UN's
Charade
of World Press
Freedom Day
Had Bid to
Censor Opposition
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, May 9
-- At the UN,
the head of
the UN
Correspondents
Association
felt
comfortable on
World Press
Freedom Day
complaining
to the top of
the Department
of Public
Information
that UN
Television
dared cut away
to a shot of a
skeptic during
her speech
claiming UNCA
protects
journalists.
It
happened on
May 1, when
UNCA's 2013-14
president
Pamela Falk
grandiosely
attempted to
launch a
Twitter
hashtag
promoting the
group. An UNCA
member, rather
than
obediently
tweeting the
contrived
tag, noted
online that
when Falk
claimed the
"GA commends
UNCA
every year,"
UNTV camera
cuts to
@innercitypress
shaking head
in
disbelief, too
funny.”
(The
UNTV video,
which we've
gone back and
found for the
reasons below
is online
here, from
Minute 30.)
As
we first diplomatically
recorded,
the UNTV
control room
got a
complaint
about their
camera angles.
This is called
attempted
censorship, as
is this
Digital
Millennium
Copyright Act
filing with
Google, here.
Now
we can report
based on
multiple
sources that
Falk herself
complained to
the top of DPI
- and
that this
complaint,
rather than
being as it
should have
been laughed
at and
rejected, was
passed on to
the control
room, trying
to dictate
even what the
camera
operators film
as cut-aways.
This is
outright
censorship:
the UN's
Censorship
Alliance's
reverse flow.
In
2012, some on
UNCA's
Executive
Board tried to
pursue the
investigative
Press for
its coverage
of UN official
Herve Ladsous
and
also
separately of
France's
ambassador
Gerard Araud,
then moved
for expulsion
based on coverage
of Sri Lanka.
Now, UNCA's
president
demands that
the UN itself
change how it
films, to
censor
opposition.
Out
in the real
world, the UN
Secretariat
had no comment
on Ethiopia's
jailing
of journalists
including the
Zone 9
Bloggers,
when asked
about it by
the new Free
UN Coalition
for Access.
As we covered
on
May 8, the UN
has yet to
speak on
Yemen's
deportation
of one of the
few (but more
than two)
non-Yemeni
journalists
working in the
country. The
next story is
Myanmar -
watch this
site.
, 
