Ignoring
Syria
Scoops,
Pioli's UNCA
Tries to Pick
2 More Hanging
Judges
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
June 17 -- As
Press inquiries
continued
Sunday
into the UN's
leaked
notice Friday
that its Syria
mission was
limiting its
"mobile
activities,"
the UN
Correspondents
Association
Executive
Committee and
President
Giapaolo Pioli
was engaged in
trying to
replace the
second
resigning
member of the
"Board of
Examination"
they
established to
investigate
Inner City
Press
with an eye
toward
expelling it.
The
first of
Pioli's five
Examiners to
resign was
unilaterally
replaced on
June
15. By whom?
By a close
friend of a
disgruntedly
former UN
reporter
who recently
resurrected a
complaint
about Press
reporting of
French
mission
briefings.
His offer of
testimony is
implicitly
connected to
an attempt to
get another UN
reporting job
and return to
New York. In
the Wild West,
now on the far
East Side of
Manhattan,
this is
called a
hanging judge.
But,
tellingly, on
June 15 a
second
examiner
resigned,
concluding
that a
mediated
solution has
become
unlikely.
Pioli has
demanded a
blanket
apology
for Inner City
Press' factual
reporting that
Pioli rented
his
apartment to
Palitha
Kohona, now
the Sri Lankan
ambassador
whose
request to
screen a war
crimes denial
film Pioli
granted
without
consulting
other
Executive
Committee
members
including
Inner City
Press.
In
order to tone
down the death
threats from
Sri Lankan
extremists
triggered by
the
UNCA
proceeding,
Inner City
Press offered
a balanced
clarification.
But Pioli
has demanded,
among
other things,
that Inner
City Press
"guarantee
that [any]
future
coverage of
the UN" not
even mention
"other UN
correspondents"
- including,
of course,
him. This
is censorship.
But
even on
Sunday, amid
questions
raised by
Inner City
Press' world
exclusive of
the Syria shut
down notice to
the Security
Council by
the UN
Department of
Peacekeeping
Operations,
led by the
fourth
Frenchman in a
row Herve
Ladsous, Pioli
and this five
big media
entourage
continued to
try to push
forward with
their Board of
Examination.
Now
the second
resignee is
proposed to be
replaced by an
individual who
has already
expressed a
view of the
outcome of the
case. No jury
would include
such a person;
nor should
this UNCA
Board of
Examination,
already a
charade and
kangaroo
court. The
individual has
been informed
of the threats
triggered by
the Board
Pioli's asked
him
to join as a
hanging judge.
Now what?
If
it goes
forward -- and
under the most
basic
principles of
protecting
journalists,
which UNCA's
Constitution
claims it does
-- then the
Examiners
should be
journalism
ethics
professors.
Let them judge
what the
problem is:
truthful
reporting, or
a journalist
renting his
apartment to
people he
purports to
cover.
Or, as in the
case of
Pioli, also making
campaign
contributions
to a
politician he
writes
about for the
Poligrafici
Editoriale
Group and
its Quotidiano
Nazionale, La
Nazione, Il
Resto
de Carlino, Il
Giorno and,
yes,
Quotidiano.net?
And
we are still
waiting for a
response to formal
question put
to Pioli's
hand-picked
chairman,
about
conflicts and
junkets,
beyond his
one-line
answer that he
worked for UPI
for fifty
years.
Watch this
site.
, 
