UN
Against
the Media, Bloggers and the New, Story of a Footnote from Ban's
No Whistleblower Zone
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
July 29, updated -- The UN,
which preaches about disseminating
information and even hires pro-UN bloggers, has resisted including
the word “bloggers” in its Media Accreditation Guidelines, which
it put online on July 30. Click here.
This
despite the
fact that the head of the UN's Department of Public Information,
Kiyotaka Akasaka, who oversees the Accreditation and Liaison Unit
(MALU), has a pro-UN
(and ostensibly pro press freedom) blog on the Huffington Post.
The
previous and
prospective chief of MALU told Inner City Press, “the UN does not
accredit bloggers," and reiterated this after a New
York Times piece identifying Inner City Press as the first blog at the
UN.
At
that
time, in the NYT piece, the UN “said that guidelines for bloggers
are a work in
progress. The goal is to balance concerns about openness, security
and professional standards with growing interest from online
journalists.”
Yet even now, the UN refuses to put even the word
“blogger” in its accreditation guidelines. The distinction
seems to be between pro-UN blogs or those owned and controlled by large
corporations and those with critical independence.
This year,
the UN Correspondents Association
executive board, to which this
reporter was elected, twice after
debate and votes submitted language to MALU that they should
explicitly include “bloggers” the Accreditation Guidelines, for
which the UN wanted UNCA's concurrence.
But
following the
first submission of UNCA suggestions, the UN accepted every proposal
except on bloggers. After a second UNCA submission -- this time
addressing concerns by referring to “journalists who are bloggers”
-- the UN still demurred.
Mr. Akasaka's
outgoing deputy Eric Falt
responded with what he called the “final” version, to be put
online the next day, which only in a footnote mentions that online
media includes blogs and vlogs. The reference is marginalized in a
footnote, and there is no reference to bloggers as such. Why not?
At
a DPI event about Social Media held earlier this year in the UN's North
Lawn building,
chaired by Mr. Akasaka, UN staffers praised their own blogging and
Tweeting of UN positions. Staff said they were paid to monitor
Wikipedia to remove “inaccurate” information about UN officials.
Inner City Press asked, if someone posted for example that Ban's
chief of staff Vijay Nambiar was too close with regimes in Myanmar or
Sri
Lanka, would that be considered opinion or “inaccurate”? There was
no answer -- presumably, the UN's social media team is
directed to remove such free speech. And now, no reference to
“bloggers.”
There is a larger context here. The UN has used the opportunity of its
Capital Master Plan rehabilitiation to move the press corps from
offices with walls, from which calls could be made and whistleblowers
could visit, to a series of cubicles directly under the Department of
Management.
As exclusively
exposed by Inner City Press, in what the UN dismissively called a
"blog post," the cubicles
initially came with security cameras above them, making it the
whistleblower free zone. Still everything can be heard, and there
are no improvements on the horizon.
Because
of the
previous and prospective MALU chief's statement that “the UN
doesn't accredit bloggers,” this reporter pressed that the UNCA
proposal(s) be stuck to, and that the word “blogger” be included.
Inner City Press asked these questions:
UNCA's
Executive
Board has twice unanimous proposed that the word “blogger”
be included in the Accreditation Guidelines. After UN DPI's initial
response to merely refer to bloggers in a side email from the interim
supervisor of MALU, the UNCA Board met for more than an hour and
counter proposed compromise language, “including those who are
bloggers.”
On
July 27, the USG of DPI told me the bloggers would be in the
guidelines.
But
the text provided on July 29, with a less than one day deadline, does
not include the word bloggers, but rather a footnote about “blogs
or vlogs.”
Given
that the previous and perhaps future supervisor of MALU has said “the
UN does not accredit bloggers,” if that is not the position, why is
the word “blogger” not included in the Guidelines? Please -- an
answer.
But
rather than an
answer, a vote was called for. This reporter voted no. UNCA response
reflected that the vote
“was
not unanimous.. We interpret it to mean that the UN has officially
recognized that blogger journalists that fulfill MALU’s criteria
have the right to a UN accreditation and will not be discriminated
against simply because they are bloggers.”
But
will that
“understanding” be in the guidelines? Unanswered is the question
of whether UNCA's consent should have required a vote of the full
membership, and the larger question: why is the UN so scared of
independent bloggers?
The
current UN
Spokesman, on camera at one of the UN's noon briefing, used the
podium to call Inner City Press' “blog”
characterizing the murder
of UN staff member Louis Maxwell by Afghan National forces as having
been covered up as “outrageous.”
Due
to outmoded
UN distinctions between print and photo journalists, which make
little sense for new media, Inner City Press has several times been
blocked from filming or photographing events at the UN, and was most
recently ordered
to leave a photo op with the foreign minister of
Rwanda while the UN's own in-house media, UN Photo, was allowed to
stay. Click here
from that story.
The UN
demanded the deletion from an Inner City Press "blog post" of a photograph
of asbestos falling in areas frequented by staff, even women with
babies in strollers, click here
for that.
UN's Ban and DPI's Akasaka, "bloggers" not shown
The
outgoing
overseer of MALU, Eric Falt, is known to run morning meetings at 9:30
a.m. in the UN's “luggage building” at which messaging, and
countering this publication by name, have
according to sources at times been discussed. [Another participant has countered that the
meetings are only to plan the UN's own p.r. work, not to discuss
others' coverage. But] It seems to some
that this UN is comfortable with UN controlled bloggers, but not
independent journalists.
Update: the UN's footnote not
mentioning "bloggers" but merely that "bona fide" online media includes
blogs and vlogs -- with no definitely of "bona fide" (good faith) or
any rationale for the UN to define such, has now gone online here
- watch THAT site...
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