UNITED NATIONS, September 27, 2010 -- When Bernard Kouchner, for now the French Foreign Minister, did a media stakeout at the UN midday Monday, a dozen reporters showed up and fought with each other to ask questions. Video here.
Inner City Press managed to ask a question about Sudan, and France's hosting of Darfur rebel leader Abdul Wahid Nur, the answer to which will be published later today. But the sideshow was the maneuvers by France's Mission to the UN to control who could ask questions.
As reporters shouted out questions ranging from Israeli settlements to the Balkans and conditions in Haiti, Kouchner turned toward the loudest voice, or the most interesting word he heard. Meanwhile two French reporters, apparently promised the “right” to ask questions prior to the stakeout, stood to the side.
The French Mission's spokesman at first pointed to them, then grabbed the UN microphone boom to “give” the floor to the two French journalists.
This degree of control had never been seen or attempted, according to long time UN stakeout denizens. “It makes them look like the teacher's pet,” one such denizen remarked. Another opined that the French Mission to the UN tries to use access to newsmakers and events as a way to discipline or influence reporters about their coverage.
On the questions that he did take, Kouchner was energetic, and not as directly rude as he was during a stakeout in the UN's Temporary North Lawn Building last week. There, when a Japanese reporters was setting up a question, Kouchner goaded the reporter that it wasn't a question at all.
During his time in New York, the French Mission to the UN tried to tightly control all media access to Kouchner, including snubbing some of the most active reporters at the UN, including on the issues Kouchner speaks most about: humanitarian access, Sudan, the Responsibility to Protect and Myanmar. It is not clear on whose behalf this control was being exercised.
During his weekend in Haiti, Kouchner reportedly said off microphone that he will soon be leaving the Sarkozy government. Asked about this on Monday, Kouchner bristled that the press should listen to what he says on microphone and not off microphone.
In his speech to the General Assembly, Kouchner ranged back to the Security Council's resolutions on the Kurds in Iraq in the early 1990s, talking about the Right to Intervene and later Responsibility to Protect. How do he and France apply this to Sudan, or to Myanmar, the topic of another UN meeting later on Monday? We will have more on this.
