By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
August 22 --
Following the
outrageous beheading
of journalist
James Foley
by the Islamic
State of Iraq
and the Levant,
the UN
Security
Council late
on August 22
issued a press
statement, to
be on its
website here.
The UNSC
statement
calls for
accountability
and states
that
"journalists,
media
professionals
and associated
personnel
engaged in
dangerous
professional
missions in
areas of armed
conflict are
generally
considered as
civilians and
shall be
respected and
protected as
such.”
That
journalists
should be
respected was
a position the
UN itself took
in April 2014
after then
Security
Council
participant
Gerard Araud
of France told
a Lebanese
correspondents
whose
questions he
didn't like,
"You are not a
journalist,
you are an
agent." Click
here for that,
including
video.
Inner City
Press on
behalf of the
Free
UN Coalition
for Access
asked UN
spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric about
this. Dujarric
said that
journalists
should be
treated with
respect -- but
declined
FUNCA's
request
that he convey
this position
to Araud (who
has since left
the UN.)
Back in April,
it was notable
but not
surprising to
Inner City
Press, which
co-founded
FUNCA, that
the supposed
representative
of journalists
at UN
Headquarters
the UN
Correspondents
Association
never
admonished
Araud.
UNCA's
Executive
Committee has
functioned as
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance,
trying to get
the
investigative
Press thrown
out of the UN,
and then for
example seeking
to censor --
by getting
Google to ban
from its
Search --
leaked
evidence of
its anti-Press
complaints to
the UN, here.
Given this
record within
UNCA, with no
reforms since,
it was not
surprising but
all-too-UN for
this UNCA
Executive
Committee to
issue its own
grandiose
statement
about James
Foley. They
didn't do this
for
journalists
killed in
Eastern
Ukraine... and
see above.
Hypocrisy
at the UN is
not in limited
supply, for
example the
Secretariat
refusing to
accept
responsibility
for bringing
to cholera to
Haiti - but
this is
particularly
grating. This
is UN, all too
UN. Longer
version here.
Watch this
site.
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