Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press at UN
www.innercitypress.com/un2algeriapoll022108.html
UNITED NATIONS, February 21 -- In the wake of the deadly bombing of the United Nations in Algiers in December, Al Jazeera placed online an interactive poll which asked if people supported or opposed the bombing of the UN. The poll drew responses, not all of them negative.
At UN Headquarters in New York, there was anger at Al Jazeera, a sense that the media outlet had clearly transgressed accepted boundaries of professional journalism. While one might have expected some public protest, instead the UN chose to deploy a unique form of diplomacy. A high profile Al Jazeera correspondent was contacted. He in turn contacted the top management of Al Jazeera. In short order, two things happened: the poll was removed from the Internet, and Al Jazeera was granted an exclusive one-on-one interview with Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, which the UN's own website heavily promoted.
Because of the surprising incongruity of this UN response, Inner City Press on February 21 asked two UN communications officials, one in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General and the other in the spokesperson's office, to confirm or deny these basic assertions:
"Is it not the case that after the December bombing of the UN in Algeria, one accredited media outlet here ran an online poll if people agreed with the bombing? That the UN asked, but only privately, for the media outlet to take it down? And, that once it was taken down, the Secretary-General granted the media outlet an exclusive interview?"
The UN's answer, which to be fair we run in full, seems to go out of its way to put the poll, or management's responsibility, in the best possible light, in order to distinguish it from other current and apparently desired reactions to reporting the UN does not like:
No. The poll was brought to our attention, as well as reports on other websites about the poll. Those reports indicated that the Al-Jazeera Editor-in-Chief and management were taken by surprise at the question asked by the poll and realized that it was inappropriate. They admitted publicly (in these website reports) that it was a mistake and said that they had removed it and disciplined the journalists responsible.
The SG and his team, recognizing that Al-Jazeera had acknowledged it's mistake, decided that the Head of DPI would write a Letter to the Editor of Al-Jazeera, regretting this series of events and underling the importance of telling the UN story to the Arab world in order to develop a better understanding of what the UN does, etc.
Subsequently, Al-Jazeera requested an interview and it was granted.
Well-placed sources contest this account. The second line asserts that the media organization's management itself took action to take down the poll, before hearing from the UN. Inner City Press' sources counter that the UN reached out to a former UN correspondent to try to get the poll taken offline, that the disciplining of journalists emphasized by the UN response may never have taken place, and that there was a quid-pro-quo relation between the taking down of the poll and the granting of the interview.
Even the UN's version of the story is contrary to current and apparently desired reactions to reporting the UN does not like, with its reference to a letter from the Head of DPI, Kiyotaka Akasaka, "regretting this series of events and underling the importance of telling the UN story." Other media outlets accused by UN management of having "clearly transgressed accepted boundaries of professional journalism" wonder when the gentle "regretting" of events and "underlining of the importance of telling the UN story" starts -- and when the interview will be scheduled.
