On
Nemtsov As Ban
Shifts from
Sad to
Condemns, Echo
of Reuters,
AFP
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February
28, updated*
-- Everybody
makes mistakes.
On February 28
the UN's
Office of the
Spokesperson
first said
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon was
“saddened” by
the murder of
Boris Nemtsov
-- then 50
minutes later
correcting it
to
“condemns.”
Agence France
Presse misreporting
that Martin
Bouygues was
dead.
The former
correction
gives rise to
the question
whether the UN
received a
complaint about
Ban not
condemning the
killing,
leading to the
issuance of
the
correction.*
It merits
coverage.
But Reuters,
for example,
simply retyped
the
“corrected”
Ban Ki-moon
statement,
putting Ban in
the same light
as was done by
Ban's
in-house UN
News Service.
The backstory
here is the
Reuters at the
UN has tried
to get other,
more critical
media thrown
out of the UN
-- and has
then gone so
far as to censor from
the Internet
leaked copies
of the Reuters
“for the
record”
complaint.
Here
was the complaint;
here
via the
Electronic
Frontier
Foundation's
Chilling
Effects
project is the
notice
that the
leaked
complaint by
Reuters has
been blocked
from Google's
Search as
a copyrighted
book, under
the Digital
Millennium
Copyright Act
(set to be globalized
by the
proposed Trans
Pacific Partnership.)
That initial Reuters
campaign
culminated in
a letter,
also leaked,
by Voice of
America to
the UN asking
for Inner City
Press'
accreditation
to be
“reviewed,” here.
A subsequent
Inner City
Press request
under the
Freedom of
Information
Act to VOA's
Broadcasting
Board of
Governors
yield
documents
showing that
not only Reuters
but also Agence
France Presse
coordinated
with the VOA
request.
So did then
and current
United Nations
Correspondents
Association
head Giampaolo
Pioli, angry
at an Inner
City Press
report that Pioli
has been the
landlord of
Palitha
Kohona, Sri
Lanka's
outgoing
Ambassador to
the UN.
To come full
circle, since
Ban Ki-moon's
statement are
most often
crafted within
the UN
Department of
Political
Afffairs, that
DPA chief Jeffrey
Feltman is
currently in
Sri Lanka
may have
played a role
in the
vacillation
from
“saddened” to
“condemns.”
We'll have
more on this.
For
now, a UN
footnote: the
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access
notes that the
Agence France
Presse and
Reuters pitch
to expel was
based on their
wires having
editors - did
that stop the
Bouygues
mis-reporting,
or the craven
retyping and quid
pro quo at
the UN? FUNCA
is against
censorship,
and for the
rights of
journalists.
* -
The UN Office
of the
Spokesperson
tells Inner
City Press
that
"the statement
resissue was
due to
aclerical
error on our
part. Nothing
more. On the
rest we"ll
revert" - including
on FUNCA's
press freedom
question.
, 
