By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, April 27 -- It's easy to make fun of the bloated White House Correspondents Dinner. Amid the glitz was a telling conflict of interest. Reuters, or rather its corporate parent Thomson Reuters, bragged that it had at its table the incoming Bank of English government Mark Carney.
Some might say it would be worse to have an actual banker. But if the subprime financial meltdown has taught anything, it's that a failure to hold the regulators to account has the most potential to harm the public.
So should an ostensibly journalistic organization be hobnobbing with regulators it purports to cover?
We say “ostensibly journalist” not only because Reuters is really about servicing high frequency stock traders -- and not as well as Bloomberg, it is clear -- but also because, for example at the UN, Reuters has no respect for freedom of the press at all.
Its bureau chief Louis Charbonneau has repeatedly tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, even telling the UN if they didn't throw Inner City Press out, he would leave. And that would hurt, he services the UN and powerful Western countries so well.
Reuters channels the Western view on Iran and Syria; takes hand-outs from Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head UN peacekeeping, and bristles when told it defames for example Kenya.
Not this but the Reuters' bureau chief's activities were brought to the attention of Reuters editor in chief Stephen J. Adler, who did... nothing.
Saturday Adler was at the so-called Nerd Prom, mugging it up for the camera. Conan O'Brien joked about Reuters, and Steve probably found it funny. But there's nothing funny about censorship, or trolling.
Adler started a Twitter account, but hasn't tweeted since 2011. His UN reporter Michelle Nichols, however, became a troll - and again, nothing was done. Nerd Prom indeed. Watch this site.
