By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, November 25 -- At Manhattan's Waldorf Astoria Hotel a crowd of the elite not only of media but of the (corporate) law, the men in tuxedos, on November 24 rightly celebrated journalists like the Free Zone 9 Bloggers of Ethiopia.
Inner City Press went to cover the event in order tointerview the Ethiopian bloggers, about those incarceration it had repeatedly asked the UN, without meaningful response. The bloggers were not to be found in the Astor or Jade rooms, reception sponsored by Reuters, so Inner City Press went to take in the scene from the balcony above the ballroom floor. Periscope video here
After some interplay with security, the Press was directed to a lower balcony directly above tables with signs for Time Inc, First Look Media and, incongruously, the Debevoise & Plimpton corporate law firm.
The speakers, from MC David Muir to CPJ's own executives, told those in attendance they were helping just be being present (and, presumably, paying). But there is a question: if for example the law firm of Debevoise & Plimpton promotes investment in the same Ethiopia which locked up the Zone 9 Bloggers, and did deals in Mahinda Rajapaksa's Sri Lanka, which killed journalists, is the one-night purchase of a table on balance of assistance?
Some might say that with this money they do good. But if the cause is truth, or even speaking truth to power, does the hobnobs of corporate M&A law firms with corporate media, some it new, really serve that cause?
From the balcony before leaving, there was too little -- seemingly no -- mention of the plight of journalists in Burundi, for example; the treatment of Turkey seemed kids-gloved (although Christiane Amanpour did mention the country in a video she narrated). We'll have more on this.
Last year, too, Inner City Press and the UN-based Free UN Coalition for Access were left with questions. The selection by the Committee to Protect Journalists seemed one-sided, without even a tip of the cap, or bow-tie, to James Risen or James Rosen, prosecuted the the US, much less journalists killed in Eastern Ukraine by forces based in Kyiv.
Or take the cases of Ethiopia's Zone 9 bloggers and Temesgen Desalegn, which were tellingly ignored by CPJ when on a panel at the UN on November 3, 2014. That day the UN held its event for the first International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. Not a single question from a journalist was taken. CPJ was on the panel.
Also speaking from the podium was for example UNESCO's Deputy Director General Getachew Engida of Ethiopia, a country which just sentenced to three years in jail journalist Desalegn.
This journalist's imprisonment, for “provocation,” is hardly low profile; either is that of the Ethopian Zone 9 Bloggers. But the moderator, UNESCO's George Papagiannis, did not raise the issue, even as he purported to read out congratulatory live-tweets about the event.
(IFEX to its credit did reply to one of @InnerCityPress' tweets questioning the event and how it was run, here. By another, it was suggested that maybe Engida, even with his many UN system posts, is a dissident from Ethiopia. But it does not seem like it: see recent photo here.)
Nor did any of the other panelists raise it: Joel Simon of CPJ, Greece's Ambassador, Columbia University's Agnes Callamard. The lone media panelist, from Al Arabiya, spoke without irony about naming and shaming countries which jail critics for mere tweets: many in the Gulf and Arabian Peninsula.
Inner City Press as media, and the new Free UN Coalition for Access, had this question ready:
“about an underpinning to deadly attacks on journalist: the idea that they are parties to a conflict, or can be prosecuted for their reporting on national security. Can the panel, particularly the Deputy Director General of UNESCO, comment on Ethiopia jailing journalist Temesgen Desalegn for three years for “provocation”? Or, to be fair, the prosecutions here in the US of James Rosen, James Risen and Barrett Brown, set to be sentenced on November 24? Of the breaking up of meetings of reporters in Sri Lanka, a country in which journalists have been killed or “disappeared,” as in the case of Prageeth. What is the relation of such prosecutions to the actual killing of journalists?”
But, as noted, the hour and a half long panel took not a single question from a journalist. At the day's UN noon briefing, Inner City Press asked Ban Ki-moon's spokesman Stephane Dujarric if Ban while in Ethiopia recently to make it the third largest UN “duty station” had in any way raised the case of journalist Temesgen Desalegn.
Apparently not. This is how the UN -- and CPJ, to some extent -- work, or don't.
When CPJ was shown of censorship within the UN itself, it did nothing. Then president of the UN Correspondents Association Giampaolo Pioli demanded that a Press story about him renting one of his Manhattan apartments to Palitha Kohona, Sri Lanka's ambassador, then unilaterally agreeing to use UNCA to screen the Sri Lankan government's war crimes denial film in the UN.
When Inner City Press refused to take the story down, instead offering to publish a letter to the editor of any length, Pioli made good on this threat to try to get Inner City Press thrown out of the UN. Documents obtained from Voice of America under FOIA here, here (AFP) andhere (Reuters - which also tried to censor its complaint to the UN, here, via Electronic Frontier Foundation's Chilling Effects project.
What did CPJ do or say about this? Unlike the New York Civil Liberties Union, here, CPJ did and said nothing - like the Sri Lankan government, it uses UNCA as one of its ways into the UN. It is inconvenient to look at this. But now, indicative of UNCA's decay, Pioli is set without competition to return to head UNCA. So will CPJ'slongstanding marriage of convenience at the UN continue apace? Watch this site.
