UNCA
Counterfeits
Fliers After
Filing
Stealth
Complaints,
Can't Raise
Due Process
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS,
January 21 --
Since July
5, 2012
and more
pointedly this
year, the
UN has been
asked a simple
question about
the rights of
journalists.
How are
complaints
against UN
correspodents
and what they
write
processed, and
when are they
informed of
the
complaints?
The
question has
still not been
answered,
while the UN
has yet to
break
its
inappropriate
ties with the
pseudo press
freedom
organization
which filed
stealth
complaints in
2012, the UN
Correspondents
Association.
Click here,
here
and here,
obtained under
the US Freedom
of Information
Act.
Reading
from
a prepared
speech Monday
night in the
UN Delegates'
Entrance,
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon
introduced
"new" UNCA
President
Pamela Falk as
if UNCA
represented
all
journalists
accredited at
the UN, which
it does not.
Falk
then gushed
about covering
the UN, when
few of her
UNCA Executive
Committee
members even
came to the
stakeout for
the day-long
Peacekeeping
debate, or
ask or write
about Africa,
sixty percent
of
the UN's work.
Upstairs
in
the floor of
cubicles
occupied by
correspondents,
fliers
summarizing
the issues
raised by
the new Free
UN
Correspondents
Association
to the Department
of Public
Information,
including the
due process
rights of
journalists,
the rights to
ask questions
and
have them
answered and
for equitable
treatment of
non-corporate
media
had been torn
down.
They
were replaced,
right next to
the new UNCA
President's
CBS office,
with
counterfeit
fliers.
Previously,
the FUNCA
fliers were
defaced
with the
phrases
"Looney Club"
and "Dirty
Shirt Club."
Downstairs,
this was
celebrated --
by Ban
Ki-moon?
The
new president
of UNCA often
points out
that she is a
lawyer. If so,
did she do no
due diligence
before
accepting the
outgoing
president's
endorsement to
take over?
What are her
views of the
organization's
2012 descent
into
censorship,
and the due
process rights
of
reporters?
These
questions have
been publicly
asked, a
number of
times, before
this piece was
written.
But
actually,
after assuming
without even
any electoral
opponent or
campaign
statement
the top
position in
the group
which filed
the stealth
complaints in
2012, it
hardly matters
what she now
says about due
process
rights.
UNCA cannot
with any
legitimacy
raise this
issue - or
many other
issues. Watch
this site.
, 
