UNITED
NATIONS, May
31 -- What's
wrong with the
UN? On May 31
it said, of
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon and
Myanmar, that
"Ban
welcomes
ceasefire
agreement in
Kachin."
There
is only one
problem: no
ceasefire has
been agreed
to. Inner City
Press has
obtained and
now puts
online the
actual
agreement,
here.
Likewise
it
is reported
that Myanmar
"and ethnic
Kachin rebels
signed a
preliminary
agreement on
Thursday...The
parties
however, failed
to
reach an
official
ceasefire
agreement."
So
why would the
UN, through
its Department
of Public
Information,
misleading
announce that
"Ban welcomes
ceasefire
agreement in
Kachin?"
(DPI's
reporting was
criticized
during the
recent UN
Committee on
Information
meetings,
which Inner
City Press covered, as
gently as
possible.)
This
is the same
Department of
Public
Information
which has been
claiming
for ten days
that eliminating
a media
worktable that
existed in
front
of the
Security
Council for
years,
before the
relocation for
renovation and
since, is in
fact somehow
NOT a
reduction in
media
access.
That
claim is
false. At best
we can say
that some atop
DPI don't
understand, or
don't want to
understand,
how coverage
of the
Security
Council has
worked for
years now,
with reporters
using laptops
on a
table in front
of the Council
in order to be
there when
ambassadors
leave in the
middle of
meetings, or
speakers come
during all day
open
debates.
To
stand for
hours is
unnecessary:
but it's what
Ban's DPI
and its
partners are
for now
demanding.
Perhaps
rather
than
inaccurately
playing at
reporting, DPI
should pay
more
attention to
its claimed
role of
ensuring the
independent
journalist
can cover the
UN and how
deals are done
here. Some
deals are
ugly,
including
deals to
mislead, and
misleading
about deals.
So
is it that the
UN's DPI, on
Myanmar, is
intentional
misleading
about
what was
agreed to in
Kachin? Or,
like how the
Security
Council has
been covered
for years, is
it that they
just don't
understand or
don't care?
We'll have
more on this.
Watch this
site.
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