Report
of
Next P5+1
Talks Belated
like Darfur
from EU, Its
Favored
Media Scooped
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
October 16 --
That Iran and
the so-called
EU3+3 aim to
talk
again
in early
November, with
Iran hopes the
US at the
level of
Secretary of
State John
Kerry, seems a
good thing.
But how was
this
reported?
The
Spokesperson
of Catherine
Ashton,
European Union
High
Representative
for Foreign
Affairs,
Michael Mann,
canceled a
briefing for
journalists in
Geneva
covering the
talks. His Twitter
feed went
silent for 15
hours in the
middle of the
talks, after Ashton's
belated
condemnation of
a deadly
attack on UN
peacekeepers
in Darfur
four days
previous.
Inner
City Press asked
if this was
"on delay."
The document Mann
linked to
does not even
MENTION Darfur
or UNAMID.
Yesterday
we
noted the
incongruity,
for example,
of Reuters
covering the
Geneva
talks with
four separate
scribes even
as
editor Stephen
Adler speaks
of five
percent
newsroom cuts.
(Perhaps
relatedly, as
Fars got
scoops Reuters
tweeted the
price of
hamburgers in
Geneva. It is
true, as
this internal
UN post-Sri
Lanka proposal
exclusively
published
Friday by
Inner City
Press puts
it, that New
York is viewed
as a cheaper
"duty station"
than Geneva.)
But
Iran
is the big one
for Reuters:
at the UN in
New York, they
festooned
their office
door proudly
with copies of
complaints
about their
reporting from
Iran's Mission
to the UN. Was
this for
gumshoe
reporting or
simply getting
leaks from the
UK and France?
In
Geneva, a
first scoop
came from
Iran's Fars
agency. As
noted, when
Iranian
foreign
minister Javad
Zarif met with
UN Secretary
General
Ban Ki-moon in
New York, the
only
journalists
who went up to
Ban's
38th floor
office to
cover it were
with Iranian
media and
Inner City
Press.
Up
there, Iranian
foreign
minister Javad
Zarif quipped
to UN Syria
envoy
Lakhdar
Brahimi that
he would see
him soon in
Tehran.
Downstairs,
the
so-called UN
Correspondents
Association
used UN
resources to
celebrate
themselves,
having hosted
a faux
UN briefing by
Saudi-sponsored
Syria rebel
boss Ahmad al
Jarba.
This is how it
works
-- UNCA or its
first vice
president from
Reuters
also in
essence spy
for the UN,
click here for
story, audio, document.
This has yet
to be
explained.
It
is at the
level of
foreign
ministers that
Iran wants the
November
talks. There
are sure to be
questions to
the US State
Department's
Jen Psaki and
Marie Harf,
present at the
talks, about
this. Harf was
tweeting, even
as other
parts of the
US State
Department
said they
stopped,
including on
the UN
Security
Council's
recent Africa
trip,
due to or to
highlight the
US
government
shutdown.
Ah, politics.
Watch this
site.
, 
