By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, May 12 --That this UN can't solve problems from Syria to Guinea Bissau is reflected closer to home in the bungled move-back of the UN press corps to the Secretariat building.
It was delayed for months, then set to occur on May 10. But when the day arrived, there were still no keys for the offices being moved back to.
(There were also extensive complaints that the largest and most private offices were granted to the Executive Committee members of the UN Correspondents Association, a questionable and questioned grouping with which the UN exclusively and secretly negotiated office assignments.)
Journalists were told that a new television system called EZTV would replace the old cable system. But as of May 10, when Inner City Press tried the referenced eztv.un.org, it did not work. Nor did the wi-fi in the third floor press area.
Now on the Sunday before the Monday "move in," the UN has offered apologies not to the entire press corps, but only to UNCA Executive Committee insiders, trying to use them who have been so well served by this secretive planning to molify others.
By no means all UN correspondents are represented by UNCA, despite recent false statements by UNCA president Pamela Falk of CBS, broadcast propaganda-like on UNTV in the UN's lobby, to the contrary.
Falk's Rasputin-like First Vice President, Louis Charbonneau of Reuters last seen palling around with UN official Stephane Dujarric in the UN lobby, has been move involved in trying to get the Press thrown out of the UN, as recently as March 8 of this year, than with any protection of press rights at the UN.
The Free UN Coalition for Access notes that Reuters grabbed for itself a private office with five spots (for two people) while another wire service got pushed with two other media. Maybe that explains Reuters' increasingly bogus UN coverage.
So where is the on the record mea culpa to all UN correspondents? Journalists were told to turn in their keys to their former cubicles and move on May 13. But it is not ready, and there are no keys to the new spaces. Investigative journalists have commitments to their sources, and will not leave any records unlocked.
(The UN's Department of Public Information conducted a non-consensual raid on March 18 on the cubicle Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access, but both fought back, countered in anonymous leaking and comments by UNCA, become the UN's Censorship Alliance.)
This is UN incompetence, and perhaps more. FUNCA has written to the chief of the UN Department of Public Information requesting his explanation. Watch this site.
Footnote: amid all this, UNCA's Executive Committee has continued and increased its campaign of anonymous social media posts, of which UN's DPI is intimately aware. It has gotten worse and worse in 2013 and we will have more on, and in response, to this.
