As
Reuters Turns
Routine Quotes
into Breaking
News, Why Is
Dying
Media Bitter?
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February 6 –
How mechanical
and servile
have the wire
service
correspondents
at the UN
gotten?
On February 4
when incoming
Security
Council
president Kim
Sook held a
press
conference, he
was
constrained by
“tradition” as
he put it to
call on the UN
Correspondents
Association
first.
But
under the current
leadership,
the best UNCA
could come up
with was a
question by
the new
president Pam
Falk about how
North Korea
was
going to
perform a
nuclear test
“in the next
few days or
even
sooner.”
Kim
Sook launched
into an answer
that most
journalists at
the UN – and
elsewhere –
did not find
newsworthy. An
understandable
answer, from
South Korea's
Permanent
Representative.
But hardly
breaking news.
But
UNCA's First
Vice President
Louis
Charbonneau of
Reuters, who'd
plopped down
next to Pam
Falk before
she asked her
question, then
rose and ran
up the
auditorium
stairs and
out. He filed
this quote as
a snap alert,
and later filed
a three
paragraph
story based
only on
the quote.
Is
this
journalism or
stenography?
As in other
recent
Charbonneau
re-types of
Ban Ki-moon
expressions of
concern, and Reuters'
use of blind
quotes of the
UN declaring
war in DRC,
where is the
value
added?
Reuters'
Charbonneau
reaches for
Ban Ki-moon,
snaps and sleazy
anonymous
tweets, continuing,
not shown, (c)
Luiz
Rampelloto
Never
mind
that some few
others made
even more of
Kim Sook's
quote, making
it
appear at
least from
those
headlines as
if they'd had
a one on one
interview with
Kim Sook
rather than
just sat
upstairs in a
cubicle
watching it on
UN TV.
(In
fairness,
Agence France
Presse is
doing so
little actual
journalism at
the UN that if
it weren't for
stories
spoon-fed by
the French
Mission or its
dump-job in UN
Peacekeeping Herve
Ladsous, Tim
Witcher and
AFP at the UN
might have
nothing at
all.)
What's
the point of
being inside
the UN if
that's how you
cover it? And
spend your
time
anonymously
tweeting
against those
who dare
question
this state of
affairs, or
dare actually
ask questions?
To be
continued –
watch this
site.
, 
