By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, March 25 -- A week after the UN raided Inner City Press' office, searched papers and took photos, the mystery only grew. Three photos appeared on BuzzFeed on Friday, March 22. Who took them?
A new evasive non-answer arrived from the UN at 7 pm on Monday.
Inner City Press, which was not notified at any time by the UN of the search, was called by another member of the Free UN Coalition for Access and ran from the Security Council stakeout to its office.
There were at least five people from the UN in and around the office, and Pamela Falk of CBS and the UN Correspondents Association taking photographs.
But on March 23 Pam Falk using her CBSNews.com e-mail sent a legal threat to Inner City Press for even questioning if she was the source of the photographs in BuzzFeed.
Falk did not, however, explain why she was taking photos.Nor has CBS News yet answered if the legal threat is from them, and complies with their policies and basis principles of freedom of the press.
Nor at Monday's noon briefing would Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Martin Nesirky provide any answer, beyond twice saying that the UN's Stephane Dujarric had replied.
But all that he wrote, on March 22, was: “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.”
So Inner City Press, including on behalf of FUNCA, wrote to the top of the Department of Public Information, not Dujarric:
The answers to date are not satisfactory. Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access were and are not telling the UN to ask the BuzzFeed author who the anonymous “Concerned UN Reporter” email / UNCA-defending quote giver is.
Rather, it is for the UN, DPI, to determine 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.
Beyond and not as a replacement for that, this is a request for a reform to be put into the Media Access Guidelines and implemented forthwith:
"Even if the UN determines that it must enter an accredited correspondent's office under what it deemed to be an emergency, the UN must immediately notify the correspondent and allow them access to witness the entry and what is done inside.
"Even if for some reason the UN determines to take photographs inside the journalist's office, it is prohibited for the UN to share the photographs with UN personnel without a strictly interpreted “need to know,” and it is strictly prohibited for the UN to share the photographs with any non-UN person."
This entire incident, combined with the still unresolved false charge in the February 27 letter and complaints, only about speech, still never shown to me highlight the need to start implementing, and no simply sit on, the proposed reformed and safeguards submitted to you by FUNCA on February 10, particularly due process (and now privacy protection) rules for UN correspondents.
The response to these specific requests came three hours later... from Dujarric. He wrote:
From: Stephane Dujarric [at] un [dot] org
Subject: Fw: Request that DPI determine & disclose... rules. Thanks
Date: Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 6:43 PM
To: funca [at] funca [dot] info
Cc: matthew.lee [at] innercitypress [dot] com
Subject: Fw: Request that DPI determine & disclose... rules. Thanks
Date: Mon, Mar 25, 2013 at 6:43 PM
To: funca [at] funca [dot] info
Cc: matthew.lee [at] innercitypress [dot] com
As previously mentioned, we did not share any pictures of your office with BuzzFeed. I personally looked at our pictures and those posted on BuzzFeed and it's clear that they are not the same photographs .Again, we recognize that you should have been called before entering your part of the shared office.
A belated apology is not a safeguard, it does not make up for the UN's lack of rules. In the case for example of UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous' outrageous refusal to answer, and handing of answers to favored scribes who didn't even ask the question, the lack of rules simply guarantees that it happens again.
But in term of the mystery: does Dujarric's “we” and “our” mean the UN as a whole or simply the Department of Public Information?
If it means the UN as a whole, it seems only one other person took photos - and they have made a legal threat trying to not even be mentioned.
If Dujarric is only answering for DPI, it is disingenuous. Department of Safety and Security, for example, was only there because called and let in by DPI. Those are the photographs which the UN must account for. Watch this site.
