By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, September 9 -- Amid Syria spin and mis-information at the UN, insider journalists' campaign to impersonate the @InnerCityPress twitter feed, named one of two "Twitterati 100" covering the UN by Foreign Policy magazine, was exposed today in MediaBistro's FishBowlNY.
The response? Anonymous commenting on the expose, of course. A person purporting to speak for (all?) UN jouralists says that Inner City Press is "pro Syria, pro Rwanda and anti French." Wonder who that could be?
The "pro Syria" is telling. The counterfeit accounts began just after InnerCityPress.com published a piece on the three questions permitted to US Ambassador Samantha Power on Syria.
All were Executive Committee members of the UN Correspondents Association, which sponsored in late July a faux "UN briefing" by Saudi supported Syria rebel boss Ahmad al Jarba, in an event publicized only to those who pay UNCA money.
As recounted in the MediaBistro piece, the imposter twitter accounts were pitched at every follower of the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info, which Inner City Press co-founded. Then they began to be pitched at the 6,700 followers of @InnerCityPress, purely to create confusion and harm.
Now the old UN Correspondents Association, whose Executive Committee has tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, and who agreed to limit media access to the Security Council and General Assembly, has emailed that it too has a twitter account.
But UNCA has only 19 followers -- and its six tweets are all mere links posted by UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk, who was informed of Team UNCA's trolling in February but has done nothing to stop it. The UN Department of Public Information, which partners (exclusively it seems) with UNCA did not stop it.
The glassed-in bulletin board in front of the large meeting room the UN gives to UNCA, for example for the faux "UN briefing" by Jarba, has not been updated since February -- a wan letter from Falk.
But FUNCA's fliers on a non-glassed in bulletin board FUNCA fought to get installed on the fourth floor are taken down by the UN at the end of each month. The UN has tried to create a one party system, while presenting itself as a voice of democracy and even free speech elsewhere.
When a petition for a media work table at the Security Council was presented to DPI, some who signed it were questioned by UNCA. When people join FUNCA, they are targeted, most often anonymously. (By contrast, these exposes are on the record, and have been limited to those who control UNCA, not the regular members.) Co-founder Luiz Rampelotto's work was stolen by the trolls. So@FUNCA_info proceeds as it does. We'll have more on this.
The anonymous commenter says Inner City Press has been accusing Reuters and AFP. But the documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act by the Voice of America and its Broadcast Board of Governors.
Voice of America tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN (letter of VOA's Steve Redisch to the UN's Stephane Dujarric, here); VOA documents say they had the support of Reuters (here) and AFP (here).
Also, Reuters' bureau chief Louis Charbonneau gave an anti-Press internal UNCA document to the UN's Dujarric three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, audio here,document here. Reuters bigwigs including Stephen J. Adler have been made aware of all this and have done nothing.
These are documents, which MediaBistro had when it published its expose. Anonymous trolling can't answer why UNCA's first vice president Lou Charbonneau of Reuters gave an internal UNCA document to UN Accreditation official Dujarric.
UNCA has not addressed it, Dujarric and DPI have not. What is UNCA's role with the UN - to spy for it? To give internal documents against other journalists - in that case, one elected to UNCA's Executive Committee?
AFP's Tim Witcher filed a complaint with UN Security leading with how Inner City Press asked a question of Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head UN Peacekeeping. This is on the record. And there's more. Watch this site.