By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 10 -- For years the UN has used its creaky UN Correspondents Association to do some of its dirty work: to request that some reporters be relieved of their office space, to try to silence certain reporters.
In 2012 it hit a new low, with UNCA first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters leaking internal UNCA documents to the UN's Stephane Dujarric with the goal of getting Inner City Press thrown out of the UN. Click here for that.
With that exposed, including through Inner City Press requests under the US Freedom of Information Act to Voice of America (subject to FOIA since it is a US government agency), the UN and its UN Censorship Alliance had to try a new tack.
And so instead of an Italian journalist, a seemingly more active America was sought to accept the 2013 presidency of UNCA: Pamela Falk of CBS News. Until 2013, she was infrequently at the UN, often as a sort of pro-UN tour guide for students from Hunter College. But this was to be the capstone of her UN-covering career.
But she did not reform UNCA, quite the opposite. Under her "leadership," UNCA Executive Committee members like Charbonneau and Tim Witcher of AFP tore down fliers of the new Free UN Coalition for Access.
Falk tried to re-assert the monopoly of UNCA, for example directly a former Reuters henchwoman to demand the first question from Bolivia's Evo Morales in February. But Morales said no, and a fiasco ensued.
Soon Dujarric, to whom Charbonneau had leaked, convened a meeting between UNCA and FUNCA. Even Falk said that the meeting was on the record. But when Inner City Press reported on it, Dujarric sent Inner City Press a threat letter, trying to kill FUNCA off as an interlocutor.
But as media access continue to decline, at the Security Council stakeout where UNCA pushed for a rule banning work space for reporters, to theGeneral Assembly with the media confined to booths with no tables and no interpretation, FUNCA continued its work.
Under Falk, some on the UNCA Executive Committee and affiliated moved into anonymous social media trolling, against FUNCA and Inner City Press. Dujarric and those above him were aware of this but either did nothing, or nothing effective -- because it continued, even on August 10.
Falk got intern "Press" passes, making a mockery of the rule that only journalists were allowed into the press briefing room and into the stakeout. She devoted the Focus Booth, which was supposed to be for working journalists to call UN peacekeeping missions into the field, to UNCA intern use.
While some might say Falk did this things to try to defend or rehabilitate UNCA, in the end Falk started using UNCA for her self, to promote inane suck-up stories about Western missions to the UN and the chefs who cook for them. It's a sad end, all around. Watch this site.
