By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 25 -- The lawless cynicism of the current UN Secretariat was on display Monday, a week after the UN conducted a raid on Inner City Press' office without notice or consent, searched papers and took photographs.
During the raid on March 18, Pamela Falk of CBS News who is also the president of the UN Correspondents Association also took pictures.
Ever since three photographs taken inside Inner City Press office appeared on BuzzFeed on March 22, Inner City Press has asked: whose photographs are these, and who gave them to BuzzFeed through an anonymous “Concerned UN Reporter” e-mail account?
Pam Falk replied on March 23 with a legal threat to “cease and desist,” sent from her CBSNews.com email address.
Inner City Press has asked CBS News whether this is in fact their legal threat -- which is contrary to freedom of the press -- or if it is consistent with the policies and standards. We will have more on that.
The UN's Stephane Dujarric sent an evasive response on March 22, only that “regarding the photos on BuzzFeed. They were not shared by the UN with the author and I can't very well ask her where she got them.”
But Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access were and are not telling the UN to ask author Rosie Gray who “Concerned UN Reporter” is.
Rather, it is for the UN to determine, simply, which UN personnel it had in Inner City Press' office on March 18, which of them took photographs, and with whom they shared these photographs.
If the UN can't do this how could they possibly investigate, say, chemical weapons in Syria?
Inner City Press went to the UN noon briefing on Monday and asked Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky three questions about Africa, one about the Syria chemical weapons investigation.
Finally Inner City Press asked by why right the UN took and gave the photographs to known opponents of Inner City Press, who have previously asked the UN's Stephane Dujarric to throw Inner City Press out. Video here, from Minute 28:26.
(See Voice of America complaint procured by Margaret Besheer; see also, Louis Charbonneau of Reuters stealth complaint; Tim Witcher of AFP and Michelle Nichols of Reuters filed complaints earlier this month, based entirely on speech, that Inner City Press has not even been shown a copy of.)
Nesirky's answer, repeated twice, was that the UN's Stephane Dujarric had “replied... apparently not to your satisfaction, but he replied.”
But he replied with an obvious evasion. The questions remain: it is for the UN to determine, simply, which UN personnel it had in Inner City Press' office on March 18, which of them took photographs, and with whom they shared these photographs. Watch this site.
