UN
Debate Sinks
to Hair
Insults, But
UNCA's Joke
May Be on Ban
Ki-moon
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
January 19 --
The UN,
particularly
because of its
inaction
for example in
Rwanda,
Srebrenica and
then Sri
Lanka, is
sometimes
called the
world's
greatest
debating
society.
But
the UN's
chosen (for
now)
interlocutor
on press
issues, the UN
Correspondents
Association,
can't seem to
debate at all.
After
a year in
which the UNCA
Executive
Committee led
by the bureau
chiefs
of Voice
of America,
Reuters (Louis
Charbonneau,
still First
Vice President
of UNCA)
and Agence
France-Presse
(Tim
Witcher, still
on UNCA's
Executive
Committee)
tried to get
Inner City
Press thrown
out of the UN,
a new
organization
has been
launched: the
Free
UN Coalition
for Access.
FUNCA
has pressed
issues of
access to
information,
equitable
treatment and
accreditation
of journalists
with the UN
Department of
Public
Information,
most recently
in a January
17 meeting
after which
FUNCA
posted a flier
summarizing
the
non-controversial
portions of
DPI's
answers.
The
response of
UNCA to the
flier? To
cover it up
with a
counterfeit
flier, and one
attempting
humor about
hair styles,
saying that
Inner
City Press
"has
challenged
those big hair
stylists
subsidized by
the
government-funded
scissor
makers."
The reference
is
apparently to
the fact that
many of UNCA's
Executive
Committee are
from state
media, or are
closely
affiliated
with
individual
member
states.
UNCA's
flier
concludes,
"Sign
here if you
want to see
Big Hair cut
to
size."
Is
this the best
UNCA can do,
to post
anonymous
threats in
insulting
fliers about
hair style?
Last time, UNCA
defaced the
fliers by
scrawling
"Looney Club"
and "Dirty
Shirt Club" --
because
in this view
what is
important in
being a
journalist, as
in being a
waiter, is who
has the
cleanest
shirt.
In
that vein,
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon has
private
lunches with
the
UNCA Executive
Committee,
doling out
quotes and
information
that they
then re-serve
to their
audience.
Is it
appropriate?
Especially
after
it has been
exposed,
through the
Freedom of
Information
Act, that
recently "UNCA
met with the
UN (very
quietly)" to
try to
get the Press
thrown out of
the UN?
Is
this Ban
Ki-moon's
understanding
of freedom of
the press?
We'll have
more on this.
, 
