By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 21 – With Reuters getting trashed from the right and left for live-streaming Sean Spicer's family residence in Virginia, it's the hypocrisy that jumps out to the Press. At the UN, Reuters and the UN Correspondents Association on which it has a permanent seat got Inner City Press evicted from the UN Press Briefing Room and UN for live streaming a formal meeting in the UN Press Briefing Room, see here and here. Reuters later got the UN Spokesperson's office to allow it to deny corruption on UNTV. Now Reuters live-streams a private residence. Hypocrisy much? On July 16 Reuters reported a letter to FIFA from what it called the "boycott states" demanding that Qatar be stripped of the 2022 World Cup. There's only one problem: FIFA denies receiving the letter, and Reuters doesn't even claim to have "seen" it. This is the same Reuters which for example at the UN has used its "Palais" (insider) status to lobby to get smaller investigative Press thrown out. Here was a message with Reuters signature block to the UN's Stephane Dujarric, which Inner City Press not only saw but published, only to have Google grant a frivolous Digital Millennium Copyright Act complaint (that an anti-Press email could be copyrighted) and banned from Search. The complainant's successor has continued the campaign, using Reuters' permanent seat on the board of the UN Correspondents Association, and followed up with a false complaint to UN Security, which subsequently ousted Inner City Press, audio here. We'll have more on this. When the International Monetary Fund held its biweekly embargoed press briefing on June 8 Inner City Press submitted questions about Qatar, as well as Cameroon, Egypt and Mozambique. On Qatar, Inner City Press asked "What is the IMF's assessment, going forward, of the cut-off of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and others, in terms of credit rating and otherwise?" Rice said it is too soon to say how these tensions will be resolved." Or, Inner City Press would add, how.
