US Might Comply with Law and Let In Iran's UN Ambassador In, Reuters Says In Claimed "Exclusive"

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, January 28 -- The US is required by international law and its Host Country agreement with the UN to allow in nation's ambassador to the UN.

  How then is Reuters claiming -- and compensating -- an "exclusive" for today reporting that the US may comply with the law and agreement and allow in Gholamali Khoshrou as Iran's new ambassador to the UN? The article doesn't even mention the Host Country agreement. The author, engaged in censorship, here, has already been cut off by one Permanent Five Security Council member, however much Reuters tries to conceal it.

  Is this new faux exclusive a way to try to counter that? UNreal.

Back on November 23 as the Iran P5+1 talks continued on the eve of the then-deadline, who is bragging about having predicted their failure? Western wire service Reuters, crowing that "Other media now coming around to @reuters consistent reporting on how final Iran atomic deal unlikely."

 While false exclusives have proliferated at Reuters under Stephen J. Adler, there a second, separate trend at work here.

  On another UN sanctions regime, Somalia and Eritrea, even when former Reuters reporter turned sanctions monitor Dinesh Mahtani was forced to resign for havingchampioned a new leader for the country he was supposed to monitor, Reuters entirely omitted his removal from its claimed exclusives on the sanctions report.

  Some of this goes beyond a desire, compensated by editor Adler, to claim exclusives even where not merited (including by adopted a policy of not crediting others' exclusives).  At the UN, Reuters has gone so far as to try to censor and remove from Google's Search as "copyrighted" copies of Reuters complaints against other media filed with the UN, click here for that. 

 At what point does this become more (or less) that journalism? What about "other media now coming around to @reuters consistent" refusal to credit smaller media, attempts to get them kicked out, then censoring the Internet? We'll have more on this.

  Back on October 27 when the UN's special rapporteur on human rights in Iran Ahmed Shaheed held a press conference at the UN, Inner City Press asked him for an update on what he had said about the effect of sanctions and banning of Iran from the SWIFT payments system which Inner City Press asked him about one year and three days earlier, 2013 here from Minute 12:29.

  On October 24, 2013, Shaheed had acknowledged that the banning of Iran from the SWIFT payments system had had an impact. On October 27, 2014, Shaheed said he believes Iran is still banned from SWIFT, but he had no update. Instead he said that humanitarian exemptions to sanctions are having successes. 2014 video here.

 But banning from SWIFT or "de-SWIFT-ing" is not a targeted sanction at all, and he did not mention any exemptions to it.

   Overall, Inner City Press asked Shaheed what impact he thought "the nuclear issue" and the P5 + 1 talks have on human rights in Iran.  Shaheed said he doesn't like linkage, but added that when there's focus on the nuclear issue, it takes away from the focus on human rights. 

  Last year Inner City Press obtained and exclusively published an internal OHCHR plan to take over the "rule of law" functions of the rest of the UN system, and the staffing of the Special Representatives on Children and Armed Conflict, Sexual Violence and Conflict, R2P and the Prevention of Genocide.What has happened on that? Are rapporteurs, like sanctions monitors, still not given any training or orientation by the UN?

Footnote: on October 27, the UN Correspondents Association which so often demands the first question be set-aside for it didn't even send anyone to Shaheed's press conference. One attendee said, it's defUNCA-ed, as in defunct, or de-UNCA-ed, like de-SWIFT-ed. The new Free UN Coalition for Access, present, did not try to brand the press conference, because there was no need. Watch this site.

   

As Erdogan Cracks Down in Taksim Square, Ban Ki-moon Stays Silent As When Turkish Guards Beat UN Security in 2011

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 15 -- Today's crackdown in Turkey on peaceful protesters in Taksim Square and Gezi Park by the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been met with silence from the UN and its Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

  Ban issued his "warm congratulations" to Hasan Rowhani for winning the presidential election in Iran, at 5 pm Saturday New York time. But nothing on Turkey.

  Back on Friday September 23, 2011, Inner City Press first reported on an incident inside UN headquarters where Erdogan's personal guards "beat up" UN Security officers, breaking the ribs of one.

  Tellingly, when Ban's then chief of staff Vijay Nambiar run across First Avenue to the Turkish Mission -- again, first reported by Inner City Press -- it was to apologize to Erdogan.

  Many UN staff were outraged, that they could be physically beaten and Ban would take the other side. But Erdogan was throwing his weight around; some cited anger at the Palmer (and Uribe) report about the Gaza flotilla incident.

  Ban met with UN Security the next day, Saturday, September 24. Nine were suspended and told not to talk. Inner City Press first reported that too; others got on the story only on Monday and later. It was the beginning of a trend.

  But the real-world trend is the use of force, and UN silence and double standards. And it continues. Watch this site.

On Minova Rapes, Bangura Says Unit Trained by US, 33 Perps, Ladsous Contrasts

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, April 16 -- One of the two Congolese Army rape units in Minova was “trained by Americans,” and a general has identified 33 suspected rapists, UN envoy Zainab Bangura told Inner City Press on Tuesday. Video here, on the latter.

  Both of these contradict what the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, led by Herve Ladsous, has said. 

 After Ladsous repeatedly refused to answer Inner City Press' questions about the rape (November 27, December 7,December 18 and since), DPKO told scribes from Agence France Presse and Reuters that of 12 suspensions for the rapes.

  But Bangura on Tuesday, even when asked a second time by Inner City Press, said that at least 33 presumptive rapists have been identified. 

  Why would Ladsous' DPKO still be low-balling the number, after stonewalling on the rapes for more than four months? We have asked, at 10:14 am, and DPKO has acknowledged receipt (while stating it does not understand what "deadline" means. We're watching.)

  Bangura also told Inner City Press, on a follow-up, that DPKO has suspended support to the two units. That is not consistent with what's been publicly said, and Inner City Press has asked DPKO to confirm or deny.

  Bangura's answer to Inner City Press also included that the US Ambassador to the DRC told her that one of the two units had been trained by the US. What does that say about the US' training?

(Reuters, whose scribe Michelle Nichols was present, may well present these Bangura answers as another Reuters faux scoop -- who knows, maybe Nichols will file another faux UN Security complaint.)

  Inner City Press also asked Bangura if her office, on Sexual Violence and Conflict, covers abuse by UN Peacekeepers. No, she said, there is a DPKO unit for that, it is sexual exploitation.

  But what about in Haiti the UN Peacekeepers who forcibly abused or mock-raped a boy? Isn't that abuse? Inner City Presss has asked DPKO to “name the five more recent repatriations of UN Peacekeepers or police for sexual exploitation or abuse, or state why it will not.”

  Bangura told Inner City Press she is following up on the muffed hand-over of child soldiers and “war brides” in the Central African Republic, that it is “chaos” there.

  A Department of Public Information official said, anymore questions? This is the time. So Inner City Press asked Bangura about allegations from Sierra Leone, naming her, about Gates / GAVI funds missing in the Ministry of Health which she headed.

  Bangura smiled and replied that when, as Tony Blair's suggestion, she took over the Ministry of Health, there were 88 accountants, with lack of clarity who had signing authority. The missing funds, one of her aides quickly added, pre-dated Bangura taking over the ministry.

  Bangura said, that's politics, people throw unfair allegations at you. And that, on personal experience, is true. What Inner City Press received about Bangura, and asked her in fairness both to her and the sender, was on the record. 

  The UN Censorship Alliance, by contrast, works anonymously in social media or comments, or filing stealth comments with UN Security, including, by AFP's Tim Witcher, explicitly in defense of Ladsous not getting asked the type of questions Bangura handled Tuesday. Watch this site.

In France as at UN, Reuters & AFP Use Blind Quotes Against Investigative Media

By Matthew Russell Lee, Media Critique

UNITED NATIONS, February 10 – In France there is a scandal in which the anonymous channeling of power by Reuters and AFP mirrors what these two wire services do in UN coverage.

  French budget minister Jerome Cahuzac is accused by investigative website Mediapart of maintaining a secret bank account at UBS in Switzerland, then moving its contents to Singapore. 

  UBS, already known to have lied to authorities in the US and been fined for it, has not surprisingly issued a denial.

 Mediapart points to an e-mail as evidence. Now, an named “judicial source” is used by first Reuters, then AFP, to say Mediapart engaged in “inexact interpretation” of the e-mail.

   Why not name the judicial source? Why so quickly believe power and UBS, a bank already known to lie, on LIBOR, terror finance and money laundering, over investigative media and a document?

   In covering the UN, Reuters and AFP on January 25 used the same “unnamed UN official” to announce that at the AU summit in Addis Ababa an agreement for aggressive “peace enforcement” would be signed. 

   As Inner City Press immediately pointed out, this was akin to letting the UN declare war, anonymously.

   When the agreement was NOT signed in Addis, there were no corrections, no accountability. 

  What ARE Reuters' policies on granting anonymity in cases like this -- now including Cazuhac -- for Reuters editors like Stephen J. Adler, Walden Siew, and Paul Ingrassia?  For Agence France Presse? There is, as has become the pattern, no answer.

   But it gets worse. 

   Both Reuters and AFP, with ongoing or Permanent seats on the Executive Committee of the UN Correspondents Association, are involved in an anonymous social media account which, along with mocking an alleged victim of sexual harassment who joined the new Free UN Coalition for Access, has made much of a strange denial by UN Peacekeeping of a document Inner City Press published about the UN in Congo.

  When the MONUSCO mission issued its denial by press release, Inner City Press immediately asked the UN to identify a single falsehood in the published document, and to confirm or deny the authenticity of other leaked MONUSCO documents it has.

  The UN said, at a noon briefing of the type observed and "harvested" but barely attended by these two wires, said it would not comment on any leaked document. 

  The message is anti-journalism: it is, trust us, don't question or publish. 

  But Reuters and AFP, or at least their UN bureau chiefs, innately leap to the side of UN Peacekeeping. AFP's Tim Witcher did this openly back in September 2011, click here for that story.

  When three doctors were killed this weekend in Nigeria, AFP in a headline called them “Chinese” doctors: "trois medecins chinois tues par des hommes armes."

    When it became clear the doctors were Korean, AFP simply issued a new story calling them “South Korean.” Now that some quote that health minister that they are NORTH Korean, part of an inter-governmental program, will AFP ever issue a correction?

  Did Reuters run any correction or explanation, after itfalsely called Lakhdar Brahimi a Nobel laureate? No. 

  Reuters has let its UN coverage go downhill by providing no oversight, adopting as reflected by FOIA documents a policy of not responding to questions, complaints or requests for policy from Inner City Press, even as Reuters bureau chief Louis "Kurtz" Charbonneau mis-labeled exclusives, filed stealth complaints to expel the Press, and now this. 

  (The false exclusive problem comes from the top: Reuters brass bases compensation on such labeling, then ignores when errors are raised and challenged.)

  These are venerable wires - or a word that rhymes with wires. Watch this site.

Reuters Pay-for-Exclusive Leads to False Claims, Abuse of Power & UNCA

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 3 -- Why would a professional reporter, when shown that the material in a story he had labeled "exclusive" had in fact been published and put in Google News by another smaller media more than five hours before refuse to withdraw the false "exclusive" claim?

  As reported yesterday, this has happened since June 30 with Reuters.

 On June 30, five hours after Inner City Press exclusively reported the UK's flip-flop on opposing then supporting the removal from UN sanctions of London-based Saudi dissident Sa'ad Rashed Mohammad al-Faqih, Reuters Louis Charbonneau put up the same story, impermissibly labeling his as "exclusive."

  Inner City Press immediately showed Charbonneau. that its story had been tweeted and in Google News five hours before. But Charbonneau refused to withdraw his "exclusive" claim.

  He now threatens to use the Correspondents' Association Kafka-esque bureaucracy in his own defense, charging Inner City Press with undefined "harassment" and unethical reporting.

Charbonneau, his Pioli and others have not responded to the legal letter of June 28, nor to two requests for the agenda of the meeting they propose, for a time uncertain on the day before the 4th of July holiday.

 

  Charbonneau has refused to withdraw his "exclusive" claim. Why? Well, ethical questions have been raised about Reuters policy on paying for exclusives.  On the below, unlike Reuters or at least Charbonneau, we give full credit to and link to Talking Biz News:

 

The following e-mail was sent to Reuters reporters from Martin Howell, the news editor for company news in the Americas, about what the wire service wants from its business reporters in terms of beating the competition:

'We are spending a lot of time writing and approving notes recording beats and exclusives... Performance goals will change... We want:

–Exclusives that lead to significant share price moves. By significant we generally mean 2 percent plus for a big cap company and 5 percent plus for a small cap.

–Timings beats in minutes not seconds that lead to stock price moves as above. We have to be particularly careful about our timings information against Dow Jones, which can be unreliable depending on how it is measured, and to be safe we shouldn’t record a beat win against Dow if it is less than 5 minutes without an additional assessment by an EIC.

–Stories that really set the news agenda, even if they don’t move share prices. Here are two examples — Jim Wolf’s great exclusive in December on Obama eyeing arms sales to Taiwan, and Jim Finkle’s exclusive on an unknown flaw in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser that allowed Chinese cyber attacks on Google and other businesses.

–Timings wins of more than a few seconds from a massive court case, like Madoff, Bear Stearns...

“What we don’t want to be filed as beat notes:

–Modest/incremental developments in a deal story that don’t move prices of securities.

–Timings wins of only a few seconds.

–Stories that required major corrections.

–When we beat Dow and Bloomberg but were beaten by local media.

  And that appears to be the problem, and why the already Kafka-esque UNCA "Board of Examination" process is being re-heated, without any provision of agenda, and despite putting UNCA into jeopardy. Watch this site.

On False Exclusives from UN, Reuters Mis-Googles, Walls Off Stephen J. Adler?

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, July 2 -- On June 30, five hours after Inner City Press exclusively reported the UK's flip-flop on opposing then supporting the removal from UN sanctions of London-based Saudi dissident Sa'ad Rashed Mohammad al-Faqih, Reuters Louis Charbonneau put up much the same story, impermissibly labeling his as "exclusive."

  Inner City Press immediately showed him that its story had been tweeted and in Google News five hours before, informing Charbonneau early Saturday evening that:

This morning, Saturday June 30, Inner City Press published and tweeted:

Al Qaeda Sanctions Comedy of Shifts, UK & Sa'ad al-Faqih, & Djiboutian, By Matthew Russell Lee, Exclusive

UNITED NATIONS, June 30 -- With most on the UN Security Council primarily concerned with Syria and the Action Group meeting in Geneva, other Council members on June 29 exclusively told Inner City Press of the strange case of Sa'ad Rashed Mohammad al-Faqih.

http://www.innercitypress.com/unsanc1faqih063012.html

It went right into Google News. [Run search by clicking here & look at earliest story - it's Inner City Press]

Then five hours later someone sends me this, expressing surprise:

Exclusive: Saudi dissident set to come off U.N. al Qaeda blacklist

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS | Sat Jun 30, 2012 5:08pm EDT

(Reuters) - A U.N. Security Council committee is set to remove Saudi dissident Saad al-Faqih from the United Nations' al Qaeda sanctions list this weekend if no council member demands that the 15-nation body intervene, U.N. diplomats said on Saturday.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/30/us-saudi-dissident-un-idUSBRE85T0L020120630

   But Charbonneau refused to make any change, would not remove the false "exclusive" label, offering this response:

Subject: Q re Sa'ad al-Faqih story in Google News this morning
From: Louis Charbonneau [at] thomsonreuters.com
To Matthew Russell Lee [at] innercitypress.com
Date: Sat, Jun 30, 2012 at 7:10 PM

Matthew - 1) I found out about this yesterday and have been gathering info ever since. 2) Before I filed my story much earlier today I googled al-faqih and found nothing. 3) I didn't see your story til you emailed me. I just looked at it and saw that the main point of my story - his de-listing set for tomorrow - isn't even in yours! 4) You've got it all wrong about the de-listing. -Lou

  Of course, mislabeling a later-published story as "exclusive" has nothing to do with the later publisher claiming his analysis is more correct. 

 

 (In this case, multiple screen shots show Inner City Press' story up before noon, a good five hours before Reuters'. Or is that how long it takes a story to move through Reuters pipes? Even if so, the "exclusive" mis-label should have been removed before it was sold, for example to the Chicago Tribune).

  On the de-listing process, Inner City Press was and is well aware of the process set out in Resolution 1989 (2011) Paragraph 23, and covered it when enacted. 

 

  At 5:30 pm on July 1 when multiple Council sources told Inner City Press al-Faqih was now off the list, Inner City Press tweeted it, but did not update its June 30 story, to keep uploading time and Reuters' mislabeling as "exclusive" clear.  

 

   Forty days ago, Reuters UN bureau chief Louis Charbonneau was credited on a story making unauthorized uncredited use of Inner City Press' March 28 exclusive report that Jeffrey Feltman would come to head the UN Department of Political Affairs.

   Inner City Press complained on May 21, and on May 25 along with four other members of the UN Correspondent Association's Executive Committee included Voice of America's Margaret Besheer and Agence France Presse's Timothy Witcher, Charbonneau signed a letter seeking to oust Inner City Press.

After many twists and turns, including Inner City Press'discovery and publication of Charbonneau's stealth complaint to the UN's Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit against Inner City Press, copied sent to Besheer, Witcher and UNCA President Giampaolo Pioli, Charbonneau on June 29 urged Inner City Press to stop battling, and certainly to stop writing to editors including his.

Inner City Press has asked Reuters Stephen J. Adler and three "ethics" colleagues about ThomsonReuters' policy on exclusives and crediting others' work, and how Charbonneau's policy and attempts to oust Inner City Press complies with the wire services' stated commitment to freedom of the press.

There has been no answer from Reuters, not even the provision of the company's policy, if any.

While asking Inner City Press on June 29 to even drop a Freedom of Information Act request concerning Voice of America's June 20 request that the UN's MALU "review"Inner City Press' accreditation status at the UN, Charbonneau on June 30 mis-labeled a story an exclusive, and refused to change it.

  Meanwhile apparently due to transmissions and invitations from UNCA, from Sri Lanka there continue not only articles (click here for July 1 government aligned Sunday Observer) but also physical threats.

  According to his June 29 bureaucratic threats, Charbonneau appears poised to use a nearly retired 50 year UN correspondent working under a state media bureau chiefwho has told Inner City Press to "respect authority" to issue a bogus "Board of Investigation" report against Inner City Press, to gain leverage. 

 

  But see legal notice to UNCA. Inner City Press held back this story, in order to tell UNCA's President this in advance. Now, it is modified and published. Watch this site.