On
DRC Signing
Feb 24,
Reuters
Stories Write
Themselves,
Echoing UN
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
February 16 –
Can a wire
service reheat
the same story
and
paragraph it
published ten
days earlier,
add a tweet
from a
diplomat in
his personal
capacity
and a
confirmation
from former
colleague and
call it a new
story? If
you're
Reuters, at
the UN, and
it's the
Congo: yes you
can.
On
January 25, Reuters
quoted an
unnamed UN
official that
the “peace
enforcement”
deal for
Easter Congo
would be
signed in
Addis Ababa
the coming
weekend.
When it didn't
happen, there
was no
correction or
explanation,
for example of
why a UN
official was
allowed to
namelessly
declare war.
On
February 6,
this time
quoting chief
UN peacekeeper
Herve Ladsous
as
well as
unnamed UN
officials and
diplomats, Reuters
said the deal
could be
signed later
in February.
It
became obvious
that this
would happen.
On the morning
of Friday,
February 15 in
the UN's North
Lawn building,
an African
diplomat from
country in the
Congo deal's
“Eleven Plus
One” told
Inner City
Press that
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon's
chief of staff
and
personal envoy
Susana
Malcorra, seen
by Inner City
Press that
morning
mc-ing the
signing of
Ban's compacts,
was meeting
with Congo's
neighbors.
On
Friday evening
at a reception
at a Permanent
Representative's
resident
on the Upper
East Side,
Inner City
Press was told
that the
“framework
agreement”
would be
signed in
Addis Ababa on
February
24.
The
next day a Rwandan
diplomat
tweeted in his
personal
capacity who
would be going
to Addis to
sign.
Suddenly Reuters
sprung into
action,
re-publishing
almost
without
changes the
February 6
story,
adding the
"personal"
tweet and a
confirmation
from a
spokesman who
used to work
at Reuters. Voila!
A
Reuters UN
story!
Compare
Reuters
Feb 6 story
to Feb
16 story,
reheated.
Why subscribe
to Reuters if
you can just
read the
diplomat's
tweets? Follow
him, here.
Just remember:
it's personal.
Footnotes:
Back when the
anonymous UN
quotes turned
out to be
false, Inner
City Press
asked what
are Reuters'
policies on
granting
anonymity in
cases like
this for
Reuters
editors like Stephen J. Adler, Walden
Siew, and
Paul
Ingrassia?
There have
still been no
answers.Now,
what's their
policy on the
use of tweets
that are
explicitly in
a "personal
capacity"?
It was
Reuters' UN
bureau chief
who felt
comfortably
trying to get
the
investigative
Press thrown
out of the UN
using a stealth
complaint
(that he was
called
“disgusting,”
which he
called the
worst thing
that happened
to him in 20
years of
journalism),
then supporting
Voice
of America's
request to
“review the
accreditation”
of Inner City
Press.
More
recently this
Reuters
powerhouse,
Louis “Kurtz”
Charbonneau,
suggested to
the UN it
charge money
for the
posting then
his group's
tearing down
of flyers
about the
controversy.
He dabbled in
anonymous
social
media
accounts, bragging of
commitments
obtained from
France's
Permanent
Representative
and tried to
silence
dissent in the
group by
saying “let's
just vote”
before the
objection had
even been
explained.
If
the stories
write
themselves,
and there is
time to
masquerade
online,
is this what
Reuters' has
come to? Watch
this site.
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