UNITED NATIONS, May 12, updated -- Amid the modulated hoopla Tuesday morning surrounding the election of the United States to the UN Human Rights Council, Inner City Press learned of an opposite trend of pull-back from the UN by American, or at least American-based media. The venerable Washington Post is moving to close its UN bureau, by the end of 2009 at latest, sources said. Post correspondent Colum Lynch, who has broken stories about abuse by peacekeepers and procurement corruption, will no longer daily be covering the UN "from inside."
While the financial crisis, globally and of newspapers, is sure to be presented as the rationale, others wonder if the drop-off in charisma and flash in the transition from Kofi Annan to Ban Ki-moon does not also play a factor. CNN, for example, no longer opens its UN office every day. Correspondent Richard Roth, after man in the street interviews about the global financial crisis and some spring baseball stories, is said to be trying to get the Human Rights Council story a spot in the network's Situation Room. The World Body, some says, just doesn't rate anymore.
Another network correspondent mused, of the Washington Post's plans, that the work space in the UN is free: why would they be closing? Ban Ki-moon's head of management Angela Kane has floated and conflicted a draft proposal to charge rent to the press in the future. With major media pulling back from the UN, some wonder why the UN would try to make it more difficult to cover the organization and its work.
While we report further on this story, for now we wish to note Lynch's unassuming but fact-uncovering style, both at the Security Council stakeout and in the UN briefing room... Lynch has not settled for political correctness, has not left facts unreported. Hence this interim piece.
Footnote 1: Seemingly connecting these two competing trends, Lynch was Tuesday morning at the stakeout in front of the General Assembly vote asking US Ambassador Susan Rice a question -- or seemingly trying to. As he asked three minutes into Amb. Rice's stakeout, she walked away. Apparently, he did not shout loud enough. We report, you decide: video here, from Minute 3:30.
From the mea culpa department, it has been pointed out that in an earlier version of this story, a journalist who Amb. Rice said was mumbling was identified as Lynch. (Since he was mumbling, the mis-identification occured, and was repeated at the noon briefing.) "You're mumbling," Ambassador Rice told the jounalist. Video here, from Minute 1:21.
"Mumbling? Oh my God," he said, and then continued to ask Rice to respond to charges that given the membership of human rights abuses, the Council cannot be effective. We do not agree, Rice said, and then seemed to refuse Lynch's question: video here, from Minute 3:30.
Footnote 2: Craig Mokhiber also said, of the UN in Sri Lanka, where interment camps alleged to be site of sexual abuse by soldiers and even of starvation are funded by the UN, that the UN must itself abide by international law. We'll see.And see, www.innercitypress.com/unhrc1wapo051209.html
