After
UN Evicted Press, It Covered
UNSC from Park Across The Street, Power Ignored
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Part of Series,
Video
UNITED NATIONS,
February 13 – The problem with
trying to cover the UN from
the park across First Avenue
is that your laptop runs out
of power, and the scaffolding
behind Tudor City is far from
water-tight. But it can
be done.
Adrian from
Haiti, there in the park each
day from ten to two, showed me
the outlet, where I could plug
an extension cord for my
laptop in. And while the scaffolding
wasn't perfect, with a few
garbage bags tied to its
underbelly, a dry work space
could be formed.
But how to talk to diplomats
and sources? To some, the word
had gone out. An Eastern
European staffer who usually
spoke to me at the
pre-fabricated stakeout now
came outside; another even
slipped me a draft statement
which I went over the Fed Ex
to scan and put online. One
block further west was Grand
Central, with its long lines
for the toilet. Some, it
seemed, had taken to sleeping
in the stalls.
Another guy I met slept down
by the river, in a small park
by the FDR Drive just north of
the UN. He stored the tent he
used in a locker at the New
York Sport Club on 48th Street
during the day, in the same
building as the French and UK
mission and the even larger
office of Ng Lap Seng's and
Frank Lorenzo's South South
News.
I had been banned
many times from the building,
most recently when Ban went to
sign the condolence book for
the Paris nightclub shootings.
The French mission hadn't
wanted me to be there. What
was their role in this ouster
from the UN?
Even my river
friend suggested that I write
to the US Mission. They had to
be for free speech, right? The
Ambassador, Samantha Power,
had been a journalist herself.
I shot one rung lower, to
Power's deputy David Pressman.
He covered Africa in the
Security Council, was said to
have a janjaweed saddle from
Darfur in his office in the US
Mission building, which had no
windows up to its eighth or
ninth floor. I'd never been to
the mid floors, only to the
penthouse ballroom for
receptions.
The former Deputy
Permanent Representative for
Management and Reform, Joe
Torsella, had helped me a few
times, with information about
the Sri Lankan general I had
pursued, Shavendra Silva.
After Torsella left, to
prepare for a run for State
Treasurer of Pennsylvania, I'd
never once talked to his
successor, a woman named Isobel
Coleman. She would come
into the UN to give short
speeches offering praise, then
leave. She'd said nothing
about the arrest and
indictment of former PGA John
Ashe -- something even
Torsella, and definitely Mark
Wallace and his
recess-appointment boss John
Bolton would have done.
Obama liked the
UN. So what if a journalist
was in the street? But I tried
with Pressman, and to his
credit he responded.
Everything would have to be
through Isobel Coleman, he
said. Great, I told him, the
Government Accountability
Project, which defended
whistleblowers like my friend
Tony Shkurtaj from when I
first got to the UN, had
already written
to Coleman urging
action. Pressman shrugged. It
seemed they didn't like to be
pressured, at the US Mission.
A woman from a wire
service, who only filled in
sometimes, came by and spoke
with me in the rain. Have you
tried CPJ, she asked,
referring to the Committee
to Protect Journalists.
Actually, I had - even before
finally going to sleep after
the ouster I'd written to
CPJ's Joel Simon. I'd been
told to contact a Rob Mahoney,
and I did. Then nothing. No
response at all.
CPJ came to the UN to
launch, as they called it,
reports about countries. They
did this in the clubhouse of
the UN Correspondents
Association. Mahoney seemed
thick as thieves -- literally,
in terms of theft of
exclusives -- with Reuters' Lou
Charbonneau. Still, a
journalist thrown in the
street? I expected them to do
something. But it was not to
be.
***
Feedback:
Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
Past
(and future?) UN Office: S-303, UN, NY 10017 USA
For now: Box 20047,
Dag Hammarskjold Station NY NY 10017
Reporter's mobile (and weekends):
718-716-3540
Other,
earlier Inner City Press are listed here, and some are available in
the ProQuest service, and now on Lexis-Nexis.
Copyright
2006-2017 Inner City Press, Inc. To request reprint or other
permission, e-contact Editorial [at] innercitypress.com
for
|
,
