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UN Is Grilled in DC, As Opponent of Free Press and Bloggers, Claims Not to Lobby

Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at the UN: News Analysis

WASHINGTON, March 17 -- There is a UN Information Center, pronounced eunuch, in the U.S. capital, and on Monday its director William Davis promised that the UN does not lobby. This he defined as explicitly supporting pending legislation, or openly requesting contributions to the UN. He was asked why his office tells only positive stories; he was asked to explain actions of the UN Development Program ranging from support of dictators to crackdowns on the press, via press release, lobbying against media accreditation and bad-mouthing of particular news outlets. Davis said he is not an expert on the dictatorship and retaliation issues. He said, with an explicit reference to Inner City Press, that the UN is struggling to enter the twenty-first century and determine how to handle bloggers, to determine if they are credible and if they "overtake regular relations with the working press."

            On this, Inner City Press has obtained the UN's internal background paper on Media Accreditation and New Media, which opines that blogs "are essentially about providing opinion and stimulating debate. They are not subject to the same editorial and legal vetted as traditional media and do not function according to normal journalistic practices and standards. With its infinite capacity to shift, change or cease operations entirely, it is more difficult for an organization to ensure accountability from a blog."

            Whether the UN is any judge of journalistic standards, when its in-house faux news operation routine deletes any controversial reference at the request of member states, is dubious to many. The UN's credibility was questioned at an event on Monday in Washington, by the Government Accountability Project, among others. Click here to view, here for MP3. GAP's Beatrice Edwards said that when the UN tries cut out the free press, it is no more than a powerful and wealth and lawless organization. Whistleblowers, she said, are best off leaking information to the Press, particularly after what she called Ban Ki-moon's "huge leap backwards" last year when he allowed UNDP to escape the jurisdiction of the UN Ethics Office and its protections against retaliation.

            Another panelist, Claudia Rosett, recounted the UN's delayed and mendacious responses to her questions, most recently a refusal by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime to disclose which countries are on its Executive Board. This should be not surprising, given the UNODC director Costa has also failed to file his long-promised "Compact" regarding the UN Office in Vienna, which he heads. Months ago, Inner City Press was told this was just a temporary scheduling glitch. But still the report has not gone online. Ms. Rosett said that UN millennial poverty advisor Jeffrey Sachs has not even put online any statement that he will not disclose his finances. Davis listened to this, but did not disagree.

UNIC's Davis, lobbying not shown

            Both GAP's Bea Edwards and Claudia Rosett nodded toward UNDP as the likely complainant to Google to get Inner City Press de-listed from Google News. "Maybe there's a guy on Mars," Ms. Rosett said, "who knows Google's policies, the make-up of the UN press corps, and how to get Inner City Press delisted. A pitch was made for pro bono public interest representation to pursue the question in court. Watch this site.

Footnote: from the Washington Internet Daily of March 18, 2008:

Google News is said to receive three million complaints daily, so whoever complained about Inner City Press must have had "a lot of clout" to get such quick action, said Beatrice Edwards, international program director of the Government Accountability Project. Her group, formed in response to the Watergate scandal, has been leading the push for a U.N. policy like the FOIA and for wider whistleblower protection for U.N. staff, after a narrowing under Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to exclude the UNDP, she said. U.N. workers regularly leak to Inner City Press precisely because they have no means, such as federal law imposes, to report abuses without risking retaliation, Edwards said.

William Davis, director of the United Nations Information Center in Washington, didn't discuss the Google News episode on the panel. Reporters covering the U.N. meet hostility from some officials partly because of varying media environments at home, Davis said, citing Japanese reporters' politeness at a recent dinner with the U.N.'s Washington office. "We are masters at shooting ourselves in the foot" with Western reporters, and officials often "flinch" when approached by the media, he said. The U.N., "dragged kicking and screaming" to recognize new media as valid entities, now welcomes outlets like Inner City Press that do original reporting, Davis said.

We'll see.

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These reports are usually also available through Google News and on Lexis-Nexis.

Click here for a Reuters AlertNet piece by this correspondent about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click here for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali National Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an undefined trust fund.  Video Analysis here

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