On Paris Attacks, Inner City Press Asks France's Borloo, Burundi Adviser Takes Advantage

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, November 13 -- During the terrorist attacks in Paris at the Stade de France, the  Bataclan theater and a Cambodian restaurant on November 13, at the UN in New York as chance would have it former French Energy Minister Jean-Louis Borloo was holding an hour-long 4 pm press conference about Energies to Africa.

 Inner City Press asked him how his sponsors, from Bouygues and Bolloré to Total and Veolia, stood to benefit. Another asking him about Akon. When he asked for a final question, Inner City Press told him about the Paris attacks. Merde, he said, il y'a une attaque terroriste? Mais oui. Vine here.

  US President Barack Obama spoke on television about the attacks, at 5:45 pm Eastern, before Francois Hollande did. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon chimed in at 6:17 pm, that he “demands the immediate release of the numerous individuals reportedly being held hostage in the Bataclan theater.”

  The new President of the UN General Assembly Mogens Lykketoft issued a statement at 6:33 pm; the UN Security Council, through the UN, issues a Press Statement at 7:13 pm (before that, a draft was circulated to friendly scribes, a retired Reuters and two US state media, presumably by the French mission which let Borloo blather on long after the attack become known).

  From Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza's adviser Willy Nyamitwe  leapt on the Paris attacks to wonder rhetorically why let lawless individuals decimate peaceful innocents, and asked why a Security Council resolution as on Burundi, rather than Press Statement, wasn't being issued.

 How might this impact the holding of or attendance at the Paris COP21 climate change talks? How will it impact refugees, with France already closing its borders? Watch this site.

Of Corrections: On Nemtsov As UN's Ban Ki-moon Shifts from "Saddened" to Condemns, Reuters Follows AFP on Mis-Reporting Martin Bouygues Dead

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 28 -- Everybody makes mistakes. On February 28 the UN's Office of the Spokesperson first said Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was “saddened” by the murder of Boris Nemtsov -- then 50 minutes later correcting it to “condemns.”  Agence France Presse misreporting that Martin Bouygues was dead.

    The former correction gives rise to the question whether the UN received a complaint about Ban not condemning the killing, leading to the issuance of the correction. It merits coverage.

  But Reuters, for example, simply retyped the “corrected” Ban Ki-moon statement, putting Ban in the same light as was done by Ban's in-house UN News Service.

   The backstory here is the Reuters at the UN has tried to get other, more critical media thrown out of the UN -- and has then gone so far as to censor from the Internet leaked copies of the Reuters “for the record” complaint. 

  Here was the complaint; here via the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Chilling Effects project is the notice that the leaked complaint by Reuters has been blocked from Google's Search as a copyrighted book, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (set to be globalized by the proposed Trans Pacific Partnership.)

   That initial Reuters campaign culminated in a letter, also leaked, by Voice of America to the UN asking for Inner City Press' accreditation to be “reviewed,” here. 

   A subsequent Inner City Press request under the Freedom of Information Act to VOA's Broadcasting Board of Governors yield documents showing that not only Reutersbut also Agence France Presse coordinated with the VOA request. 

  So did then and current United Nations Correspondents Association head Giampaolo Pioli, angry at an Inner City Press report that Pioli has been the landlord of Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's outgoing Ambassador to the UN.

  To come full circle, since Ban Ki-moon's statement are most often crafted within the UN Department of Political Afffairs, that DPA chief Jeffrey Feltman is currently in Sri Lanka may have played a role in the vacillation from “saddened” to “condemns.” We'll have more on this.

For now, a UN footnote: the new Free UN Coalition for Access notes that the Agence France Presse and Reuters pitch to expel was based on their wires having editors - did that stop the Bouygues mis-reporting, or the craven retyping and quid pro quo at the UN? FUNCA is against censorship, and for the rights of journalists.