To whom it may concern:

I would like to ask whether I would be able to reach out to the UN’s Mr. António Guterres about experience-based recommendations regarding media organizations. This is given the idea that, should safety be better prioritized in news media organizations, broadcasts produced would be more helpful to the world and would arguably automatically, immediately, and meaningfully bolster progress on all UN SDGs.

My recommendations are based on an experience of abuse in media but a seeming inability to find a way to address this by either finding an appropriate organization willing to listen or finding any response from the organization where it occurred. (This organization, CNN, simply told me to tell them what I wanted as I recall, and that they would see if they could get it for me, but when I requested policy changes better protecting women, there was no response as I remember.) This was devastating as, as a young woman, I had experienced serious pressure to give up a much-wanted job and join a dating partner’s team instead after he proposed. Abuse followed and, although our experiences are not even remotely similar in terms of severity, I related to author Betty Mahmoody in the sense that I had observed and experienced one relationship under what seemed to be essentially two completely different jurisdictions in terms of the degree to which my rights and safety were acknowledged and upheld. After the situation began to feel abusive, multiple people, including the company’s HR department, worked to help me get back to a regular department (this experience, while discussed with CNN recently, occurred quite some time ago, and I had agreed to work for an enormously profitable and decades-old unit largely insulated from the remainder of the corporation), but let me know they were being prevented. I eventually left and experienced what I felt was serious retaliation for dong so.

My hope had been to address my experience impersonally, by founding an organization to help fund ethical journalism produced in safety as, based on my observations, there is a direct and proportional correlation between women’s safety within news organizations and the helpfulness of broadcasts produced. During the metoo movement, I spoke about the specifics of my experience privately without resolution after requesting that the company consider particular policies. But because I did not feel heard, I attempted to communicate possible solutions to many organizations, despite how embarrassing talking about my situation felt, also to no avail.

While greater emphasis has been placed on human rights stories by news organizations in recent months, at least outwardly, given how selectively they have been reported, it is hard to know whether these changes are sincere or will be permanent. It further seems to me that, as publicly-traded news organizations drive not only coverage, but interpretation, of news, narratives that have emerged have been only partially helpful.

Perhaps it is because I am from Plymouth originally, but listening to many of the founding concepts that helped build the groundwork on which our country was built be denigrated, even while new ideas for further building on these have been silenced, has been difficult, and I believe there is a need for news organizations – as immensely valuable as they are – to be held accountable.

Given that news organizations increasingly wield levels of power comparable to that of entire countries, and particularly as they also issue speculative currency in the form of stocks, one potential alternate solution I would propose is that the UN consider adding American media outlets to its Universal Human Rights Index Database.

Thank you.