The UN Office in Geneva is celebrating 60 years of collaboration with European Broadcasting Union of public-service broadcasters, which has helped transparent, fair and impartial television news around the world.
For years, the United Nations and its agencies in Geneva have relied on global news agencies and other media outlets based at the Place of Nations to get the latest breaking stories out to the world daily.
But one special partnership with the Geneva-based European Broadcast Union (EBU) ensures that public service news broadcasters across Europe and around the world, have access to live transmissions and video news items coming from the UN’s office in the Swiss city, a major source of international news content.
The partnership involves “challenging fake news, leading the transparent and balanced dissemination of facts, and restoring public trust in democratic institutions as cornerstones of public service media,” explains EBU Director General Noel Curran.
The decades-long relationship between the two organisations, whose mandates call for a clear, unbiased, impartial and independent portrayal of the world as it is today, also acknowledges just how effective television can be in serving the public interest and in championing trust, diversity and innovation.
“At the UN, we cover many forgotten crises that too few other broadcasters carry, from the world’s biggest humanitarian emergency in Yemen, to insecurity in the Central African Republic, Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo or mass displacement in the Sahel, that’s linked in a big way to the climate change emergency,” UNTV news producer Daniel Johnson, who is in regular contact with EBU’s news desk about upcoming stories of interest, said.
He’s also a familiar voice for UN News listeners, as the regular presenter of our daily News in brief and UN Catch-Up Dateline Geneva weekly podcast.
“In addition to all the UN and international agencies in Geneva, “we’re also incredibly privileged to have the Human Rights Council so close too,” said Daniel.
“It’s about 60 metres as the crow flies from the UNTV studio – so we can jump in to follow its work, if there’s a big or breaking story there, to ensure that they don’t disappear.”
Every year, UNTV Geneva produces some 200 edited international news items, which are distributed via EBU’s Eurovision News Exchange.
The partnership also extends to events of exceptional interest that promote the multilateral values of both organisations.
An additional and recently created partnership that involves both entities is the UN Communications Group for people working in video.
After the European group was created – with the EBU providing hosting – it was joined in 2020 by its North American counterpart.
“In a sense, COVID has made our cooperation stronger, as so many operations have gone ‘hybrid’, and therefore rely on live audio-visual support,” says Michele Zaccheo, Chief of UNTV and Radio and coordinator of the Group.
“When the pandemic started, we joined up to not just fight disinformation on COVID, but to see how we could concretely work together and support each other,” Zaccheo said