In
UN
Presser on
Syria, To
Restrict Other
Views, UNCA
Asks to Oust
FUNCA Member
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
January 19 --
The UN
announced that
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon would
have an
important announcement
Sunday at 5:30
pm, and
turned on its
worldwide
webcast at
that time.
While it
seemed clear
it would be
about the upcoming
"Geneva Two"
Syria talks,
and probably
involve a
belated
invitation to
Iran to
participate,
people tuned
in and
watched. Click
here for
Inner City
Press story
on the presser,
here
for Geneva Two.
In
the half-hour
delay before
Ban actually
appeared, they
saw a
spectacle that
says much
about the UN
and how it is
covered. A
representative
of Ban's
chosen United
Nations
Correspondents
Association,
which for
example hosted
the Syria
Opposition
Coalition's
Ahmad al Jarba
for a faux
"UN briefing"
in
July, tried to
get another
correspondent
thrown out of
the front row
of the
briefing room.
Sitting
in
what the UN
has designated
as the "UNCA
seat," compete
with name tag
on it, the
day's UNCA
representative
told two
correspondents,
one of them a
member
of the new Free UN Coalition for
Access,
that they had
to move.
Why?
The
representative
said that
there was an
"UNCA rule"
that
that effect,
and went and
asked the UN
Media
Accreditation
and
Liaison Unit
to enforce it.
The FUNCA
member said
unless the
rule
could be shown
in writing, he
would not
leave.
Why
would one
group of
journalists
try to limit
the access of
others?
Well, UNCA
executive
committee
members
have tried
to get the
investigative
Press thrown
out of the
UN, in emails
to UN Media
Accreditation
that one of
them, the Reuters
bureau chief,
has
subsequently
(mis) used the
US Digital
Millennium
Copyright Act
to
block from
Google's
search.
UNCA has
became the
UN's
Censorship
Alliance.
The
question is,
why does Ban
Ki-moon's UN
grant special
favors to one
group of
correspondents
whose
leadership is
dominated by
Gulf and
Western media?
They are given
a large UN
room -- to
host Jarba,
for
example -- and
the automatic
right to hold
"UN
screenings,"
for example of
a Sri Lanka
government
film denying
war crimes.
They
are given the
first
question,
automatically,
even if a
member of
their
Executive
Committee is
not present.
This
increasingly
indefensible
-- and
disruptive --
practice must
stop. Sunday,
UN
president
Pamela Falk of
CBS was not
there. But
what was said
from
the "UNCA
seat," trying
to limit the
access of
other
correspondents,
is
attributable
to her and
UNCA. We'll
have more on
this. Watch
this site.
, 
