LOS ANGELES — As matters now stand, accredited, professional journalists from Taiwan are once again being denied press passes by U.N. authorities to cover the annual World Health Assembly of the World Health Organization. This year's event takes place in Geneva on May 19. The topic is "A Safer Future: Global Public Health Security in the 21st Century."
A keystone to greater public-health security around the world is good and timely information. That is the news media's primary job, and there's no issue more needy of acute timeliness than health, especially with epidemics like SARS and the bird flu.
The reporters from Taiwan are not being denied accreditation because they are not competent journalists. They are being denied because they're from Taiwan, which is not a member of the United Nations because it is not recognized by the U.N. — or by most countries of the world, and for that matter the United States — as a separate, sovereign country.