By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, October 13 -- Much will be written about Wikileaks' film "Mediastan," but two things most jumped out at Inner City Press.
In Kyrgyzstan, the Wikileaks team offers access to the cables leaked by whistleblower Chelsea Manning to "Radio Liberty." Initially this station's Bishkek chief Sultanbek Joumagolov is bragging about how much free press there is. Then he says he has to check with his boss in Prague. Mediastan from Minute 36.
His bosses are not Czech -- they are the US State Department, which throough the Broadcasting Board of Governors on which John Kerry serves controls Radio Liberty, Al Hurra and... Voice of America
At the UN, Voice of America tried to get Inner City Press thrown out, saying it had the support of Reuters and Agence France Presse. (Proof was obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act; his month, BBG tells Inner City Press no more responses, blaming the US government shutdown, here.)
All three claim to be independent media, but this is false not only to Voice of America as whole but also as to Reuters and AFP, at least as to the UN.
In fact, Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau even spied for the UN, turning over an anti-Press documentsinternal to the UN Correspondents Association three minutes after promising not to. Story here, audio here, document here. No explanation has been given by Reuters or UNCA under 2013 president Pamela Falk of CBS -- or by the UN.
This brings up the second point: the Swedish member of the Wikileaks team Johannes Wahlstrom, after been shown with Julian Assange discovering that Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt was speaking with Karl Rove, recounts how after he ran interviews with journalists about the limitations they accept in reporting on Palestine and Israel, he came under fire from the journalists themselves and got fired.
He said it is very dangerous, reporting on the media.
And that is Inner City Press' experience at the UN. The moment it reported on how the UN Correspondents Association let the Sri Lanka government screen, inside the UN and hosted by UNCA, a propaganda film denying it committed war crimes, attempts to throw Inner City Press began.
These have continued since, with AFP filing a complaint with the UN leading with how Inner City Press asked a question to Herve Ladsous, the fourth French boss of UN Peacekeeping in a row (whose "farce" was covered this week in the UK New Statesman, here) and with a series of imposter social media accounts.
To combat all this, Inner City Press co-founded the Free UN Coalition for Access @FUNCA_info. The UN's reaction was to threaten to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press'accreditation for merely hanging a FUNCA sign on the door of its shared office, when UNCA has five signs.
The problems with journalism exposed in Wikileaks' Mediastan are not confined to Central America, clearly -- they are on graphic display inside the UN in New York. We'll have more on this. Watch this site.
