US
Answer on
Rwanda &
M23 Was to
Stearns of VOA,
State Media,
Censor
By
Matthew
Russell Lee
UNITED
NATIONS, July
24 -- When US
State
Department
spokesperson Jen Psaki
was asked at
Tuesday
briefing to
denounce
Rwanda for
supporting the
M23 rebels,
few reported
on who asked
the question.
It
was Scott
Stearns of
Voice of
America, a
government
broadcaster on
whose
Broadcasting
Board of
Governor's
Psaki's boss
Secretary of
State John
Kerry sits.
So
the US asked
itself a
staged
question, for
the second day
in a row,
and Psaki
pulled out her
binder and
read a
prepared
answer. Stearn
had asked the
same question,
without yet
being able to
cite HRW, on
July 22: video
here, from
Minute 52:16.
Then,
Psaki had
promised to
get back with
an answer.
Inner City
Press asked
US Mission to
the UN
spokespeople
about the VOA
question -- as
well
as about the Congolese
Army's 391st
Battalion,
which after US
training has
engaged in
mass rape and
corpses
desecration,
see
USUN answer
here.
But
it appears
that Psaki
held back the
answer a full
24 hours,
delivering it
after Stearn
re-posed the
question by
citing HRW's
study (but not
the correction
HRW had that
morning
appended to it.)
Voice
of America,
contrary to
its recent
lobbying, is
state media.
Inner
City Press has
filed and
received US
Freedom of
Information
Act
responses
about VOA,
showing among
other things
that its editor
Steve
Redisch last
year asked the
UN to "review"
the
accreditation
of Inner City
Press.
The documents
show VOA
saying it
had the
support in
this of Reuters,
Agence
France Presse
and others
on the board
of the United
Nations
Correspondents
Association,
headed this
year
by Pamela Falk
of CBS.
In
full
disclosure,
Inner City Press
has further
FOIA requesting
pending for
documents to
which BBG
repeatedly
denies access.
Redisch
request
here, here
re AFP, Reuters,
UNCA:
and here
re Reuters
first
vice president
of UNCA Lou
Charbonneau
leaking to the
UN's chief
accreditation
official Stephane
Dujarric
an explicitly
internal UNCA
document.
Neither the UN
nor its UN
Censorship
Alliance UNCA
have yet taken
any action on
this.
VOA
and its
affilates,
which include
Radio Marti,
Al Hurra and
others,
have this
month been
celebrating a
legal change
allowing them
to
broadcast what
many consider
propaganda
inside the US,
and not only
outside of it.
Without
getting
here into that
debate, the
spectacle of
state media
Voice of
America two
days in a row
asking the US
State
Department
canned
questions
about the DRC,
as curtain
raisers to a
UN Security
Council
to chaired
Thursday by
John Kerry,
who is on
VOA's
governing
board,
casts a new
light. As
stated
yesterday,
this is a
machine.
Footnote:
Voice of American
and BBG argue
for
broadcasting
propaganda
inside the US
by claiming
there is a
clamor for
their content.
If it's any
measure, VOA's
State
Department
"correspondent"
Scott Stearns
has 46
followers on
Twitter;
its UN
correspondent
has during all
this been most
occupied with
the birth of
the UK royal
baby.
How will VOA
"cover" the
July 25 DRC
meeting of the
UN Security
Council which
"editor" John
Kerry will be
chairing? Will
VOA, for example,
ask about the
US' training
of the 391st
Battalion (on
which HRW was
also silent,
as on the UN's
failed Human
Rights Due
Diligence
Policy
under Herve
Ladsous)
-- and if so,
in a similarly
canned fashion?
Watch this
site.