UNITED
NATIONS, April
15
-- When Norway
crows about
the UN
Security
Council
renovation,
there should
and will be
critique of
the reduction
in
press access.
But those
chiming in
late on this
issue should
wonder:
how was it
allowed to
happen, and
who's to
blame?
At
the south
entrance to
the Security
Council, the
area near the
window
which used to
be for the
press is no
more. And
X-ray machines
have
been
installed,
further
delaying
access to the
stakeout area.
There
is, for now,
no table to
work at. These
are all
losses.
Journalists'
fair
access to the
UN has until
now supposedly
been handled
between
the UN
Department of
Public
Information
and the UN
Correspondents
Association,
now known as
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance.
The
new more
accurate moniker
is
because UNCA's
Executive
Committee
spent most of
its meetings
in 2012
trying to
throw Inner
City Press out, for
articles it
wrote about UN
Peacekeeping
chief Herve
Ladsous --
now shown to
have defended
the
flight of
genocidaires
from Rwanda
in 1994 -- and
about
Sri Lanka.
So
UNCA was
distracted.
When it
finally tried
to claim to be
pushing
DPI, nothing
was done. In
fact, UNCA's
Pamela Falk of
CBS and Louis
Charbonneau of
Reuters spent
a February 22,
2013 meeting
with DPI
telling Inner
City Press “the
problem is
your website”
and
demanding not
to be written
about.
DPI's
Stephane
Dujarric, in
turn, wrote
Inner City
Press a formal
letter
that it should
not have reported
about the
February 22
meeting --
at
which Inner
City Press said, “you
are on the
record” and
Falk
said, “he's
going to write
this up”
-- but has not
increased
media access
one bit.
At
the existing
Security
Council
stakeout, when
Ladsous
directed his
spokesman to
seize the UN
Television
microphone to
try to avoid
an
Inner City
Press question
about the 126
rapes in
Minova by
the
Congolese
Army, his
partners,
Dujarric did
nothing
publicly,
merely
speaking
quietly to
Ladsous'
spokesman
after a
complaint for
the Free
UN Coalition
for Access.
As
noted
earlier today,
FUNCA is
pushing
forward -- but
NOT through
DPI.
Let's be
honest: DPI
didn't do
anything to
preserve what
access the
media had;
UNCA
collaborated
in the
reduction.
It's time for
a new
approach, and
failing to
identify what
happened in
the past and
why
only ensures
its
repetition.
Watch this
site.
, 
