UNITED
NATIONS, April
5 -- Here's a
small example
of how the UN
works, or
doesn't.
At
Friday's noon
briefing,
Inner City
Press asked
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's lead
spokesman
Martin
Nesirky, piped
into the
briefing from
Madrid, to
confirm that
Ban will meet
Pope Francis
in
Rome on April
9. Video
here, from
Minute 5:40.
Nesirky
refused
to answer,
saying when
they have an
announcement
they'll make
it, that's how
it's done.
It
seemed
strange, since
the Vatican
had already
announced that
Ban
would go.
Inner
City Press
immediately
wrote the
story, after
Nesirky's
deputy Eduardo
Del Buey
refused
questions on
Haiti and the
Democratic
Republic of
Congo, then
headed to the
UN's North
Lawn
building to
cover more
fall out from
the Staff
Union's vote
of “no
confidence” in
Ban.
Ban's
spokesperson's
office sent no
e-mail answer,
nothing. But
then a
flurry of
tweets from UN
correspondents
who weren't at
the noon
briefing,
“reporting”
that the UN
says Ban will
go to Rome.
How
can the UN
answer the
question it
declined at
noon, while
not
providing the
information to
the journalist
who asked the
question?
Well,
Ban's
spokesperson's
office has a
“squawk”
system where
they pipe
in audio to
correspondents
sitting in
their
cubicles. They
get
answers, in
this case, to
others'
questions,
while the
questioner,
not in the cubicle that
the UN raided
on March 18,
does not get
the
answer.
This
is an
institutionalized
version of
what Ban's UN
Peacekeeping
chief
Herve Ladsous
does -- refuse
questions from
Inner City
Press for
weeks about
the rapes in
Minova, for
example, then
hand
half-answers
to the
scribes.
Rather than
standing up to
Ladsous, the
UN has sunk
to his level.
While
the UN
conducted its
March 18 raid,
Pamela Falk of
CBS, the
president
of the UN
Correspondents
Association --
now known as
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance --
ghoulishly
took
photographs.
Later she sent a
legal threat
from her
CBSNews.com
e-mail address
to Inner City
Press,
to not ask or
write about
it.
She
was not among
the tweeters
of the spoon-
(or squawk)
fed news. But
“first” was Voice of
America, which
tried in 2012
to get the UN
to “review the
accreditation”
of Inner City
Press.
Then
there was
Louis
Charbonneau of
Reuters;
documents
obtained under
the
US Freedom of
Information
Act from VOA
say Reuters
supported the
request.
Then
there was
Denis
Fitzgerald of
Saudi Press
Agency, who
volunteered to
“judge” Inner
City Press in
2012, and is
now on the
Executive
Committee of
the UN
Censorship
Alliance. And
so it goes at
the UN.
Watch this
site.
, 
