By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 12 -- The decline of Reuters' UN Bureau, from anonymous social media trolling to mere re-typing of spoon-fed answers to other media's questionsand outright spying for the UN, demonstrated as to Reuters bureau chief Louis Charbonneau, is a sad and sordid tale. Here is a recent chapter.
Back on April 10, 2013, Inner City Press showed Reuters big wigs including Stephen J. Adler, his "Ethics Officer" Greg McCune, Editor in Chief, Paul Ingrassia, Deputy Editor in Chief, and Walden Siew, Top News Editor, that their UN reporter Michelle Nichols was associated with anonymous social media accounts that sought to get Inner City Press targeted by extremists in Syria and elsewhere.
This followed a proceeding of the UN Correspondents Association in 2012, led by Charbonneau as he leaked internal anti-Press UNCA documents to UN accreditation official Stephane Dujarric, that resulted in Inner City Press getting death threats from supporters of Sri Lanka's Rajapaksa government, click here an outside summary of that.
Reuters did nothing; the Reuters-associated account then ramped up the anonymous trolling, including quoting from Dujarric and defending UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, who refuses to answer Inner City Press' questions after being asked about his role as France's Deputy Permanent Representative at the UN during the Rwanda genocide, arguing for the escape of genocidaires into Eastern Congo.
Now, on August 11, this same anonymous social media account was at it again, trying to stoke up threats from both the Rwanda issue and, again, Syria. Can a major media company act this way? How low with UNCA, now under Pamela Falk of CBS and Charbonneau of Reuters behind her, spying for the UN, go?
Charbonneau hands to Ban Ki-moon: document, audio, story
What of Dujarric, who accepted without complaint through his personal e-mail address the internal UNCA document from Charbonneau, headed "you didn't get this from me," and has despite this conflict of interest issued his own February 2013 threat letter to Inner City Press, andsupervised one in June about the mere hanging of a sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on the door of Inner City Press' shared office?
DPI, where Dujarric works, was long ago made aware of these UNCA "leaders'" anonymous social media trolling. It continues, and DPI has... well, we'll have more on this. Watch this site.
