For Security Council Trip to DR Congo & Rwanda, UN Lets France Pick Its Scribes, Despite French Role in Genocide

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 20 -- When the UN Security Council goes on a trip with media to Rwanda and the Congo, who decides which reporters can go?

  In this case, France -- a country which sided with thegenocidaires in Rwanda, and which has installed one of its diplomats who argued for the genocidaires' escape, Herve Ladsous, as the head of UN Peacekeeping.

  How is this fair? But it is how the UN works. 

  This too: notice of the opportunity for some reporters to go on the trip was sent out at noon on September 18 by Pamela Falk of the UN Correspondents Association, whose Executive Committee member Tim Witcher of Agence France Presse filed a complaint with UN Security leading with how Inner City Press asked a question to Ladsous about the DRC.

  UNCA's first vice president Louis Charbonneau of Reuters takes "leaks" from France and the UK (while leaking TO the UN), and on the DRC routinely parrots their line about Rwanda supporting the M23 rebels.

  (Charbonneau and Witcher were linked last week in MediaBistro to imposter Inner City Press social media accounts, the culmination of nine months of anonymous trolling link to UNCA, the UN's Censorship Alliance. Their anonymous comments complained Inner City Press is "pro-Rwanda" - explaining the trip decisions, and why Inner City Press will write rather than appeal.)

   Inner City Press has asked -- why was information about a UN Security Council trip distributed only to those who pay UNCA money? After this question was raised, six hours later, a notice to the Office of the Spokesperson for Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's full list was sent. But the question remained unanswered.

Inner City Press immediately notified Ban's spokesperson's office of its interest in going on the Security Council trip, as it went on in 2010.

But on Friday evening, the following arrived:

From: Jerome Bernard [at] un.org
Date: Fri, Sep 20, 2013 at 6:46 PM
Subject: Re: Security Council trip to Africa
To: Matthew Russell Lee [at] InnerCityPress [dot] com
Cc: Free UN Coalition for Access @FUNCA_info

Hi Matthew,

I am sorry but because of the very limited number of seats in the UN plane it won't be possible for you to travel with the Security Council for this trip to the Great Lakes Region of Africa.

I am sure there will be other opportunities for travel in the future.

Best regards,

Jerome Bernard
Office of the Spokesperson for the Secretary-General

  So who made this decision? Inner City Press is informed: the French Mission, they are in charge of the trip. What a charade. A journalist should not have to appeal to another country to be treated fairly. 

  In charge of the French Mission to the UN is Gerard Araud; his new deputy at his first UNSC stakeout refused to answer Inner City Press' question whether the UN's Eastern Congo "Intervention Brigade" is a combatant, a party to the conflict. Click here.

  Inner City Press writes extensively about the DRC (in fact, it first reported that this trip would happen). In 2010, Inner City Press went on a Security Council trip to Africa. Has its reporting declined since then? For 2013, @InnerCityPress was named a "Twitterati 100" by Foreign Policy magazine, one of only two covering the UN. 

  Inner City Press has asked for a list of the scribes France hand-picked to cover "its" trip to the Great Lakes region. Going forward, the new Free UN Coalition for Access @FUNCA_info is seeking to reform both corrupt information flows and a UN which allows a country which supported a genocide to chose which media fly in the UN plane to cover it. Watch this site.

   

After AFP & Reuters at UN Named as Trolls in MediaBistro, Anonymous Reply Calls Inner City Press "Pro Syria, Pro Rwanda, Anti French"

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 9 -- Amid Syria spin and mis-information at the UN, insider journalists' campaign to impersonate the @InnerCityPress twitter feed, named one of two "Twitterati 100" covering the UN by Foreign Policy magazine, was exposed today in MediaBistro's FishBowlNY.

  The response? Anonymous commenting on the expose, of course. A person purporting to speak for (all?) UN jouralists says that Inner City Press is "pro Syria, pro Rwanda and anti French." Wonder who that could be?

  The "pro Syria" is telling. The counterfeit accounts began just after InnerCityPress.com published a piece on the three questions permitted to US Ambassador Samantha Power on Syria.

 All were Executive Committee members of the UN Correspondents Association, which sponsored in late July a faux "UN briefing" by Saudi supported Syria rebel boss Ahmad al Jarba, in an event publicized only to those who pay UNCA money.

As recounted in the MediaBistro piece, the imposter twitter accounts were pitched at every follower of the Free UN Coalition for Access, @FUNCA_info, which Inner City Press co-founded. Then they began to be pitched at the 6,700 followers of @InnerCityPress, purely to create confusion and harm.

Now the old UN Correspondents Association, whose Executive Committee has tried to get the investigative Press thrown out of the UN, and who agreed to limit media access to the Security Council and General Assembly, has emailed that it too has a twitter account. 

   But UNCA has only 19 followers -- and its six tweets are all mere links posted by UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk, who was informed of Team UNCA's trolling in February but has done nothing to stop it. The UN Department of Public Information, which partners (exclusively it seems) with UNCA did not stop it.

The glassed-in bulletin board in front of the large meeting room the UN gives to UNCA, for example for the faux "UN briefing" by Jarba, has not been updated since February -- a wan letter from Falk.

  But FUNCA's fliers on a non-glassed in bulletin board FUNCA fought to get installed on the fourth floor are taken down by the UN at the end of each month. The UN has tried to create a one party system, while presenting itself as a voice of democracy and even free speech elsewhere. 

  When a petition for a media work table at the Security Council was presented to DPI, some who signed it were questioned by UNCA. When people join FUNCA, they are targeted, most often anonymously. (By contrast, these exposes are on the record, and have been limited to those who control UNCA, not the regular members.) Co-founder Luiz Rampelotto's work was stolen by the trolls. So@FUNCA_info proceeds as it does. We'll have more on this. 

The anonymous commenter says Inner City Press has been accusing Reuters and AFP. But the documents were released under the Freedom of Information Act by the Voice of America and its Broadcast Board of Governors.

Voice of America tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN (letter of VOA's Steve Redisch to the UN's Stephane Dujarric, here); VOA documents say they had the support of Reuters (here) and AFP (here).

Also, Reuters' bureau chief Louis Charbonneau gave an anti-Press internal UNCA document to the UN's Dujarric three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, audio here,document here.  Reuters bigwigs including Stephen J. Adler have been made aware of all this and have done nothing.

  These are documents, which MediaBistro had when it published its expose. Anonymous trolling can't answer why UNCA's first vice president Lou Charbonneau of Reuters gave an internal UNCA document to UN Accreditation official Dujarric. 

  UNCA has not addressed it, Dujarric and DPI have not. What is UNCA's role with the UN - to spy for it? To give internal documents against other journalists - in that case, one elected to UNCA's Executive Committee?

  AFP's Tim Witcher filed a complaint with UN Security leading with how Inner City Press asked a question of Herve Ladsous, the fourth Frenchman in a row to head UN Peacekeeping. This is on the record. And there's more. Watch this site.

   

As Fake Brahimi UN Twitter Feed on Syria Is Suspended, UN-based Trolls Counterfeit @InnerCityPress, Oxfam Spox Re-Tweets

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 9 -- On Syria, the fake Lakhdar Brahimi twitter account has now been suspended. But before it was, several of its clearly fake statements were re-tweeted, including by some journalists. Was this intentional?

The UN is aware of and does nothing about a range of counterfeit and trolling twitter accounts. Benign is the@SecGen account, which robotically takes Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's daily schedule and tweets it out -- "Meeting so-and-so" -- even if it is not happening, or Ban is running late. But there are others.

  Sometimes the UN benefits from counterfeit or trolling social media accounts. For example, back in February 2013 Inner City Press showed the top officials at the UN Department of Public Information that DPI's partners in the UN Correspondents Association Executive Committee had started seven anonymous social media accounts to target not only Inner City Press but also the alternative Free UN Coalition for Access, which it co-founded.

  Nothing was done; the trolling continued, including attempting to link Inner City Press to Syria's Assad, as UNCA tried with regards to Sri Lanka in the past. 

  Not only did DPI not act: it has threatened to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' UN accreditation for hanging a FUNCA sign on the door of its shared office, when UNCA has five signs.

  Emboldened, and seemingly made bitter by@InnerCityPress being named in August one of two "Twitterati 100" covering the UN by Foreign Policy magazine, the UNCA trolls have now started two counterfeit accounts pretending to be Inner City Press, and have pitched them at all who have followed @FUNCA_info, as well as@InnerCityPress' followers. It is devious and meant to anonymously harm a smaller media.

  But now it gets interesting, Brahimi-like you might say. 

   The spokesperson or social media guru of the non-governmental organization Oxfam, Louis Belanger, re-tweeted out to the humanitarian twitter-sphere a blatantly counterfeit tweet, in which the fake Inner City Press comments on the UN's March 2013 raid on its office, for reporting on which UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk sent Inner City Press a cease and desist letter from her CBSNews.com email account.

The political context here is that Belanger used to send Oxfam's and Control Arms' press releases to Inner City Press until in July 2012 Inner City Press asked how their principles applied for example to France's air-dropping of weapons to anyone who could pick them up in Libya's Nafusa mountains. The press releases stopped. Belanger parties with several of the UNCA trolls; now he re-tweets their counterfeit Inner City Press tweets.

From the big level of the Syria conflict and its (social) media component, down to the muck of UN's media and NGO world, it's a struggle, with false flags, false accounts, false denials. Watch this site.

   

On Syria, Obama's Six and Assad's Charlie Rose Interviews Teased as in Sweeps Week, Social Media War

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 9 -- On Syria on Sunday morning, CBS breathlessly announced that Charlie Rose had interviewed Bashar al Assad. But they wouldn't show any of it until Monday morning.

  At 7 am Monday, there is was: Assad asking Rose to tell Obama and Kerry to show their evidence to the public.

  Rose replied, as in elementary school, You don't show your evidence.

  But who's the one who said he'd make a public case? CBS flashed to a current opinion poll for bombing Syria. Can the number by brought up, Sweeps Weeks style, for a vote in the House of Representatives next week?

(Nor does Charlie show his interview: Monday morning was only an excerpt, the rest withheld until Monday night on PBS and, it seems, Bloomberg Television.)

  Predictably, Assad brought up Colin Powell's evidence-show to the Security Council before the US went into Iraq. Powell has written that he regrets that, but can't do anything now. Who in today's Sweeps Week may feel that way later?

  CBS showed a clip of John Kerry in the UK citing social media -- verified by "technology," of course -- as proving who used chemical weapons.

From the UN, after @InnerCityPress was named one of two"Twitterati 100" covering the UN by Foreign Policy magazine, and after InnerCityPress.com ran articles questioning how the US is doling out information and questions to those on the UN Correspondents Association Executive Committee who sponsored a faux "UN briefing" by Saudi sponsored Syria rebel boss Jarba, those insiders launched two counterfeit social media accounts.

  The goal is confusion - they've followed diplomats, reporters and others, including a Western "humanitarian" NGO communications chief who has retweeted obviously counterfeit messages, knowingly or unknowingly -- and to undermine Inner City Press and questions being asked. But questions and reporting will continue. Watch this site.

   

On Syria, US Denis McDonough Says Vote Is Really on Iran, Assad Interview Teased for PBS, Media Games

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 8 -- Selling a military strike on Syria, US official Denis McDonough hit the Sunday talk shows. On CBS's Face the Nation he said that those who've seen the American evidence are convinced.

  That's not the case at the UN. As Inner City Press reported late last week, responses from those who'd gone to the US Mission to see the evidence included "not convinced" to "the same as shown in the capital." 

 A European country, in the meeting with those who asked the UN to probe the August 21 incident, grilled the US. Does McDonough know this? Or think that the public doesn't?

  On ABC's show This Week, McDonough said he's "outraged" at the suggestion that the US would be operating as Al Qaeda's air force. Is it outrageous to suggest that a strike might help the armed opposition, including Al Qaeda?

  On Face the Nation, McDonough announced that this vote is really a vote on Iran. Really?

  Drama occurred on Face the Nation, when Bob Schieffer put Charlie Rose on to say he'd had an interview with Bashar al Assad, but wouldn't show it until Monday night on PBS. Rose said Assad referred to Aleppo. But what did he say? Commercial tease (for an ostensibly non-commercial network) in the run up to war?

  Schieffer delivered his view, that strikes should go forward because the US said they would. Oh. Then he said, Some of our stations are leaving us now. Some of your viewers, too.

  From the UN, after @InnerCityPress was named one of two "Twitterati 100" covering the UN by Foreign Policy magazine, and after InnerCityPress.com ran articles questioning how the US is doling out information and questions to those on the UNCA Executive Committee whosponsored a faux "UN briefing" by Saudi sponsored Syria rebel boss Jarba, those insiders launched two counterfeit social media accounts. 

  This hostility was noticed, overseas and in Washington.

 The goal is confusion - they've followed diplomats, reporters and others -- and to undermine Inner City Press and questions being asked. But questions and reporting will continue. Watch this site.

   

Amid Syria War, UNCA Led by CBS, Reuters & AFP Start 2d Counterfeit @InnerCityPress

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 7 -- The war in Syria has a smaller, sickening echo into the UN in New York: the insiderjournalists who held a murky "UN briefing" with Saudi supported rebel boss Jarba are now stealthy trying to undermine critical media.

  During the week, a long-time UN Correspondents Association bigwig cut off a question about rebels using chemical weapons, and then demanded the UN spokesperson say what media the questioner worked for.

  Now this weekend, a seemingly larger team from UNCA is counterfeiting @InnerCityPress, one of two Twitterati 100 covering the UN named by Foreign Policy magazine. The UNCA insiders, many of whom merely re-tweet their corporate media's output or fawning selfie photographs with those in power, want to undermine the investigative Press.

So far with the counterfeit account they established on September 5, right after InnerCityPress.com analyzed how CBS, Reuters and Gulf media were the only ones allowed to ask questions of US Ambassador Samantha Power, they have reached out to make 900 follows.

  They get some follow-backs -- 38 so far -- one of whom later told Inner City Press, I thought you guys were starting a new account so I followed.

  That person and others then unfollowed. But the UNCA insiders have started a second counterfeit account. This one, because Inner City Press questions and continues to question the US' public evidence on chemical weapons, and why it did not commit at least to wait for the UN report, draws a link between Inner City Press and Syria's Assad -- anonymously, of course.

To be an anonymous part of an anonymous crowd making such attacks: this is the UNCA board.

  It is derivative and parasitic: they follow those who have chosen to follow @InnerCityPress or @FUNCA_info, theFree UN Coalition for Access which Inner City Press co-founded after quitting UNCA, seeing as they try to get journalists thrown out of the UN, and in the case of Reuters' bureau chief Lou Charbonneau, spy for the UN through UN accreditation official Stephane Dujarric. Story here, audio here, document here.

  Charbonneau told Dujarric that if he didn't thrown Inner City Press out of the UN, Charbonneau -- the go to guy for pro-Western spin -- might leave the UN. Now the UNCA-linked counterfeit account follows Dujarric.

  AFP's Witcher complained to UN Security, leading with the way Inner City Press asked a question to UN Peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, who previously served on one of AFP's management boards.

  Now they follow and try to confusion countries' Mission to the UN, many of whom already follow the real@InnerCityPress. This was raised to the top of the UN Department of Public Information, when in February 2013 UNCA already had a half dozen of these anti-Press anonymous troll social media accounts, but it has continued. 

 One observer called these UNCA Executive Committee members, not without irony, "Ban's shabiha." Or more generously, "Lapdogs with laptops."

  And DPI had threatened the suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' accreditation for hanging the sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on the door of its shared office, while UNCA has five signs.

  The reality is, after some in the UN tried to get Inner City Press thrown out, after that these UNCA scribes took up the cause: Voice of America, Reuters through Charbonneau and now Michelle Nichols who works under him, Agence France Presse's Tim Witcher, and

Bloomberg, part of those trying to get Inner City Press thrown out until after this was raised to Matthew Winkler and the correspondents was told to stay away from the campaign - at least visibly.

But there are more, linked to these counterfeit Twitter accounts:

Pamela Falk of CBS, figurehead 2013 UNCA president, who send sycophantic tweets at the Ambassadors of the US and UK, who are now followed by the/her UNCA counterfeit account;

Margaret Besheer of Voice of America, who tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN; and the Freedom of Information Act inquiries just keep revealing more.

Ban's UNCA Lunch of the Lost, Feb 7, 2013, credit Evan Schneider, UNPhoto. From left: OSSG's Del Buey; Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency; OSSG's Nesirky; Melissa Kent of CBC; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Ban Ki-moon, Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Unknown; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI

   

At UN Amid Syria, Gulf & Western Media UNCA Starts Counterfeit of ICP, and Ban Ki-moon's UN Cheers Them On, Joins In

By Matthew Russell Lee

UNITED NATIONS, September 6 -- The same group of insider wire services and Gulf media which tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, unsuccessfully so far, have this week set up counterfeit Inner City Press social media accounts and troll-followed UN Missions, agencies and people who follow the Free UN Coalition for Access,@FUNCA_info.

  This comes less than a month after @InnerCityPress was named one of two "Twitterati" for UN coverage by Foreign Policy magazine (the only one based at the UN), and after InnerCityPress.com reported on the propagandistic distribution of questions at the missile-justifying stakeout by US Ambassador Samantha Power on September 5, here.

The goal seems to be to now create confusion about which is the real @InnerCityPress account. It is not hard:@InnerCityPress has 6,725 followers and UNCA-linked counterfeit for now less than 25, while mass-following over 800. It's a nasty piece of business. 

  Still, a communications chief of an NGO targeted by the UNCA trolls was fooled, and snarked about the account. Other FUNCA followers, when targeted, automatically followed back the counterfeit account.

It's a new low for this gang of scribes, who hide behind anonymous accounts since they work for big media companies like Reuters and Agence France Presse.

The UN bureau chiefs of these two companies, Louis Charbonneau and Tim Witcher respectively, both tried to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN, as documented by e-mails obtained from US government agency Voice of America under the Freedom of Information Act.

    (VOA's Broadcast Board of Governors, on which Secretary of State John Kerry serves, has started stonewalling on the follow-up request, so an appeal is being filed this week.)

   Click here for VOA's request that Inner City Press' UN accreditation be "reviewed," saying it had the support of Reuters, AFP and Bloomberg (which after a letter to Matthew Winkler purported to drop out of the campaign.)

Reuters' Charbonneau as first vice president of the UN Correspondents Association, it is documented, passed an internal anti-Press UNCA document to UN accreditation official Stephane Dujarric three minutes after promising not to do so. Story here, audio here, document here.

  Once the Voice of America led push was exposed, Dujarric begrudgingly extended Inner City Press' accreditation, while providing pointers on how to cover Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his head of peacekeeping Herve Ladsous. 

  Inner City Press quit the UNCA Executive Committee, to which it had been elected, and co-founded the Free UN Coalition for Access to actually protect journalists. (Here is a sample project by a FUNCA member in Somaliland, here.)

  Only this week, at a UN noon briefing, an UNCA insider tried to cut off the question of a FUNCA member reporting for Pacifica Radio's WBAI who asked about chemical weapons use by rebels in Syria. Click here for that.

In setting up the counterfeit social media account, the UNCA insiders stole the work of FUNCA's co-founder. UNCA long ago stopped defending journalists - it tries to get some thrown out of the UN, or to steal or destroy the work of others. 

  And the UN, informed of UNCA's trolling back in February -- here is on the record audio of UNCA's 2013 president Pamela Falk, ultimately responsible for all this -- has done nothing. 

  In fact, the UN's Department of Public Information has threatened to suspend or withdraw Inner City Press' UN accreditation for hanging a sign of the Free UN Coalition for Access on the door of its shared office, while UNCA has five signs.

  It's like being in a game in which the referee not only permits one side to sleazily (anonymously) attack the other, but even joins in gleefully in the attack. Apparently it's the law of the jungle.

  The UNCA Executive Committee members who have at a minimum done nothing to stop this are, as pictured lunching with Ban Ki-moon, Denis Fitzgerald of Saudi Press Agency; Melissa Kent of CBC; Sylviane Zehil of L'Orient le Jour; Tim Witcher of AFP; Ali Barada of An-Nahar; Kahraman Halicelik of Turkish Radio & TV; Pamela S. Falk of CBS; Lou Charbonneau of Reuters; Bouchra Benyoussef of Maghreb Arab Press; Yasuomi Sawa of Kyodo News; Masood Haider of Dawn; Unknown; Zhenqiu Gu of Xinhua; Stephane Dujarric of UN DPI

  This counterfeit trolling, this stealing or attempted destruction of journalists' work and attempts to block questions or censor is exactly was the Free UN Coalition for Access was formed and will continue. Watch this site.