involves a small but critical portion of the 150-page "Platform for Action," the official conference exhortation to governments, which attempts to define the media's job in promoting the U.N.'s vision of a brave new world of women's equality.

Scattered sections address the role of the media in "contributing to" violence against women and in spreading "stereotyped and demeaning images of women for narrow commercial and consumerist purposes." But Chapter IV, Section J devotes itself to analyzing the media's past sins and doling out retribution and penances. It is packed with language that could spell trouble for the press.

The document observes that "negative and degrading images of women" proliferate in the media, and that this "must be changed" by "mainstreaming a gender perspective."

For starters, governments should train women to work in the media and enact laws to create a "gender balance" among employees in private media companies. National and international "media systems" are to develop mechanisms to promote "balanced and diverse portrayals" of women – and governments are to "encourage" the participation of women in drawing up those regulations.

The platform calls for media watchdog groups to "ensure that women's needs and concerns are properly reflected." Governments are to "encourage the media to refrain from presenting women as inferior beings," to "promote the concept that sexist stereotypes displayed in the media are gender discriminatory, degrading in nature and offensive," and to legislate against "the projection of violence against women and children."

The media have been given their tasks as well. They should "promote the equal sharing of family responsibilities," disseminate information on women leaders "who bring to their positions many different life experiences," increase awareness of women's rights, and train experts to apply gender analysis to media programs.

Depending on your point of view, these may sound like good goals, or terrible ones. But the relative merits of the positions espoused in the platform are beside the point. What has come out of Beijing is a dangerous manifesto intended to provide government with virtually untrammeled authority to control the content and operations of media organizations.

This isn't the first time something like this has happened.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the U.N.'s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) proposed similar initiatives under the rubric of a so-called "right to communicate." The goal was to empower the developing world by guaranteeing access to comm­nication channels – an international "Fairness Doctrine" so incon- sistent with First Amendment principles that it helped prompt the United States to withdraw from UNESCO.

In Beijing, to their credit, delegates from the United States and the European Union inserted qualifiers limiting mandates to those consistent with freedom of expression. The United States also interposed an interpretive paragraph reminding governments that while they can commit whatever resources they choose, they cannot "require" independent media to take any actions without impinging on freedom of the press.

This is all to the good. But current zealotry in Congress over cyber-porn and television violence notwithstanding, the trouble that will arise from the platform isn't going to come from Western governments. Rather, it will emerge in the developing world, where terms like "encourage" have been interpreted to mean "do it or lose your license" – or go to jail.

Governments simply have no business "encouraging" the media to do anything, no matter how laudable the goals may be. In some countries, even a seemingly innocent "suggestion" looks very much like a mandate. As a consequence, the line between objective news reports and government fiats, between an independent news organization and a government mouthpiece, becomes fuzzier.

No matter how appealing the mission – whether it's promoting women's rights or publishing the Unabomber's manuscript in a well-intended attempt to stop a maniac from killing more people – news organizations cede their independent news judgment to the government at their peril. The Beijing platform is a reminder of how fragile the rights of a free press can be. l