By
Matthew
Russell Lee,
Social Media
Review
UNITED
NATIONS,
December 19 --
With 2013
dubbed by many
the year of
social
media, we'll
review a faded
but $250 a
plate event
held in New
York
on December 18
which
attempted to
promote itself
on Twitter
with,
what else, a
hashtag:
#UNCA2013.
It
was a "ball,"
or a "prom,"
to promote what
has
become the UN
Censorship
Alliance,
formally the
United Nations
Correspondents
Association.
The
master of
ceremonies of
previous years
was not
present this
time, as
was the case
with a number
of UN
ambassadors
and missions.
The new --
one year only?
-- MC Laura
Trevelyan is
the one who
proposed
the
hashtag; two
scribes from Reuters
embraced
it and began
promoting it
and
themselves.
But
to cut to the
case, the
hashtag
received a
total of 34
uses during
the more than
four hours of
the event, six
by the three
above-named
(one Reuters
scribe also
congratulated
the other for
getting an
award
from UNCA, of
which he
has been first
vice president:
no conflict of
interest
there, right?)
Since
at latest
2011, the
group's
leadership has
gotten it
involved in
trying to get
accurate
journalism
taken OFF the
Internet, for
example
about its own
conflicts
of interest in
hosting inside
the UN a Sri
Lanka
government
film denying
war crimes
after its
president had
a
financial
relationship
with Sri
Lanka's
Ambassador to
the UN.
Having
failed in
censorship,
the UNCA
leaders
tried to get
Inner City
Press
thrown
out of the UN.
The
next most
active
#UNCA2013
tweeter on
December 18
with four was
Margaret
Besheer of
Voice of
America,
who took the
"lead"
in 2012 in
asking the UN
to throw out
or "review the
accreditation"
of Inner City
Press. Since
VOA is a US
government
agency, Inner
City Press
filed ongoing
Freedom of
Information
Act
requests and
obtained
documents
showing among
other things
that VOA
said
Reuters
and Agence
France Presse
supporteded
its ouster
request.
The
request was
made to a UN
official who
was present at
the "prom"
on December
18, tweeting
congratulations
about the
awards shot
through with
obvious
conflicts of
interest. At
least these
were on
the record.
The nastier
side of the
UNCA leaders
has been their
anonymous
social media
trolling,
including
counterfeit
twitter
accounts.
UNCA's 2013
and now
uncontested
2014 president
Pamela Falk
of CBS was put
on notice, on the
record, of
this trolling
but did
nothing. Now
she has set up
her own
account,
initially run
of CBS
News re-runs,
now selfies.
There
is no response
to the
disproving of
the statement
that the
Samsung
television
equipment UNCA
is accepting
has no
involvement of
a
Mission --
even the UN
says the South
Korean mission
was involved.
The
new Free
UN Coalition
for Access,
@FUNCA_info,
set to
advocate for
greater
transparency,
freedom of
speech and of
the press and
due
process in the
UN, chose not
to mention
#UNCA2013 or
the
twerk-fest.
@InnerCityPress
asked some
questions;
responses and
retweets came
from among
other
UN-impacted
places Haiti,
Rwanda, Brazil
and Sri
Lanka. The
latter wanted
to know, where
were UNCA's
(and the UN's)
favorite war
criminals?
The
final volley
of tweets came
from Pakistan,
about a murky
reference to
Secretary
General Ban
Ki-moon and
twerking.
There was a
guy who
switched from
Herve Ladsous'
UN
Peacekeeping
to, what else,
investment
advice. The
final tweet:
"what IS
#UNCA2103?"
What, indeed.
Watch this
site.
, 
