Inner City Press: Investigative Reporting from the United Nations

On Female Genital Mutilation, ICP at UN of Ethiopia, Mali, FARC

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 8 -- On the International Day of Zero Tolerance for Female Genital Mutilation, at least as marked at the UN, Inner City Press asked Nafissatou J. Diop, Senior Adviser & Coordinator of the UNFPA-UNICEF Joint Programme on Female Genital Mutilation Cutting what if anything the UN is doing on the issue in Indonesia, as well as Ethiopia and Egypt, listed as the top three. Video here.

Inner City Press asked Malian singer and FGM survivor Inna Modja if the UN's MINUSMA mission does anything on the topic. It emerged that FGM is “only” in the south of Mali - not what's called the Islamist part in the north, Azawad. Go figure.

Inner City Press on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access thanked the panelist, especially victims. The old UN Corresponnets Association wasn't present - too busy throwing the Press out of the Press Briefing Room, then sending spam.

   Finally, in Spanish, Inner City Press asked Patricia Tobon, FGM Survivor, Representative from the Embera community, Colombia, if a peace deal between the Colombian government and FARC would help on the issues. Her answer is at the end of the video.

Previously: “Women's relative invisibility in traditional news media has crossed over into digital news delivery platforms,” a UN Women press conference diagnosed on November 23. Inner City Press asked the panelists how they measured this, with Twitter; one wondered if they considered Snapchat, for example, as a digital news delivery platform, given how people watched the US presidential debates over it.

The underlying study was by, in part, WACC, which turns out in the footnotes to stand for World Association for Christian Communication. Inner City Press asked if that doesn't present a problem in some parts of the work, for example the Middle East. The panel, included Nanette Braun and Karin Achtelstetter, answered that their polling showed it doesn't. Perhaps one hears what one wants to hear.

The conclusion on new media being like the old, however, resonates. How different is the coverage of US foreign policy by the celebrated, or corporate, new media platforms?

How could the UN and its Security Council be better covered and informed by social media? Inner City Press asked UK Ambassador Matthew Rycroft this question on Septembe 23, not in the UN but a dozen blocks away at a Digital Diplomacy / “Soft Power” event by Facebook and Portland Communications. #Periscope video here.

   Rycroft told Inner City Press that the best Security Council meetings he's been in have allowed in outside voices; he noted it is still not the custom to tweet from inside consultations, though perhaps it should be.

Inner City Press asked the US State Department's Moira Whelan about US Ambassador to Libya Deborah Jones quitting Twitter back in March, after one of her tweets about bombing of the Tawerga was attacked. Whelan said the State Department wants to support its diplomats when they come under fire; Rycroft said if a diplomat's intentions were good and well-considered, they should be supported even if things go wrong.

Photo: #DigitalDiplomacy event by @PortlandComms & @Facebook, ICP got quote: http://t.co/MbQTNRwiw2 pic.twitter.com/COOXrJBiDA
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) September 23, 2015

   Facebook's Katie Harbath mentioned that India Prime Minister Modi would be meeting with Mark Zuckerberg; an hour later at the Indian delegation's press conference in the Waldorf Astoria's huge Empire room, there was confirmation of this and other tech meetings for Modi. (Inner City Press asked about UN Peacekeeping, whose chief Herve Ladsous recently linked UN rapes to “R&R” on video, here.)

There was talk of the UN and social media; from Inner City Press' and the new Free UN Coalition for Access' perspective, the UN itself far too infrequently responds and engages, and much of the corporate press corps resents new media coverage of the UN, for example with the old UN Correspondents Association's Valeria Robecco saying multimedia is NOT a photographer to block coverage of the Pope's visit, click here for that. But we will continue: watch this site.

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Other, earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.