UNITED
NATIONS, April
11 -- That
mega
corporations
nevertheless
want to
appear to be
hip is, well,
a symptom of
cultural
hegemony.
Take
Reuters: their
business is
selling
information to
high frequency
stock traders.
In this, they
underperform
for example
Bloomberg and
its terminals.
But
Reuters is hip,
or wants to
be. It has a
social media
editor, it
looks at the
business
models of
BuzzFeed, of
Google
allowing
people
to designate
heirs for
their data --
even of
Bloomberg
moving to
include the
tweets of some
high profile
economists and
pundits in
their
terminals.
You
might think
that such a
company,
seeming to
favor the free
flow of
information
and even
freedom of the
press, would
pause when one
of
its bureau
chiefs was
caught, via
the Freedom of
Information
Act,
lobbying to
get a smaller
media -- a
blogger --
thrown off of
a beat. But
you'd be
wrong.
In
this case, Reuters'
UN bureau
chief Louis
Charbonneau
went so far as
to threaten
that if the UN did not
throw
Inner City
Press out, for
articles
particularly
media critique
that it
published, he
would have
no choice but
to ask about
transferring
out of the UN
to another
beat
at Reuters.
This
threat
obviously
implicates
Reuters and
the role it
has come to
play
for the UN and
some Permanent
Missions like
those of the
UK and
France. But
did
Charbonneau
tell his boss
about the
threat and do
they stand
behind it?
They
have been
urged to
inquire into
their UN
bureau's
anti-Press
moves, in
their own
names and as
anonymous
trolls.
(This has
continued.)
Those
asked include,
so far,
Stephen J.
Adler, Editor
in Chief, Paul
Ingrassia,
Deputy Editor
in Chief,
Walden Siew,
Top News
Editor, Greg
McCune,
“Ethics,” and
one other. But
despite the
issues raised,
twice now,
this mega
corporation
will not
respond or
more
importantly
reform. Hip
or
a kingdom of
trolls?
To
continue with
the contrast
to Bloomberg
-- documents
obtained under
the Freedom of
Information
Act show that
faced with the
same
inquiries as
Inner City
Press sent in
June 2012 to
the Reuters
quartet,
Bloomberg's
John Walcott,
if not Matt
Winkler to
whom the
inquiries were
directed, made
a decision.
The
Bloomberg
correspondent
who
signed a
letter
starting the
kangaroo court
proceeding of
the UN
Correspondents
Association
should
thereafter not
participate in
it,
or in the
campaign.
While this has
not entirely
been carried
out, it
still show a
difference
between
Bloomberg and
Reuters.
Bloomberg
for
whatever
reason
realized that
attacking free
press may not
be a
good idea,
perhaps or
probably only
for business
reasons.
Reuters, the
hipster
wannabe, still
doesn't seem
to “get” this.
Calling
Antonio
Gramsci. Watch
this site.
, 
