By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, June 4 -- As the UK as president adopted its UN Security Council program of work on Tuesday morning, outside for the second day in a row -- the second day in years -- there was no media worktable.
Inner City Press has been shown a rule that would ban media workspace, and even discourage journalists' presence when the Council is not in formal session.
But it's worse. As Inner City Press and the Free UN Coalition for Access have been advocating for restoration of the media access that existed before, anonymous social media accounts associated with the old UN Correspondents Association have not only been arguing AGAINST media workspace, but presenting their method of work as the only one.
This method seems to involve rarely coming to the Security Council stakeout, and only speaking to Western P-3 ambassadors or more frequently their spokespeople.
One small message, sent mid Tuesday morning, was to chide Inner City Press that "Real journalists report and investigate the news - they don't create it!" That is, real journalists are faceless pass-throughs for those in power.
That came from an account which previously sent a cell phone photograph from the storage room behind the temporary Security Council location. It is from a journalist at the UN, and one closely involved with UNCA. We will have more on this in the days to come.
Where was the president of UNCA, Pamela Falk of CBS, during all this? Not at the stakeout. (Several of her board members who have tried to get smaller more investigative press thrown out of the UN were: Louis Charbonneau of Reuters, Tim Witcher of AFP, there's more).
Nor obviously was Falk doing anything to rein in her UNCA trolls, of which she has been informed since at latest February 22. Rather she was getting ready to try to claim the first question about the Democratic Republic of Congo at the noon briefing, to UN official Kyung-wha Kang.
To what end? Does she ever report on this on CBS? Or is it simply a make-up question to promote UNCA or herself? These might seem like tough questions, but at least they are on the record. It is UNCA and certain lazy, faceless and resentful big media reporters on its and its affiliate's boards who for months has been hiding behind anonymous accounts. They have hit a new low. Watch this site.
