By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, August 21 -- Why do some events or speakers inside the UN building get shunted off into a private club, not filmed or webcast by UN Television, while others are in public?
On August 24, a day when the UN Press Briefing Room with its UNTV webcasting facilities, open to all UN accredited journalists, is entirely open and available, the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission and an advocate from Syria, Subhi Nahas, are being shunted off into the non-televised private club of the "UN Correspondents Association," UNCA, now known as theUN's Censorship Alliance, publicized only to those who pay UNCA money?
More troublingly, UNCA and its board members have tried to get the investigative Press, which along with the new Free UN Coalition for Access, has covered IGLHRC's successful passage through the UN's NGO Committee, here , thrown out of the UN. Is this the right venue, including on the criteria of trying to make the information widely available?
(Inner City Press likewise covered the process of the International Lesbian and Gay Association and the Australian Lesbian Medical Association, among others like Freedom Now, of which it asked the ECOSOC President -- in the UN Press Briefing Room, here.
If any member state asked for the UN Press Briefing Room, IGLHRC's Jessica Stern and Subhi Nahas of Organization for Refuge, Asylum and Migration (ORAM) could hold their press conference open to all, webcast to the world. Was no country willing to do it? Surely the US would be willling. So why not?
Did UNCA, now the UN's Censorship Alliance, not explain this? We may have more on this. Watch this site.
