By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 13 – While the UN and Secretary General Ban Ki-moon celebrate “World Radio Day,” Ban's main and only interlocutor on media issues is engaged not only in tearing down flyers calling for fairer access to the UN, but sinks lower into mocking an alleged victim of sexual harassment.
Last week Inner City Press reported how this UN Correspondents Association, increasingly known as the UN's Censorship Alliance after several of its leaders spent months trying to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, used a counterfeit social media account to mock a reporter who alleged sexual harassment. Click here for that story.
Now the campaign has switched to a second anonymous social media account, alleging that the Free UN Coalition for Access which began in December 2012 to challenge UNCA's archaic and ineffective monopoly on press comfort issues at the UN, wishes to charge money to investigate the harassment.
This followed attempts in the UNCA Executive Committee in 2012 to say Inner City Press received terrorist funding, leading to death threats from Sri Lanka.
How can this UNCA partner with the UN, even be a party to the UN's Media Access Guidelines?
FUNCA's current flyer questions those Guidelines, and UNCA being a party. Each day, the UNCA leaders tear the flyers down. They were joined in this by a UN staffer; witnessed tearing down flyers, for example, was Tim Witcher of AFP, now standing for Anti Free Press.
The approach of UNCA first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters? He was witnessed urging the UN to charge money for a new paint job. This is Reuters' approach to free speech? Charbonneau in 2012 filed his own stealth complaint with the UN against Inner City Press, then supported Voice of America's complaint to the UN.
When this was exposed by documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, Charbonneau offered no explanation. Rather he tears down flyers and urges the UN to adopt petty bureaucratic rules to limit speech.
All of this takes place under an ostensibly “new” president of UNCA, Pamela Falk of CBS, elected without any competition and nominated by her predecessor.
A flyer highlight her attempt in a January 24 letter to the UN to limit the existing right of non-resident correspondents to access to the so-called Delegates' Lounge, posted with highlighting next to her office door, was torn down on February 13.
Rather than address the daily new lows under her UNCA tenure, Falk has reportedly criticized FUNCA for not “walking out” with the alleged victim of sexual harassment -- this from the president of an organization which in 2012 tried to get Inner City Press to "walk out" of the UN forever.
Falk has also "offered" or arranged to accept from the UN a charade of free speech: that her UNCA maintain a glassed in bulletin board to display her letters - two, so far - while belatedly offering an “open access” board for all other journalists.
But since her UNCA insiders have taken to defacing FUNCA flyers and posting false ones, including one mocking the alleged victim of sexual harassment, on Inner City Press' UN cubicle door, the solution is no solution at all. It, like UNCA's Executive Committee, is a joke.
They have still provided no transcript of their session with Ban Ki-moon on February 7, even to their own dues paying members. The photo of that session includes 12 UNCA Executive Committee members, one of whom has written in to attempt to disassociate himself from UNCA and its campaigns; while that member did not answer follow up questions sent by FUNCA, that name is removed, and the IDs scrambled. They are:
Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ban Ki-moon, Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Melissa Kent of CBC; Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI
What does Ban Ki-moon think, and what will he do, about these new lows of his “partner” UNCA? Watch this site.
