By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, February 5 -- The extent of the corruption and complacency of some of the large wire service and television journalists who try to dominate the UN press corps became ever clearer on February 5.
After the Free UN Coalition for Access met for an hour in the morning with the top officials of the UN Department of Public Information to demand due process for journalists when the likes of Voice of America, Louis Charbonneau of Reuters and Tim Witcher of AFP file stealth complaints, there was a lull.
In the meeting, the DPI officials told FUNCA and Inner City Press, didn't these wires and UN Correspondents Association "leaders" pause their anonymous social media campaign against any journalist daring to join FUNCA?
Not really, was the answer. But it is clear: the UN to the highest levels is aware of, and now responsible for, the sleaze of the UN's partners or censorship alliance in UNCA.
And at 6 pm on Tuesday, after Inner City Press and then FUNCA ran an upbeat account of slow but not impossible reforms of UN press rules, the anonymous UNCA leaders re-started their campaign.
They began by saying that the UN briefings, which most of them don't bother to attend but just try to use as parasites to file "alerts" like stenographers, have been turned into "circus."
Actually, it's their puppet "new" president of UNCA Pamela Falk who has of late been sadly playing the clown. Never before has anyone tried to thank a Secretary General's spokesperson "on behalf of UNCA" for showing up and doing their job. But Falk did.
It's almost cruel, the way the controllers of UNCA are using Falk.
But it is also Falk's fault, to coin a phrase. She is a lawyer, and should have done some minimal due diligence on UNCA before she accepted the invitation to run unopposed for its presidency. It is an organization increasing discredited, which spent most of 2012 trying unsuccessfully to throw the investigative Press out of the UN.
Now she is charge with trying to make it relevant again. But how? In her first January 24 letter she stole an issue from the newer FUNCA, about trying to access Ban Ki-moon's briefing to the GA. But neither she or anyone from UNCA's Executive Committee even TRIED to access the meeting. Get a new issue.
Now, she is responsible for the tearing down of fliers, for the anonymous social media account, all of it. As with the previous UNCA president, it is a sad end or late chapter in the career of a journalist who got along and got along but is now exposed. Watch this site.