UNITED
NATIONS, March
27 -- Social
media and the
UN was the
topic on
Wednesday,
when a
representative
of Mashable
and an
Internet
activist
from Egypt
took Press
questions
along with
ECOSOC
President
Nestor
Osorio and the
UN's Youth
Envoy, Ahmad
Alhendawi.
Inner
City Press
asked the two
mostly non-UN
guests to
assess the
UN's
social media,
including
Herve Ladsous'
UN
Peacekeeping
which does not
answer tweets
on Haiti
cholera or
rapes in the
Congo, and the
@SecGen
Twitter
account that
Alhendawi that
day cited. Video
here from
Minute 27.
Mashable's
Stacy
Martinet
acknowledged
that the UN
could do
better. She
advised
letting other,
“lower” levels
of the UN do
the tweeting.
Wael
Ghonim said
that in Egypt,
after the
revolution,
the military
(SCAF)
started a
Facebook page
and put its
releases there
first,
bypassing
the old media.
Ahmad
Alhendawi,
who'd tweeted
about @SecGen,
said things
should be a
two-way
street.
Secretary
General
Ban Ki-moon's
spokesman
Martin Nesirky
replied that
@SecGen
“is not
official, run
by well
meaning
individual, I
believe based
in UK.”
Nesirky said
that his
office,
“without
blowing our
own
trumpet,” has
36,000
followers.
It
is understood
that the UN
did not ask to
shut down the
unofficial
@SecGen. But
would they try
to close, say,
@RogueBanKiMoon,
for
example?
These
days in the UN
press corps,
the old media
“leaders” of
the UN
Correspondents
Association
have started
no fewer than
six anonymous
social
media accounts
to try to
undermine
the new Free
UN Coalition
for Access,
which thanked
the panelists
on Wednesday,
and Inner City
Press which
co-founded
FUNCA.
In
their
anonymous
accounts,
targeted at
countries'
mission to the
UN,
the UNCA
“leaders” have
falsely
alleged Inner
City Press
receives
terrorist
funding, or --
somehow worse?
-- funding
from Rwanda.
But
who are these
leaders of
UNCA, now
known
alternatively
as the UN's
Censorship
Alliance or,
due to
anonymity, the
UN Cowardice
Alliance?
There
is UNCA
President
Pamela Falk,
who send out
corporate
tweets from
CBS, does not
respond to
questions or
critiques, and
deleted
without
explanation
tweets that
were
inaccurate and
came into
question.
Falk
has not
tweeted since
March 24, the
day after she sent
a legal threat
to Inner City
Press not to
even ask why
she was taking
photographs of
the UN's
March 18 raid
on the Press
office.
There's
UNCA
Second Vice
President
Masood Haider
of the Dawn of
Pakistan,
with 87
followers and
seven tweets
in the 27 days
of March
including
one that
simple reads,
@nypost.
There's
UNCA
Third Vice
President
Sylviane Zehil
of L'Orient
Le Jour
with 92
followers and
tweets, a
recent sample
of which is
“Citigroup to
Improve
Anti-Money
Laundering
Controls,”
without any
link much less
critique or
analysis.
There's
UNCA
First Vice
President and
Concerned UN
Reporter
candidate
Louis
Charbonneau,
most of whose
tweets are
just corporate
pass-throughs
from Reuters,
as if on
auto-pilot. He
also
religiously
re-tweets his
Reuters
underling
Michelle
Nichols,
who filed a
false
complaint
echoing his,
along with
AFP.
There's
UNCA
Executive
Committee
member at
large Tim
Witcher of
Agence France
Presse,
with 127
followers and
seven tweets
in March, the
first of
which was a
re-tweet of
the co-stolen
Minova rape
story of
Reuters'
Michelle
Nichols, with
whom Witcher
went on to
file a false
complaint
for being
called,
accurately, a
lapdog.
We
could go on,
as they do.
Watch this
site.
, 
