By Shanta Roy
UNITED NATIONS (IDN) – The day-to-day news coverage by the UN press corps represents a virtual political barometer of the outside world – from a UN perspective.
Since most news organizations in the developing world cannot afford either a fulltime or a part-time correspondent at the UN, they have traditionally relied on the mainstream wire services and news organizations such as Reuters, BBC, the Associated Press, Deutsche Welle, Agence France-Presse (AFP) and the Chinese news agency Xinhua — all of them fully staffed and geared for extensive UN coverage.