SDNY COURTHOUSE, September 29 – Inner City
Press has filed its 2026 application
for United Nations accreditation, seeking restoration of
resident correspondent status and credentials to cover the
General Assembly's High-Level Week this September and
onward.
While different, it is the same request it
has filed, and had denied or ignored, every year since
being physically removed from UN Headquarters by DSS
officers on July 3, 2018, while covering the Fifth
(Budget) Committee, with no hearing and no appeal
since.
This year's filing is different in its
timing. The United Nations is choosing its tenth
Secretary-General right now, to succeed António Guterres
when his term ends December 31, and who has banned Inner
City Press for nearly the entirety of his term.
Inner City Press covered the new
candidates' own town hall this month — six people running
to lead an institution that talks, at length, about trust
and accountability, none of whom was asked, and none of
whom asked, why that institution has excluded an
accredited journalist for eight years without so much as a
written reason.
This application, filed through the UN's
Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit, will be decided by
the outgoing administration. Whether, and how, it is
decided will be one of the first things the incoming one
inherits. The application itself reiterates what has
never been rebutted: no hearing on the 2018 removal, no
appeal since, no response to two pro bono law firm letters
sent on Inner City Press's behalf — one from Quinn Emanuel
Urquhart & Sullivan in 2021, here,
a second from Duane Morris — despite confirmed receipt of
both. It notes that the Under-Secretary-General for Global
Communications once assured the UN Special Rapporteur on
Freedom of Expression that Inner City Press's written
questions would continue to be answered during the
exclusion. They have not been.
It asks, as it has before, only to be
treated as this office treats state media outlets that
publish far less and ask nothing at all — some of whom
currently hold office space, including Inner City Press's
own longtime shared workspace, S-303, that they rarely
use.
The response, this year, arrived within
seconds of submission: "Accreditation 'Matthew Lee'
submitted successfully. Your accreditation is awaiting
approval. A manager will manually validate it." It
is, in its way, a fitting one-line summary of eight years
of this process: automated, provisional, and dependent on
an unnamed manager's discretion, with no criteria
disclosed, no timeline given, and no right to know why
should the answer once again be no. Inner City Press's
April 2018 accreditation request, filed under similar
circumstances, was granted almost immediately. Its
December 2015 renewal was approved within a day. This
year's request asked for nothing more than ordinary speed
- but even that was denied.
Before the UNGA High Level week, no answer. And on
September 25, despite a confirmed invitation to an event
called "Defense of International Law," Inner City Press
was blocked at the 47th Street gate.
On September 29, the day of the fourth
straw pool for Next SG, MALU emailed a cursory denial:
Just in: here's the entirely of the UN's explanation of banning Inner City Press for nearly the entire tenure of @AntonioGuterres: "Dear Matthew Lee, We regret to inform you that your media accreditation request has not been approved." Why not? Who can sue the UN? https://t.co/aNxVCwO5iD pic.twitter.com/LzQZptne3b
— Inner City Press (@innercitypress) September 29, 2026
From: malu@un.org
Date: Tue, Sep 29, 2026 at 1:17 PM
Subject: United Nations media accreditation declined
To: matthew lee innercitypress com
Dear Matthew Lee, We regret to inform you that your
media accreditation request has not been approved." No
further explanation. Entirely lawless.
Inner City Press will report what happens
next. Watch this site.
