By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 10 -- At Reuters beyond servicing high frequency stock traders there is a social media editor. There is a big-picture blogger. And it now appears there's also designated corporate trolls.
Early on April 10, Inner City Press wrote to four top editors at Reuters showing that the tweeting pattern, complete with ten day lull between March 29 and April 9, was identical between a troll account that calls for the UN to throw Inner City Press out and Reuters' UN correspondent Michelle Nichols.
Inner City Press has checked with a number of experts in the field -- not Reuters', to be sure -- and they have said it is conclusive: Nichols is the troll.
But the big wigs at Reuters, just as they did in June 2012 when shown that their UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau was driving a kangaroo court process in the UN Correspondents Association that led to Inner City Press getting death threats from Sri Lankan extremists, have not responded in any way.
Too busy with the high frequency traders? With award dinners or the corporate trolls?
Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from Voice of America reflect that Reuters supported VOA'sJune 20, 2012 request to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN.
VOA's Margaret Besheer wrote to her bosses that Reuters said it was prepared to sue Inner City Press.
For what? For speaking up about death threats from Sri Lanka? Back then, Charbonneau cynically said that the proceeding of UNCA, of which he was and is first vice president, would not stop - Inner City Press should just “call the NYPD.”
Strangely enough it was Reuters' Nichols who contacted and complained to Security, UN Security, on March 8 with a demonstrably false complaint. That too has been raised to the Reuters big wigs. One of them is even called the ethics officer: Greg McCune.
Then there's Stephen J. Adler, Editor in Chief, Paul Ingrassia, Deputy Editor in Chief, and Walden Siew, Top News Editor.
Apparently when you run a big media or financial company like Reuters, the duty for example to supervise your personnel at the UN, so they don't file anti-Press complaints and don't continue to operate as anonymous corporate trolls, goes out the window.
Lower down in Reuters last summer, there was surprise and concern when the NY Civil Liberties Union wrote to the UN about the VOA request which VOA said Reuters supported. Here. But that's lower down in Reuters. At the top they apparently pay no attention. They do not supervise.
To be clear: if VOA's Besheer was not lying in her e-mails to her bosses last year, Reuters was thinking of suing Inner City Press. They don't like Inner City Press, it seems, entirely based on things it reports on and publishes.
But what Inner City Press does is all on the record, in its name. Nichols' troll accounts are not. Stealth complaints by Charbonneau to the UN are not.
Anonymous transmittal of photos of the UN's March 18 non-consensual raid on Inner City Press' office, pseudonymous comments on the resulting BuzzFeed article: these are not on the record.
Are they consistent with Reuters' policy? Having waited 11 hours and counting, apparently yes. Reuters is an Empire of Corporate Trolls. Watch this site.
