By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 26 -- When the UN has gone soft and corporate media is dying, who or what will pick up the slack?
That was the question Monday night at the River Club ten blocks north of the UN where the non-governmental organization Global Witness hosted George Soros, financiers, journalists and tennis players in an Art Deco space beside a gleaming turquoise pool.
One of Global Witness' three founders Charmian Gooch told the crowd how they began on Cambodia, then illegal mining and now Gaddafi's Libya investment funds.
She said proudly, we have no membership, no public relations, no marketing. Then an Alex Soros was introduced to speak, as a history student at Berkeley, followed by investigative journalist Ken Silverstein.
Silverstein spoke of the death of media, how the Los Angeles Times closed its investigative unit and tried to replace three reporters' 900 bylines a year.
He now works at Harper's, and did a story on the side for Global Witness but at least initially kept his name off it, he told Inner City Press, in order to get into Cambodia.
All of this took place close to the UN, during the annual General Debate, but the UN wasn't mentioned once.
Soros looks heavenward at GW event by UN Monday night, publish what you pay
Inner City Press asked Silverstein about Equatorial Guinea being the head of the African Union, and Gabon on the Security Council. Silverstein said that the son of Equatorial Guinea's long time ruler Obiang leaving the US shows the power of the pen. But to what end?
Another journalist present cautioned, you cannot change the world. Then what was this event about, with the senior George Soros present, acknowledged from the podium? Tennis players in whites wandered through on their way to indoor courts, the signs outside of which told "Babysitters" to not enter without The Pro.
Footnote: Among the attendees was one Scott Wallace, writing about uncontacted tribes in Brazil. Inner City Press asked him about such tribes impacted by the Belo Monte dam; he said they exist. He said Peru denies the existence of such tribe. He will be in New York at the Explorers' Club in November. And we will try to be there.
