UN in DC Tweets Out Below the Belt, Doesn't Reply to FUNCA Question, Just Deletes: UNsocial Media

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 1, updated -- The UN Information Center in Washington DC sent out a tweet on Monday morning, “Interested in learning more about #UN events taking place in #WashingtonDC? The #UNIC calendar is your one-stop shop: http://bit.ly/1aV3IR.”

There was only one problem: the link was not to any UN calendar, but rather to a web site called penis-health-blog.com. We have saved the @UNICDC twitter page, here in case as is likely they change it. For now it's at https://twitter.com/unicdc/status/351672513547337728

Update: immediately after publication of this article UNICDC deleted its tweet, without sending any explanation to FUNCA. UNsocial media.

Update 2: after the above, UNIC DC tweeted this. 

"We've deleted a suspicious tweet form this morning. Don't click on any links from past 4 hours"

                    

  The Free UN Coalition for Access, which since its founding in late 2012 has engaged with and tested UN social media -- increasingly so after the Department of Public Information which runs the UNICs tried to order the censorship of even a single FUNCA sign on the office door of Inner City Press -- immediately replied to @UNICDC: “Please explain this link, even if you take it down: MT “@unicdc calendar is your one-stop shop:http://bit.ly/1aV3IR”

  But even an hour later, there had been no reply. This is how the UNIC's, and other UN social media accounts, work: they pump out information one-way, but don't respond to questions. This is UNsocial media.

   The "staff" page of UNIC-DC lists as director the ironically named Rodney Bent, and also one Liam Murphy (pictured here with Ban Ki-moon.)

  The UN's “Greening the Blue” twitter account did not respond on the carbon impact of Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's travel, when asked by the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info.

  UNDP's Olav Kjorven didn't answer on his carbon footprint, nor on whether the UN system favors an Oceans SDG.

  UNDP is pitching the #Post2015 tumult in “194 countries,” because a video they paid for said it involved Rwanda and 193 countries. But when asked by FUNCA what the 194th country is -- Somaliland? -- they did not respond, but justdropped the 194 country claim for 750,000 people. (Then it returned, again unexplained.)

 It's a one way mirror, throughout the UN system. Watch this site.