NYT Samantha Power Profile Uses Ghost Tweets & Former Big Wigs, Scribes Schizo on Syria

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 23 -- As the 68th UN General Assembly begins, some try to write the script in advance, just as some big wigs have others write even their tweets for them. 

 These two trends come together this morning in a vacuous, unauthorized New York Times profile of US Ambassador Samantha Power, quickly re-distributed by those who cover her, ostensibly independently.

  The piece, not by Times UN correspondents Neil MacFarquhar nor his replacement Somini Sengupta but rather Sheryl Gay Stolberg, says half way through that Power "declined to be interviewed for this article." 

 
   Oh. There weren't enough diplomats at the General Debate who were willing or eager to be interviewed?

  Instead, the Times uses Power's Twitter account to profile her. There is only one problem: as Inner City Press reported yesterday from the Social Good Summit at the 92nd Street Y, Power couldn't say what her Twitter account handle is, and admitted that it is a US Mission to the UN staffer who read her @ replies and "briefs" her on them. (Some quickly defended or justified this; others didn't, including as a use of taxpayer money.)

From the UN Mission to the UN's transcript of the event:

MR. CASHMORE: What’s your handle?

AMBASSADOR POWER: What is my handle? I think #AmbassadorPower. Someone told me it’s #AmbassadorPower. (Laughter.) #AmbassadorPower?

  So a profile several times using this twitter account is dubious (as for example is CNN using a dubious Al Shabaab account to "report" the nationalities of Kanya's Westgate Mall attack -- which Power did not mention in her Q&A with Mashable on Sunday.)

  The Times collects fawning quotes. The "former UN Peacekeeping official" it uses, Ed Luck, has been gone for some time, but says urgently that Power is a "superstar" in his former venue. (He was also before he left a "Responsibility to Protect" official, part-time and unpaid because the office was not agreed to by the General Assembly.)

  None of this is to say that Power is not an interesting person -- but it is not because of her ghostwritten tweets or quotes from Ed Luck.

  Still, the Times snow-file was quickly re-tweeted by, for example, the 2013 president of the UN Correspondents Association Pamela Falk of CBS, complete with the handles of the US State Department as it to say: see? I am doing my job! 

  Under Falk, UNCA in July hosted a faux UN briefing by Saudi-sponsored Syria rebel box Ahmad al Jarba. Also re-tweeting was UNCA former big wig Margaret Besheer ofVoice of America, on whose Broadcasting Board of Governor sits John Kerry, also Power's boss.

UNCA first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters tweeted that "Syria's Assad slams Western powers on UN draft resolution;" but a scribe working for him wrote "Syria's Assad says not concerned about UN draft resolution" -- both based off the same interview (not with Reuters, but Chinese television: lost in translation?) 

  This is the UN and how it's covered; these are the scribe to which the UN and US Mission most like to give access. And no, Samantha Power was not interviewed for this article -- Inner City Press didn't ask. Watch this site.

   

US Ambassador Power with Mashable Is Mostly Syria, Nothing on Spying or Haiti Cholera, DRC or Censorship

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 22 -- When US Ambassador Samantha Power spoke Sunday at the Social Good Summit at the 92nd Street Y, one expected her to fill in the African holes in President Obama's speech and its run-up.

As Inner City Press reported on Friday, Obama adviser Ben Rhodes' summary of Obama's UN General Assembly speech had no Africa at all: just Syria, Israel-Palestine and Iran. Since so much of the UN's actual work is in Africa, that's where Power would come in, right?

  Not right. Friendly-interviewed for 20 minutes by Pete Cashmore of Mashable, Power's first three country-specific references were all to Syria. She is, as one wag put it, selling that soap. It's an important topic, sure. But there are other topics.

  Amazingly, Power didn't mention the deadly attack on the Westgate Mall in Kenya, for which Al Shabaab has taken credit, yes, on Twitter. This is a UN issue: al Shabaab said the attack was for Kenya sending troops into Kismayo in Somalia, as part of the UN Security Council approved AMISOM mission.

  Beyond Syria, Power mentioned an anti-corruption program in India, then her advocacy to Cuba's foreign minister at a UN meeting. She didn't say: the meeting was on regional cooperation and many countries, especially from Latin America, criticized the US for the NSA's spying exposed by Edward Snowden. Another topic that did not come up.

  Power did mention Sri Lanka, saying that activists there say they like the UN Human Rights Council. She mentioned Zimbabwe twice, about really one incident: a Zimbabwean activist met with her earlier in the day, along with others from Egypt and Ukraine.

  She mentioned Haiti, how social media allowed people to know where others are buried. She did not mention: some of those buried were killed by cholera brought to Haiti by the UN. There will be a protest on that topic on September 26; information is available on the website of the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  Power did not off-hand know her Twitter handle, leading to question: who is tweeting for her? Upstairs in the "Social Media Lounge" -- beyond Mashable, the event was sponsored by UN-fan UN Foundation, with Southwest Airlines and, strangely, Caterpillar also listed among the "Presented By" on the agenda -- tweets of #2030Now and blogs were flying.

But the Democratic Republic of the Congo wasn't mentioned once. And for the UN Security Council's upcoming trip there, in which Ambassador Power will presumably participate, it is France which is allowed to pick and block how it is covered. THAT is the UN, that is censorship. And what will Ambassador Power do, about the DRC and Rwanda? About the UN's impunity for bringing cholera to Haiti? Watch this site.