By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 19 -- After the UN demanded the removal from YouTube of a video Inner City Press filmed after the UN raided its office and searched its papers, Inner City Press asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky by what right the UN made the demand, and the raid.
Regarding the censorship request, Nesirky said he was not aware of the details but would reply. Video here, from Minute 37:37.
Inner City Press is now posting a second video, regardingPamela Falk of CBS, the president of the UN Correspondents Association, increasingly known as the UN's Censorship Alliance, ghoulishly taking photographs of the raid.
UNCA has tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, first for its reporting on France and its head of UN Peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, and on Sri Lanka, war crimes and conflict of interest, then on UNCA itself.
On December 7, 2012, Inner City Press co-founded theFree UN Coalition for Access to actually defend (and not target) journalists and push the UN Department of Public Information for more access and fair treatment of all media, including new media.
But when DPI invited Inner City Press as FUNCA to an on the record meeting with UNCA's Falk and her first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters, as which Falk screamed “mugger” and “you call yourself a journalist” and Inner City Press reported on it, DPI's Stephane Dujarric wrote a letter claiming that “all sides” understood the meeting to be off the record.
The audio proves otherwise, but Dujarric on March 15 responded to a letter to the head of DPI by saying “the letter stands.” The next business day, Inner City Press' office was raided by the MALU unit Dujarric controls. We'll have more on this. Watch this site.
