By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 16 – Can a wire service reheat the same story and paragraph it published ten days earlier, add a tweet from a diplomat in his personal capacity and a confirmation from former colleague and call it a new story? If you're Reuters, at the UN, and it's the Congo: yes you can.
On January 25, Reuters quoted an unnamed UN official that the “peace enforcement” deal for Easter Congo would be signed in Addis Ababa the coming weekend.
When it didn't happen, there was no correction or explanation, for example of why a UN official was allowed to namelessly declare war.
On February 6, this time quoting chief UN peacekeeper Herve Ladsous as well as unnamed UN officials and diplomats, Reuters said the deal could be signed later in February.
It became obvious that this would happen. On the morning of Friday, February 15 in the UN's North Lawn building, an African diplomat from country in the Congo deal's “Eleven Plus One” told Inner City Press that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's chief of staff and personal envoy Susana Malcorra, seen by Inner City Press that morning mc-ing the signing of Ban's compacts, was meeting with Congo's neighbors.
On Friday evening at a reception at a Permanent Representative's resident on the Upper East Side, Inner City Press was told that the “framework agreement” would be signed in Addis Ababa on February 24.
The next day a Rwandan diplomat tweeted in his personal capacity who would be going to Addis to sign. Suddenly Reuters sprung into action, re-publishing almost without changes the February 6 story, adding the "personal" tweet and a confirmation from a spokesman who used to work at Reuters. Voila! A Reuters UN story!
Compare Reuters' Feb 6 story to Feb 16 story bylined by Michelle Nichols, reheated.
Why subscribe to Reuters if you can just read the diplomat's tweets? Follow him, here. Just remember: it's personal.
Footnotes: Back when the anonymous UN quotes turned out to be false, Inner City Press asked what are Reuters' policies on granting anonymity in cases like this for Reuters editors like Stephen J. Adler, Walden Siew, and Paul Ingrassia? There have still been no answers.Now, what's their policy on the use of tweets that are explicitly in a "personal capacity"?
It was Reuters' UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau who felt comfortably trying to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN using a stealth complaint (that he was called “disgusting,” which he called the worst thing that happened to him in 20 years of journalism), then supporting Voice of America's request to “review the accreditation” of Inner City Press.
More recently this Reuters powerhouse, Louis “Kurtz” Charbonneau, suggested to the UN it charge money for the posting then his group's tearing down of flyers about the controversy.
He dabbled in anonymous social media accounts, bragging of commitments obtained from France's Permanent Representative and tried to silence dissent in the group by saying “let's just vote” before the objection had even been explained.
If the stories write themselves, and there is time to masquerade online, is this what Reuters' has come to? Watch this site.
