By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 29 -- While diplomats milled around UN Conference Room 1 waiting to learn how theirlack of consensus on the Arms Trade Treaty would be phrased, what were the leaders of the UN Cowardice Association up to?
Using their anonymous social media accounts to try to claim a victory for their role in the UN's raid of Inner City Press' office on March 18, at which UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS took photographs.
Then anonymous UNCA leader “Concerned UN Reporter” passed photographs including of Inner City Press' bookshelf to BuzzFeed. This is UNCA: the UN's Censorship Alliance.
Their new anonymous social media accounts are associated with most members of the UNCA Executive Committee: Louis Charbonneau of Reuters, Tim Witcher of Agence France Press, Melissa Kent of CBC, Syliane Zehil of L'Oriente Le Jour, even Barbara Plett of the BBC and others pictured below.
There's also former Executive Committee member Margaret Besheer of Voice of America, and former former Evelyn Leopold. But absentee president Falk, after screaming on February 22 that she didn't know which of her board members were behind the accounts, has done nothing to find out. Is she resigning?
Ban's UNCA Lunch of the Lost, Feb 7, 2013, credit Evan Schneider, UNPhoto. From left: OSSG's Del Buey; Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency; OSSG's Nesirky; Melissa Kent of CBC; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Ban Ki-moon, Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Unknown; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI
Falk has only issued a legal threat to Inner City Press, from her CBSNews.com e-mail account, not to question why she took photos of the March 18 raid by the UN Department of Public Information.
DPI is aware of the fake social media accounts and claimed to take them seriously. DPI's Stephane Dujarric is followed by a recently created one. But so what? Watch this site.
