Inner City Press -- Investigative Reporting From the United Nations to Wall Street to the Inner City

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 12 -- The UN says it wants journalists to cover its activities and meetings, but its provision on Internet services and EZTV feeds of its meetings have been in decay for months.

  On May 12 Inner City Press on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access filed a complaint with the UN's Office of Information and Communications Technology about the lack of wi-fi at the stakeout in front of the UN Security Council, which made it impossible to do journalistic work at the stakeout.

  OICT's response was to ask for Inner City Press' UN identification card index number, and what "room number" the Security Council and its stakeout are. FUNCA has repeated complained, for example in April and July 2013, to OICT about the difficulty of reporting from the Security Council stakeout.

  This was previously problematized by a rule proposed by the UN and its UN Censorship Alliance, f/k/a UN Correspondents Association, that the area in front of the Security Council should not be used as work space (there are now no electrical outlets except for UNTV, and no work table), or used at all when there is no formal Council meeting. This ignores, for example, bilateral meetings by the US Security Council president.

 At the May 12 noon briefing many correspondents complained to UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric, including about ongoing problems with EZTV. Among the complainants was the president of UNCA, downplaying the Security Council stakeout problems. The offices upstairs have hard-wired internet, but the Security Council stakeout does not.

  Note: with UNCA through Pamela Falk trying to brand every UN press conference and even UN Security Council presidency with the name UNCA, it was perhaps not surprising that her UNCA bought Twitter followers, jumping from over 300 to over 800 followers.

  That UNCA's middle 500 followers had few to no connections to the UN, journalism or international affairs and little profile information except some pornographic come-ons was noted in an article on the evening of May 9, here.

  And by May 10, the UNCA account had suddenly fallen from over 800 followers back down below 300. Call it guilty knowledge -- or cover up, as Falk's UNCA did once exposed for lining up for a free Samsung television through the UN and the South Korean mission. Once exposed, it was canceled - and Falk's UNCA demanded a "correction." And now? Who paid for this? And, now: was UN wi-fi used?

   On May 1, Falk felt comfortable trying to dictate how and who UN Television filmed on World Press Freedom Day. 

  According to multiple sources, Pamela Falk of CBS complained to the top of the Department of Public Information that UNTV dared cut away to a shot of a skeptic during her speech claiming UNCA protects journalists. Video here on Inner City Press' YouTube channel (on full video on UN website, here, from Minute 30).

  Now that the video and the UNCA attempt to censor that it spawned are known, other critics have come forward. This doesn't represent us, said one. Another brought up the surge in Falk's UNCA twitter accounts low number of followers, pointing out hundreds in a row with little identifying information, some with pornographic profiles, concluding, "they're bought followers."

  Now, even after the reversal or cover-up, the question of precisely how this happened remains, and new questions need answering.

  These included "EXTREMELY DOMINANT BBW," "Nudist * Foreskin lover #BBBH" and "the finest of erotic events and vacations" as well as being padded by executives and stringers for Falk's CBS, like Sharon Hoffman, Nick Barnets and Luke Fredberg.

  These and hundreds of other followers bought by UNCA were removed between May 9 and May 10.

  The month started when UNCA's 2013-14 president Pam Falk grandiosely attempted to launch a Twitter hashtag promoting the group. An UNCA member, rather than obediently tweeting the contrived tag, noted online that when Falk claimed the "GA commends UNCA every year," UNTV camera cuts to @innercitypress shaking head in disbelief, too funny.”

 (The UNTV video, which we went back and found for the reasons below is online here, from Minute 30.)

  As we first diplomatically recorded, the UNTV control room got a complaint about their camera angles. This is called attempted censorship, as is this Digital Millennium Copyright Act filing with Google, here.

  Now we can report based on multiple sources that Falk herself complained to the top of DPI - and that this complaint, rather than being as it should have been laughed at and rejected, was passed on to the control room, trying to dictate even what the camera operators film as cut-aways.

  This is outright censorship: the UN's Censorship Alliance's reverse flow.

  In 2012, some on UNCA's Executive Board tried to pursue the investigative Press for its coverage of UN official Herve Ladsous and also separately of France's ambassador Gerard Araud, then moved for expulsion based on coverage of Sri Lanka. Now, UNCA's president demands that the UN itself change how it films, to censor opposition.

  Out in the real world, the UN Secretariat had no comment on Ethiopia's jailing of journalists including the Zone 9 Bloggers, when asked about it by the new Free UN Coalition for Access. As we covered on May 8, the UN has yet to speak on Yemen's deportation of one of the few (but more than two) non-Yemeni journalists working in the country. The next story is Myanmar - watch this site.