After UN Eviction of News Agency of Nigeria, UN Tells the Free UN Coalition for Access NAN Can Return, Issues Remain

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 5 -- The UN, which since its founding has assigned office space to media to cover it, threw out the News Agency of Nigeria. Its name was simply cut off the door to what had been its office space. Photo here, by FUNCA member Luiz Rampelotto.

  The Free UN Coalition for Access opposed and opposes the move, particularly since other privileged media have been allowed to leave their assigned offices empty and unused for long periods - the rationale used by the UN.

  Inner City Press on behalf of FUNCA asked UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric about it at the June 4 noon briefing, video here, and embedded below. 

  FUNCA also put the question to the UN in writing. Now, the UN has responded to FUNCA that "if a new correspondent is accredited to the UN, the Agency will have a space in the building."  

  A flier FUNCA posted was torn down, by the UN says it didn't remove it. So who did? The UN's Censorship Alliance? They said nothing about NAN's eviction, instead concerned with demanding first questions they do not report upon, and celebrating the large space the UN gives them as actual media are thrown out.

  From the June 4 UN's transcript:

Inner City Press: it seems that in the Central African Republic, where there is a UN Mission, there has been a ban on SMS or text messages directed at seeming a non-violent organization of a protest, so does the UN have any comment or reaction to that? And also, this is in-house, but I wanted to ask if you can explain the loss by the news agency of Nigeria of its office and workspace at the UN given that it’s a major country, they’re on the Security Council. Was there sort of notice given? What’s the process? What’s the reasoning?

Spokesman Dujarric: I don’t know. The process for offices and accreditation is clear, it’s on the website. And you know, you can ask MALU [Media Accreditation and Liaison Unit]. I’m happy to ask for you.

Inner City Press: I know there’s been previous request of sort of due process. Do you believe that that’s been provided in this case?

Spokesman Dujarric: I don’t know the specifics of this case but I have full trust in MALU that due process is followed.

Inner City Press: [UN says “inaudible,” but what was asked was “double standards?”]

Spokesman Dujarric: What is your question Matthew?

Inner City Press: Okay, I guess my question is that it seems that without --

Spokesman Dujarric: No, I think I’ve answered the Nigeria question. If you have another one, I’m happy to…

Inner City Press: The CAR question. Do you have any comment on…

Spokesman Dujarric: No, I’ll check with the Mission. I’ll see if they have said anything on this.

   Nine hours later, despite Dujarric's statement that he was happy to "ask MALU" -- which he previously supervised -- no explanation had received. So FUNCA submitted the question to MALU / DPI - and the response above was received.

  Since the old UN Correspondents Association board, rather than defend media, have shown a willingness to try to get other media thrown out, FUNCA soon after its founding asked the UN to at least be more transparent in its decisions that impact media, including not only accreditation but loss of work space.

  The New York Civil Liberties Union asked the UN to publicly implement due process rights for the journalists which cover it -- but the UN has yet to do so. 

  FUNCA continues to push for this, and for example for the UN to belatedly take some action on French Ambassador Gerard Araud, in the middle of a UN press conference in the UN Press Briefing Room, telling a correspondent, “You are not a journalist, you are an agent.” 

  But the UN would not convey, even in its typically wan fashion, the stated position that correspondents should be treated with respect to Araud or the French Mission to the UN. And UNCA, the UN's Censorship Alliance, "dragged its feet," according to the correspondent to whom Araud said, "You are not a journalist, you are an agent."

  Nigeria is a member of the Security Council; its Permanent RepresentativeJoy Ogwu held ten question and answer stakeouts during her presidency of the Security Council in April. (South Korea held only three stakeouts during its May presidency, by contrast.) So why is the News Agency of Nigeria having its UN work space taken away?

News Agency of Nigeria cut off UN office sign, photo by FUNCA's Luiz Rampelotto of Europa Newswire

  Here is a flier the Free UN Coalition for Access put out, soon after its founding, about double standards (it referred to a previous configuration of offices, over the UN's Dag Hammarskjold Library)

FUNCA Asks a Question: Double Standards Much?

The New York Times has an office inside of UN Headquarters. But its door has been closed, without opening, for months. A thick pile of fliers, months old, clogs the doorway. There’s dust everywhere.

But the UN is doing nothing, because it won’t apply its rules equally to all.

In fact, reporters who want to cover the UN are being denied access to UN Headquarters – on the grounds that there’s just not enough space to go around. And Big Media gets handed big offices that some of them never even use.

The UN’s media guidelines say that reporters need to come in the UNHQ three times a week in order to keep their office space. It’s a catch-22: if you don’t have an office, you also can’t get the right kind of press pass that lets you move freely in and out of Headquarters.

And plenty of small newspapers have lost their desks because they couldn’t keep up with the attendance requirement. But of course, these standards aren’t applied across the board: the New York Times hasn’t even opened the door to their space since October.

What kinds of conditions are these? Is it any wonder that we see less and less reporting on international affairs, or that newspapers increasingly rely on wire services for their news? What other options are open to small media?

UN correspondents have launched the Free United Nations Coalition for Access, a group dedicated to guaranteeing equal access for all reporters looking to cover the UN.

We formed FUNCA after a small group of big media – the UN reporters fromReuters, AFP, and Voice of America — banded together to try and dis-accredit Inner City Press, an independent news site that produces tough, watchdog reporting on the UN.

Then the head of the UN’s Peacekeeping Department, Herve Ladsous, announced that he was no longer taking questions from Inner City Press – a policy which he has bizarrely, blithely kept going for months. This means he hasn’t had to answer questions about, say, the UN’s role in allowing rapes in the Congo, or working with the rapists, or in bringing cholera to Haiti. Far from putting pressure on him, most of the UN press corps has sat by silently and let Mr. Ladsous turn a deaf ear to all the tough questions.

FUNCA wants to fill the press freedom vacuum. Right now, we’re advocating along other things for the rights of freelancers who have been denied UN credentials (even as other freelancers have credentials and big offices). We’re pushing more UN officials to give on the record briefings to the press corps. And we now work with journalists around the world, from Somaliland to Colombia to Burundi - and Nigeria.

   Note that despite a commitment that while UNCA maintains a glassed in bulletin board in front of the large office the UN gives it -- while News Agency of Nigeria is thrown out -- FUNCA can post fliers on a separate board, not glassed in, recently these have been torn down, including one about the need for the UN to take action after French Ambassador Araud told a correspondent, “You are not a journalist, your are an agent.” 

  We are inquiring into these flier tear-down, just another form of censorship at the UN. Watch this site.

   

UN Language Wars in New Draft Resolution in Committee on Information, NHK Added to P3 TV, Farewell to USG

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, May 1 -- Sometimes the language wars at the UN go behind closed doors. Such was the case on May 1 when the UN Committee on Information considered, paragraph by paragraph, a resolution on the work of the Department of Public Information.

   Back on April 28, delegates from Argentina to Cuba and China asked why the UN Webcast archives are not in Spanish or Chinese, Russian or Arabic. 

  On May 1 the draft resolution's Paragraph 72 was directly on this point; the UN's excuse about its "MAMS" system was not considered compelling. Inner City Press, on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access, asked about it on April 29:

Inner City Press: in the Committee on Information, various countries raised issues about why their languages aren’t represented, that the archives of UNTV are not presented in Spanish, Chinese, Russian. It wasn’t really clear to me what the answer on that was--

Spokesman Stephane Dujarric: I think the answer is that it’s an effort that we have tried, [the Department of Public Information] has tried to improve the situation in terms of languages. We are now able to webcast in the six languages; I know that they’re working the technologies to archive it in the six languages. It’s an issue of resources, it’s an issue of mandate, but it’s not an issue of will and of willingness to do more in many languages. And in fact, a lot of the UNTV programming is now done in different languages.

Inner City Press: This is a simpler one, I know it will be the last one for me, I know there’s an event down there, but I wanted to ask on the actual UN EZTV which has channels and it’s an in-house thing, it seems like now, there’s two French channels, there’s two American news channels, there’s Al-Jazeera, there’s no Russian or Chinese channel, so…

Spokesman Dujarric: We’re trying. Part of the issue is what we can get for free, we had to cut costs in terms of subscription so it was a cost issue, but I know it’s an effort on the part of [the Department of Public Information] to add more channels in different languages, but it’s also trying to do it in a way that doesn’t cost us a dime.

Inner City Press: It’s seems like P3 TV, do you see why?

Spokesman: Okay, that’s a comment, not a question.

Two days later there is an addition on UN in-house EZTV, but it is not Chinese or Russian: it's Japan's NHK. So G4 TV?

  More insidiously, France's outgoing Permanent Representative to the UN Gerard Araud on April 15 told a UN accredited correspondent (not this one) who asked a critical question, "You are not a journalist, you are an agent." 

  Inner City Press on behalf of the Free UN Coalition for Access has asked UN Spokesman Stephane Dujarric to convey to the French mission the UN's stated position, that correspondents should be treated with respect. So far it has not happened.

  On May 1 responding to a public invitation to a Q&A session with Araud -- for $20 mind you -- Inner City Press went to ask him this question and others. But once at the venue, a law firm on Lexington Avenue, Araud said it was off the record. Bait and switch, on World Press Freedom Day.

  The attacked correspondent has for days asked the UN Correspondents Association's Executive Committee to take some action -- as, we note, it did with respect to another media, and another Ambassador. But the attacked journalist tells Inner City Press that UNCA is "dragging its feet." Others are not surprised.

Footnotes: In fairness, initiatives like DPI's Brown Bag Lunch series with for example UN Security and the UN envoy to Libya were good, and we thank now outgoing Under Secretary General for Public Information Peter Launsky-Tieffenthalfor them. More is possible before he leaves in mid-August. The press and public should have input into the criteria and selection process, the Free UN Coalition for Access maintains -- just as its sign remains and will remain up, even as its most recent flier about reform was torn down April 30.

  We heard on April 30 that USG Launsky-Tieffenthal is leaving, and FUNCA out of respect wrote to him and asked. He is an Austrian civil servant and is being called back to service in Vienna in mid-August.  By contrast other Under Secretaries General like Herve Ladsous still openly refuse particular media's questions, and other USGs rarely if even take questions. Improvements, including a UN Freedom of Information Act and improved UN Media Alert, are needed. Watch this site.

   

At UN, Despite Call to Stop Staff Union Election It Continues, Samsung TV for Scribes Laundered by South Korea & UN

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, December 11 -- Of the two elections overlapping today in the UN, in the one of the UN Staff Union voting continued Wednesday morning in the UN lobby, despite a lawyer's letter. The other in the UN Correspondents Association features mis-speaking that no Mission was involved with "their" Samsung television and little competition -- none for the top two spots. 

  As updated here, UNCA mis-spoke in saying no mission was involved in the donation. Samsung gave the TVs to the South Korean mission, which gave them to the UN, then to UNCA. No mission was involved? Hardly.

   As to the Staff Union election, spokesperson Farhan Haq said at the December 10 noon briefing that the UN does not get involved.

  Later on December 10 a lawyer wrote to Election Services Company urging them to stop running or working in the election, saying they will not get paid. The incumbent and one Rosemary Lane are copied on the letter:

"Frank Fatone
Elections Services Company

Dear Mr. Fatone:

... Only the Staff Council has the capacity to authorize the disbursement of Staff Union funds... I urge you to postpone any action."

But in the UN lobby Wednesday morning, Staff Union voting continued. Two stories above, the UNCA incumbent president running without opposition nevertheless had fliers festooned around: only photographs, no content at all. Any amended statement of no mission involvement in the Samsung equipment?

  An hour after Haq's statement, an officious e-mail went out urging UN staff to boycott the election - a call that when made by a political party in Nepal, the UN denounced. Here's the key part:

Date: Tue, Dec 10, 2013 at 1:37 PM
Subject: no to fake elections!
From: Egor Ovcharenko [at] un.org

Dear colleagues,

given the number of false statements circulated last days, I decided that it is my duty to clarify what is going on.

Last Friday Staff Union informed all of you that its Polling Officers have been recalled by Unit Chairpersons, the very same body that elected them.

From that day on, these recalled officers have no right to act as Union officials, and their actions or communications do not engage our Union in the slightest.

(Administration has been duly informed, as it has an obligation, in accordance with staff rule 8.1 d), to ensure the fairness of the ballot. Unfortunately, its actions, for instance, suspension of Polling Officers' e-mail, are still pending.)

Therefore fake elections the recalled Polling Officers are preparing must be called by their proper name: electoral fraud...

Everyone can make his or her own judgment. My opinion is that these fake elections are, in fact, a private enterprise.

I advise you not to participate in it, as there are reasons to believe that the motives of its organizers are far from innocent, as their record clearly shows.

Best,

Egor Ovcharenko
Rapporteur of the United Nations Staff Union
Coordinator of DGACM Staff Representatives

  This back and forth has echoes of the election in Cote d'Ivoire that led to military intervention. By contrast, no Permanent Five members of the Security Council has enough of an interest here for even a public relations intervention, thus far.

   The other "election" -- though four of the six top posts are clean slates with no competition --  is of the United Nations Correspondents Association, whose more than a dozenboard members participated in efforts to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN. 

  Nothing has been reformed since; tactics in 2013 devolved into anonymous social media trolling and counterfeit Twitter accounts of the new Free UN Coalition for Access and of Inner City Press.

   An argument is still being made that the 2013 president of UNCA, Pamela Falk of CBS, is somehow not responsible for this, for trolling done under her watch, and for heading an organization which functions as the UN's Censorship Alliance. This is contrary to the very "command responsibility" principles the two top candidates awaiting coronation have espoused. 

  The decision to accept "through" the UN a Samsung television is defended by referring to some vibrant debate, with no record sent out of any voting, much less a roll call disclosing who voted to take the Samsung television.

  The defenders of the gift, Inner City Press is told, pointed out that UNCA already takes corporate (and governmental) advertisements in its (partial) book of journalists covering the UN, including for example from the Italian oil firm ENI.

  At the December 9 noon briefing Inner City Press asked:

Inner City Press: is there a comprehensive place to go to see what donations the UN receives from corporations? In particular, I’m asking about what I understand to be a donation of television screens or sets from Samsung and I wanted to know, what are the rule applicable to these donations? Is the UN aware, for example, of pretty serious organizing drive in South Korea aboutoccupational diseases at Samsung? What are the rules applicable and is there a database of such contributions?

Spokesperson: I’ll check, Matthew. Thanks very much. Have a good afternoon.

  But 26 hours later, there was still no answer.Unaccountability is increasingly pervasive throughout the UN, in ways as small as this and large, for example on the scandal of UN Peacekeeping having brought cholera to Haiti and now refusing to even accept (or confirm denying) service of legal papers.

  At least in the UN Staff Union, when it was claimed last week that a vote was taken to recall the poll officers, a request was made for the names of who voted which way. 

  In the UN's Censorship Alliance,  as documented by ongoing Freedom of Information Act requests including to Voice of America, "UNCA" reached out to the UN to seek the expulsion of Inner City Press without any vote even having been taken.

  There have been no reforms since -- but again, a re-coronation of Pamela Falk of CBS as the 2014 president of UNCA,now known as the UN Censorship Alliance, is set for this week. 

  A second midnight defense was mounted, that Falk has not "done anything" to anyone, or even spoken badly. Well, the UNCA trolls are attributable to her, including under command responsibility.  In 2013, she was asked to reign in those UNCA "leaders" who used the organization to try to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, as they descended into anonymous trolling social media accounts, counterfeiting the new Free UN Coalition for Access and then Inner City Press.

  Falk's reaction in an on the record meeting was to demand that she not be written about, despite having sought this position, and putting herself forward at every opportunity to ask softball questions the answers to which are most often not published anywhere. Audio here, here and here.

  The United Nations Correspondents Association election also involves indicters and purported judges, and the Reuters successor to the scribe who spied (click here for that). That spying for the UN was done by UNCA first vice president and has not been addressed or acted on in any way. Such an organization is in no position to preach on ethics, journalistic or any other kind.

Now this UNCA is poised to raise money, $250 a plate, for an event Ban Ki-moon is set to attend, after fielding softball questions two days earlier from his hosts (or censors). Can you say, conflict of interest? And this is another way that senior UN officials remain unaccountable. Watch this site.

   

UN of Ban Ki-moon Tries to Impose One Party System, Banning the Press & Dissent with its UN Censorship Alliance: Other Signs Outlawed

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, June 14 -- In the midst of reducing media access to the Security Council and General Assembly, the UN outlawed fliers which questioned the changes in policy, posted  by the new Free UN Coalition for Access. 

  Now the UN seeks to ban FUNCA's name from any journalist's office door, while allowing at least two signs of its UN Censorship Alliance, UNCA.

  Before putting this into a Kafka-esque rule about fliers and where journalists can and cannot work, staff of the UN Department of Public Information and scribes from Agence France Presse and Reuters simply tore FUNCA's fliers down, and in some cases defaced and even counterfeited them.

   The rules were agreed to by the old UN Correspondents Association, and now comes the punchline: while UNCA is given a large office at the top of the escalator on which two separate UNCA signs are posted, on June 14 DPI, contrary to previous communication, told Inner City Press which co-founded FUNCA that it cannot display a Free UN Coalition for Access sign on its door.

UNCA and DPI, together the UN's Censorship Alliance, are essentially trying to create a one party system. Despite the fact that UNCA does not represent all UN resident correspondents, and that in 2012 the UNCA Executive Committee devoted most of its meetings to trying to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN for articles it wrote, the UN now tries through rules to outlaw any other organization.

DPI on March 18, 2013 conducted a non-consensual raid of Inner City Press' office, during which UNCA president Pamela Falk took photographs. Later Falk issued a legal threat through her CBSNews.com e-mail address demanding the Press "cease and desist" from even questioning for what purpose she took the photos.

On March 21, right after BuzzFeed called Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson Martin Nesirky, photos taken during the raid, including of Inner City Press' desk and bookshelf, were leaked to BuzzFeed via an anonymous "Concerned UN Reporter" e-mail account. These photographs are identical to ones e-mailed around by DPI.

Now, after close of business on Friday, June 14 comes this, from the UN: "the posting of notices policy does apply to the FUNCA sign... I am afraid you will have to take the sign down."

While the UN Department of "Public" Information is on a witch hunt about dissent, it is not doing its job. Long ago DPI said that there would be intra-UN telephones to call the peacekeeping missions in the "focus booths." But there are no phones -- and no chairs. An African photographer constantly at the UN is being told he should go through the metal detector on each entrance, while a photograph with AFP, who rarely comes to the UN, is considered a resident correspondent, no metal detector.

There is still no table or surface to type on at the Security Council, as existed before and during the relocation. All space for the public and press to view the General Assembly has been eliminated. And DPI is focused on... banning fliers and even the sign of an alternative organization which dissents. Watch this site.

Free Press Rights at UN Advanced by FUNCA, Amid UNCA's Resistance to the New, Defense of Ladsous' Stonewalling

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, February 5 -- Is the UN trying to modernize? Parts of it may be. On Tuesday morning ten stories above the East River issue was joined between three representatives of the Free UN Coalition for Access and the top brass of the UN Department of Public Information.

  Certain FUNCA-won reforms were confirmed, though not yet in writing. Small as they sound, these include that, going forward, all correspondents will have equal and unfettered access to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's 38th floor meetings.

  "There will be no more UNCA [UN Correspondents Association] pool," it was confirmed (with the exception of if Barack Obama comes to the UN -- no policy yet for the 2016 US President.) Passes to cover the General Assembly will no longer be distributed through UNCA, but the UN Documents Center.

  As FUNCA requested, at least Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's New York City events outside of the UN will be disclosed in the UN Media Alert.

  While never put in writing, DPI confirms that it told the spokesman for UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous that it was inappropriate when he on December 18 seized the UNTV microphone, rather clearly to try to avoid a Press question about 126 rapes in Minova by the Congolese Army, which which UN peacekeeping works. Video here.

  We will have more on this, including a further explanation (and elaboration) of the #LADSOUS2013 hashtag and video, which at least one DPI official stated went too far.

 FUNCA countered, on the topic of going too far, that the repeated tearing down of its substantive flyers, and the anonymous use of a fake social media account, only confirmed the decay of UNCA and the absolute need for and rights of the Free UN Coalition for Access.

  There appears to belatedly be a recognition that the UN must publicly promulgate due process rules for journalists when a complaint is filed against them. 

  No notice was given of such complaints in April and June 2012, and the identifies of the UN officials who met with UNCA "very quietly" then about dis-accrediting the Press have yet to be disclosed. We will have more on this as well.

  At Tuesday's noon briefing, the UNCA president asked Ban Ki-moon's spokesman about the very issues she'd written to DPI on February 1 about; the spokesman was solicitous. 

  And so, while in the past FUNCA issues about due process have been dismissed, this time a question was taken: how can the UN be banning journalists based solely on where they come from?

  These are the issues on which FUNCA is working; like due process, it is terrain on which UNCA cannot legitimately work, since it was UNCA which sought to expel other journalists with stealth complaints, and partners in the offending UN rules.

  On the fundamental point of free speech and equal access, the issues were squarely raised, as they have been for weeks. Watch this site.

UN Demands Posting of Its Views on Board It Won't Permit, UNCA Kills 1st Amendment Under US Lawyer Pamela Falk

By Matthew Russell Lee

 

UNITED NATIONS, February 2 -- The UN is so infused with double standards that its official either cannot see, or will not acknowledge, them.

  On Friday afternoon UN Department of Public Information official Stephane Dujarric e-mailed a series of bureaucratic (non) answers to press freedom questions posed more than two weeks before. He concluded, "I would appreciate you posting this email in full."

  Four hours later Dujarric replied to a letter addressed to his boss and DPI chief Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal and showing that the responses were totally unsatisfactory and that Dujarric because of his murky role in previous dis-accreditation attempts was and is not the right interlocutor (a good UN word, that, but apparently not understood by DPI in this case).

  Ignoring the critique, Dujarric insisted, "I would appreciate, as asked in my email to you earlier today, that you publish my answers in full on Inner City Press and/or FUNCA."

   FUNCA is the Free UN Coalition for Access, which was launched on December 7, 2012 to defend the rights of journalists at and from the UN, since the long-time and now decayed UN Correspondents Association not only does not defend, but in 2012 affirmatively attacked, the rights of the investigative Press at the UN.

   All that said, Dujarric ignored a basic request FUNCA made to him -- or really to his boss Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, who has yet to respond.

 Just as UNCA has a bulletin board in the UN press area -- UNCA used its glassed-in board to leave posted for months in 2012 a letter denouncing Inner City Press -- the new FUNCA either must be permitted to post flyers on an unbranded UN Journalists board, or to have a bulletin board of its own, to echo a movie title.

   This right to equal treatment is not an abstraction. Inner City Press already published the wan January 24 letter to Dujarric and Launsky-Tieffenthal signed by UNCA's new president, Pamela S. Falk of CBS, here.

  After Inner City Press published it, UNCA hastily posted its letter on its glassed in bulletin board, which is right next to Pamela Falk's CBS office (which, unlike others' cubicles, is enclosed and private).

   So where is the UN's response to UNCA's and Falk's letter? Is the UN asking Falk to post it as well? On the bulletin board that it allows only UNCA, but no one else, to have, as in a one-party state?

 Friday UNCA's / Falk's glassed in board had her letter to DPI, but no response. Free UN Coalition for Access flyers, including next to the board and CBS door, had been torn down. The day previous, the flyers were torn down off the door to Inner City Press' cubicle. Posting, indeed.

  It's worth noting that Pamela Falk has in the past often said to Inner City Press, "I am a lawyer."

  She is an American -- this is eminently clear in questions asked -- and so presumably aware of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

  The free speech right to post flyers in the UN critical of the UN, and to equal treatment between groups like UNCA and FUNCA, is First Amendment 101. So where is Pam Falk? Watch this site.