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By Matthew Russell Lee, Video CJR Letter

UN GATE, September 29 – One year and five days after banning Inner City Press for life without appeal from the UN, on August 22 now ostensibly gone UN Global Communicator Alison Smale held an ill-attended a press conference about her last hurrah in Salt Lake City. In the press conference, the second of only three questions was from one of the correspondents she gives office space to and who said that France's Macron "made love" to US President Donald J. Trump. Smale said nothing. Video here.

  Now on September 29 from the New York Times' Elaine Sciolino a tale from the crypt of another earlier, now dead president: "Mr. Chirac’s aides tried to put these remarks off the record. When that failed, they called me; Alison Smale, then managing editor of The International Herald Tribune, and the French journalists back for a second interview to clarify France’s position.... As I said goodbye to the aides, France’s national security adviser, Maurice Gourdault-Montagne, asked me what I was going to write. “I’m going to write both interviews,” I said. Alison agreed wholeheartedly.  That was not the answer he wanted to hear...  Later, Jean-David Levitte, France’s ambassador to Washington, made some of the same points in a phone conversation with Bill Keller, then The Times’s executive editor. No matter. The story ran on the front page.  As for Mr. Chirac, he never invited me back, and left office soon afterward."

 So Smale stood up for publishing "off the record" comments - then years later, for money, threw a journalist out of the UN for reporting from Guterres' photo op and on his failures in Cameroon. A disgusting trajectory, continued by Melissa Fleming. Big Tony corrupts everything he touches.

  The UN has refused to answer questions from Inner City Press which Smale banned about when her final day was. As of September 10 Smale's Twitter profile still lists her "at UN," along with hypocritical virtue-signaling about "media purged, free speech lost" when she did all these things.  Her replacement Melissa Fleming, corrupted, refused to answer question and on August 30 was responsible for denying Inner City Press access to UNGA week which they grant to hundreds of dictator promoting state media.

  And now like Tales from the Crypt Smale's canned spin in a venue tellingly silent about her and her successor's censorship: Alison Smale, the head of the UN Department of Global Communications until her recent retirement [? said] that UN Video had ceased production of  “21st Century” but would continue production for the popular “UN in Action” series in the UN’s six official languages.  Smale did not answer questions, however, about the number of programs produced, plans for distribution or effects of budgetary constraints on the series other than to say, “Like many organizations today, we face challenges in obtaining resources to carry out our mandates and we seek dynamic partnerships both within the UN family and externally to create opportunities to produce and share our content.”  ... Smale said, “The role of the Department of Global Communications (DGC) is to share the United Nations story with the world, in multiple languages and formats so that people everywhere have a better understanding of the UN’s work and values." What B.S.. We'll have more on this - and on Fleming's lack of accountability.

Smale's Twitter profile as of September 10 still says "moved to New York for exciting UN job .. still with Russian pianist-composer Sergei Dreznin daughter Lucy in UK ...retweets not endorsements..."  Yeah, and reputation entirely false or destroyed. Part of her "legacy" - past 4 pm on Friday, August 30 the UN issued a denial of accreditation with no reasoning other than that accreditation had previously been revoked:

"From: malu malu at un dot org
Date: Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 4:23 PM
Subject: U.N. eAccreditation request for Matthew Lee Ref # M5413398 has been declined
To: Inner City Press:

Greetings Matthew Lee from Inner City Press,  Your media accreditation request, with reference no: M5413398, has been declined for the following reason: Media accreditation was withdrawn on 17 August 2018."

  This is Kafka-esque, and corrupt. We will have more, much more, on this.

 Smale disgraced her former role with for example the New York Times. She never once even spoke to Inner City Press before banning it; she used its questioning of diplomats at the Delegates Entrance as a basis for her Kakfa-esque order.

   Her pianist husband memorably told Inner City Press that to avoid this fate it should wear a suit and tie. Because of course that is the litmus test for journalism. She didn't disclose her outside activities, she delayed in filing the minimal public financial disclosure. She made claims about Inner City Press that were entirely false while allowing no opportunity for rebuttal. She was and is a censor.

  Here for her Salt Lake City scam is the her schedule: The 68th United Nations Civil Society Conference will be held under the theme ‘Building Inclusive and Sustainable Cities and Communities’ in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA from 26 to 28 August 2019.  Organized in cooperation with the NGO/DPI Executive Committee, Salt Lake City’s Mayor’s office and chaired by civil society representative Maruxa Cardama, Secretary General at SLoCaT Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport, this will be the first time a major UN conference will be held in the United States of America, outside of New York...

  Back on 23 August 2018 Smale held a faux press conference from which the Press was banned to announce the UN will spend the public's money in Salt Lake City. Minutes before she began, there were three journalists in the UN Press Briefing Room, if you include the personal friend of Smale's she channeled unedited into her banning letter. The room suddenly filled up with non journalists - a supposed no no, but Smale's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit did not enforce that rule (or, one hopes, lure any unsuspecting correspondent into "behavior" that Smale could uses as a pretext for punishment. Having to cover this from the UN bus stop made it hard to hear, but Smale was seen stepping off the podium before the end. The other speakers seemed fine and we hope to have more on and from them - Smale makes it difficult, with her outright censorship. It was moderated by another of the complainants Smale channeled, Maher Nasser, who blocked Inner City Press on Twitter after it asked about the placement of sexual exploitation and abuse on a Peacekeeping website he was promoting, and about rules. This is today's DPI, and UN. Utah, Smale seems to think, should make her censorship acceptable, she appears to think. There no way to know, because despite Smale's assurance in her no due process banning letter, of the ten questions Inner City Press asked by email on August 23, not a single one was answered, including the reiterated question, "This is again a request to be informed of the reason on the SG's Public Financial Disclosure page USG Smale is not listed, while Natalia Gherman who was named to her position later than USG Smale is listed and has made public disclosure - and for an explanation why Smale did not recuse herself as was clearly called for from banning me. (There was also August 23-10: In terms of USG Smale's letter banning me for life please state who she says was disparaged, when, and in what medium / in person or not. Please provide the UN's version, and any UN video, of the June 19 private use of briefing room for Al Jazeera and critique afterward. Please immediately provide all UN video of the June 22 ouster and July 3 roughing up and ouster, and the names and nationalities of all involved officers.")
  If Smale doesn't make the minimal public financial disclosure, and it is not explained despite being asked repeatedly after she was accused by whistleblowers in her own Department of diverting funds allocated for Swahili services to English language social media promotion of Antonio Guterres, what about this spending in Salt Lake? Below is from the UN's press release, embargoed until 6 pm when we publish it, fifteen minutes before the press conference regarding which we asked Smale's Department: "request, as a journalist who has covered the UN for 12 years and is still covering it today, to be allowed to attend and ask questions at the 6:15 press conference by USG Smale who never spoke to me once before purporting to ban me for life." While not directly answered, the effect was of course no: more Smale censorship, a Press-less press conference.

At 4 pm on Friday August 17, 2018 Inner City Press got a four page letter from Under Secretary General Alison Smale, formerly the New York Times' Berlin bureau chief. We've put the letter on Scribd here, Patreon download here. 

The letter informed me, without a single opportunity to be heard and offer rebuttal, that “your accreditation is hereby withdrawn pursuant to the Guidelines.” It cited what it called three previous warnings. But on further inspection there is no there, there. And Grand Inquisitor Alison Smale didn't even consider, or acknowledge, that Inner City Press had responded to the spurious complaints...

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