UN Is Grilled in DC, As Opponent of Free Press and Bloggers, Claims Not to Lobby
By Matthew Russell Lee
Inner City Press
March 17, 2008
There is a UN Information Center, pronounced eunuch, in the U.S. capital, and on Monday its director William Davis promised that the UN does not lobby. This he defined as explicitly supporting pending legislation, or openly requesting contributions to the UN. He was asked why his office tells only positive stories; he was asked to explain actions of the UN Development Program ranging from support of dictators to crackdowns on the press, via press release, lobbying against media accreditation and bad-mouthing of particular news outlets. Davis said he is not an expert on the dictatorship and retaliation issues. He said, with an explicit reference to Inner City Press, that the UN is struggling to enter the twenty-first century and determine how to handle bloggers, to determine if they are credible and if they "overtake regular relations with the working press."
On this, Inner City Press has obtained the UN's internal background paper on Media Accreditation and New Media, which opines that blogs "are essentially about providing opinion and stimulating debate. They are not subject to the same editorial and legal vetted as traditional media and do not function according to normal journalistic practices and standards. With its infinite capacity to shift, change or cease operations entirely, it is more difficult for an organization to ensure accountability from a blog."
Whether the UN is any judge of journalistic standards, when its in-house faux news operation routine deletes any controversial reference at the request of member states, is dubious to many. The UN's credibility was questioned at an event on Monday in Washington, by the Government Accountability Project, among others. Click here to view, here for MP3. GAP's Beatrice Edwards said that when the UN tries cut out the free press, it is no more than a powerful and wealth and lawless organization. Whistleblowers, she said, are best off leaking information to the Press, particularly after what she called Ban Ki-moon's "huge leap backwards" last year when he allowed UNDP to escape the jurisdiction of the UN Ethics Office and its protections against retaliation.
