UN
With No Press
Protections Has UN
Censorship Alliance, Director
Tells Press to Stop Periscope
By Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS,
July 10 – The UN has
no rules protecting the
rights of journalists to
investigate and report on UN
corruption without being evicted
and restricted for their
coverage. Despite not making
any change to this
since taking power, UN
Secretary General Antonio
Guterres' deputy Amina J.
Mohammed listed as her lone
public appointment on July 6
“remarks at the launch of the
2017 United Nations
Correspondents Association
Directory.” Tweeted photo here.
This supposed UN
Correspondents Association has
not
pushed for any rules or
transparency; rather, it seeks
to limit broadcasting and
reporting. The July 10 example
was on Inner City Press' way
to Guterres' Colombia photo
op, moved on little notice to
his UN residence on 57th
Street. As Inner City Press
broadcast a Periscope on the
way there, documenting among
other things the effects on
reporting of the UN's changes
at Guterres' convenience, a
board member of UNCA Melissa
Kent of the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation CBC
tried to get Inner City Press
to stop broadcasting -- even
outside of the UN, on New York
City's First Avenue. It
was for seeking to pursue the
UN bribery / Ng
Lap Seng / South
South News story by covering
a UN Press Briefing Room event
of UNCA, which accepted funds
from Ng's South South News,
that Inner City Press was evicted
from the UN and remains restricted
sixteen months later.
(Guterres' holdover spokesman
Stephane
Dujarric has defended
this, saying he "lent" the
room to UNCA, Aide Memoire
to US Senate here.
As Inner City Press was
physically ousted from the UN
by eight UN guards, this UNCA
board member Melissa Kent
looked on from the lobby.) On
July 5 as Guterres gave a
“reform” speech about how
Amina Mohammed will take over
the UN Development System,
Inner City Press was ordered
to stop staking-out the
meeting unlike other
correspondents. Actually, at
the same time UNCA was holding
an unrelated event in the
clubhouse the UN gives them.
It's like an in-house union,
which has allowed a two-tier
system of access and actively
sought to get the
investigative Press thrown
out. And while Amina Mohammed,
of whom we still expect and
hope for more, earlier in 2017
said she was "working on"
Cameroon where the Internet
was cut off for 94 days,
nothing came of that so far,
and no reforms or reversal.
The UN and censorship. In this
context it is also troubling
that the acting head of the UN
Department of Public
Information Maher Nasser, who
has maintained
the double standard of access
for ten weeks and counting
recently "multiple reportedly"
attended a Hamptons event of
-- and accepted gratuities
from, as they'd put it in the
Ng Lap Seng trial -- UNCA big
wig Giampaolo Pioli, who
previously vowed to get Inner
City Press thrown out if it
did not remove from the
Internet a story concerning
his renting
of an apartment to the
ambassador of Sri Lanka,
implicated in the White Flag
murders of surrendering
combatants. These things are
not all UNCA members' fault,
nor most of those who accept
their gratuities. But the UN
Secretariat's failure to have
content neutral rules, and for
example to have now
disparately treated the
investigative Press for
sixteen months while trying to
give its office and full
access to an Egyptian state
media, Akhbar al Yom, whose
Sanaa Youssef rarely comes in
and never asks questions - is
shameful. Note that this
no-show correspondent is a
past President of UNCA. It's
the UN Censorship Alliance.
We'll have more on this.
***
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