Press
Protection
Pieties at UN
Belied by Bids
to Throw Out
& UNCA
Spying
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, July
17 -- There
will be a lot
of talk about
the protection
of journalists
at the UN
today, and
Inner City
Press will
cover it
from all
sides,
including from
the
perspective of
how things
actually
work at the
UN.
In
2012 the
representatives
of Reuters,
Agence France
Presse, Voice
of
America and
others, using
the UN
Correspondents
Association
which
they control,
repeatedly
tried to get
the
investigative
Press thrown
out of the UN.
Voice
of America
wrote to the
UN on June 20,
2012, asking
that the
accreditation
of Inner City
Press be “reviewed.”
Click here for
that document.
In documents
Inner City
Press obtained
under the US
Freedom of
Information
Act since VOA
is a US
government
organ, VOA
said it had
the support
of Reuters,
Agence
France Presse
and UNCA
itself.
(FOIA requests
have been
filed
concerning the
anonymous
social media
campaign begun
within the
Executive
Committee of
UNCA which is
still active
this week.)
Agence
France
Presse's Tim
Witcher, after
first
complaining
within the
UNCA
Executive
Committee
about a story
Inner City
Press
published
about
Herve
Ladsous,
the fourth
Frenchman in a
row to head UN
Peacekeeping,
this year went
further.
Witcher filed
a complaint
with UN
Security
leading with
how Inner City
Press asked a
question to
Ladsous about
the lack of
accountability
for the 135
rapes in
Minova by the
UN's partners
in the
Congolese
Army.
Part
of this
pattern of
attempts to
discourage or
prohibit
investigative
reporting in
the UN) by its
UN Censorship
Alliance was a
demand that
Inner City
Press remove
from the
internet its
reporting
about Sri
Lanka military
figures using
UNCA
exclusive
“right” to
hold
briefings
inside the UN
to deny
detailed
charges of war
crimes
committed in
2009, and
facts relevant
to why this
took place.
Sri
Lanka is a
country where
journalist who
question the
government are
threatened
with death,
and after the
UNCA Executive
Committee's
proceeding and
leaks, the
death threats
reached the
Press in New
York. But the
UNCA Executive
Committee,
even informed,
kept right on
going.
Protection of
journalists?
UNCA
leadership's
self-serving
and
unaccountable
use of the the
three room
on the third
floor that the
UN gives it
continues
under UNCA's
2013
president
Pamela Falk.
Falk took
photographs of
a March
18,
2013
non-consensual
raid on
Inner City
Press' office
and, when
asked
why she took
photographs,
issued a legal
threat to
“cease and
desist”
reporting on
it, through
her
CBSNews.com
e-mail
address.
Protection of
journalists,
indeed.
Reuters'
Louis
Charbonneau,
then as now
the first vice
president of
UNCA and
power behind
the dubious
thrown, filed
stealth
complaints and
worse.
Charbonneau immediately
gave to the UN's top
accreditation
official
an internal
document that
he and the
other
Executive
Committee
members had
promised three
minutes before
would remain
only inside
UNCA. Click
here for
document,
here
for story.
Click
here for audio
of the UNCA
Executive
Committee meeting
where
Charbonneau
said the
document would
remain only
within UNCA
-- three
minutes before
he
sent it to the
UN's top
accreditation
official with
the notation,
"you didn't
get this from
me."
As
such, Reuters'
Charbonneau
and the UNCA
Executive
Committee came
to
function in
essence as
spies or
informants for
the UN, which
was
given (and
retained for
later use) documents
explicitly
labeled as
internal to
UNCA. Some
are not
surprised that
the flow,
then, works
that other way
as well.
As to UNCA,
once it is
definitely
shown that
their
supposedly
internal documents
were
immediately
handed to the
UN's top accreditation
official,
something had
to happen.
Even the UN
goes through
the motions in
the face of
such
revelations.
But not UNCA.
There
is much more
to say, but
the point for
now is this:
some of the
talk
about
protection of
journalists
held at the UN
today and
others days
is shot full
of hypocrisy.
Add
to this that
the anonymous
social media
campaign begun
within the
Executive
Committee of
UNCA -- now
known due to
its anonymous
trolling
nature as the
UN Cowardice
Association --
is active
still
this week.
This
stands in
contrast to
the
on-the-record
work of Inner
City Press,
and the Free
UN Coalition
for Access
which it
co-founded in
order to
actually
protect
journalists
from these and
other attacks
-- click
here
for example
for FUNCA
members' work
in Somaliland,
a place where
the UN and
Security
Council are
not protecting
journalists,
far from
it.
And
the UN
Secretariat's
recent
response? To threaten
to “suspend or
withdraw”
the
accreditation
of Inner City
Press for
merely hanging
the
sign of
the Free UN
Coalition for
Access on door
of room S-303,
one story up
from the
Security
Council. Just
is just one
story. Watch
this site.
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