More UN Correspondent Mischief?
An obscure hack named Anora Mahmudova gained notoriety a few months ago, when it was revealed by Front Page Magazine and Accuracy in Media that she was working illegally in the United States. What made this tawdry affair interesting was that her law-breaking employer was the United Nations Correspondents Association.
You see, the supine reporters who "cover" the UN (usually by rewriting its press releases) feel that they are above the law and that journalism ethics don't apply to them. No wonder. A good many of them come from government-run propaganda outfits in countries like Saudi Arabia. They see nothing wrong with taking money from the UN while covering it or brazenly violating the US immigration laws.
What made it even more interesting, and even more tawdry, what that this terminally ethics-deprived bunch was emptying its coffers by hiring Mahmudova in 2004 as "office manager." According to Front Page, UNCA paid her more than it received in dues. Why the generosity? Well, it turns out that Mahmudova is the wife of payola pundit Ian Williams, the fourth-rate hack who worked for the UN as a "media trainer" at the same time functioning as an ostensibly independent "UN correspondent" for The Nation.
AIM said at the time that the Ian Williams household was the single biggest item of spending by UNCA last year, but that "in the rush to get her on the UNCA payroll and benefit the Williams family, UNCA ignored the fact that she was on a special journalist visa that did not permit her to work for the organization."
Front Page called her work for UNCA "strictly illegal" and said "Mahmudova flaunted this fact, informing many individuals that she did not have papers necessary to work for UNCA. But she did it anyway; for his part, according to several sources inside the UN, Williams facilitated the arrangement."
Yesterday, while engaging in my daily perusal of online Moonbat outlets, I saw an article by none other than Anora Mahmudova! An article of hers ran in Maximsnews and AlterNet. The article itself isn't much--it reads like a high school journalism assignment--but what interested me was this:
According to FrontPage, Mahmudova holds a U.S. I-visa. "All foreign journalists are required to have them. Under these visas, moreover, foreign reporters are prohibited from working except for the organizations that sponsored them in the first place"--which in Mahmudova's case is the BBC, according to FrontPage. According to her bio on MaximsNews, she "is the BBC World Central Asian Service correspondent in the US and at the United Nations."
Hmmmm..... I hope for her sake that she can write for AlterNet and MaximsNews! These are a couple of flaky little Internet Moonbatteries. Do they pay? Dunno.
But if they do.....well, then I think Cliff Kincaid of AIM had a point when he said, "apparent violations of U.S. immigration law are not a trivial matter and deserve serious scrutiny by the appropriate U.S. authorities. 'The U.N. and its reporters are not above U.S. law,' said Kincaid." Nope. Reporters aren't above the law, and neither are payola pundits and their spouses--or even grimy, has-been"journalism organizations" such as UNCA.
You see, the supine reporters who "cover" the UN (usually by rewriting its press releases) feel that they are above the law and that journalism ethics don't apply to them. No wonder. A good many of them come from government-run propaganda outfits in countries like Saudi Arabia. They see nothing wrong with taking money from the UN while covering it or brazenly violating the US immigration laws.
What made it even more interesting, and even more tawdry, what that this terminally ethics-deprived bunch was emptying its coffers by hiring Mahmudova in 2004 as "office manager." According to Front Page, UNCA paid her more than it received in dues. Why the generosity? Well, it turns out that Mahmudova is the wife of payola pundit Ian Williams, the fourth-rate hack who worked for the UN as a "media trainer" at the same time functioning as an ostensibly independent "UN correspondent" for The Nation.
AIM said at the time that the Ian Williams household was the single biggest item of spending by UNCA last year, but that "in the rush to get her on the UNCA payroll and benefit the Williams family, UNCA ignored the fact that she was on a special journalist visa that did not permit her to work for the organization."
Front Page called her work for UNCA "strictly illegal" and said "Mahmudova flaunted this fact, informing many individuals that she did not have papers necessary to work for UNCA. But she did it anyway; for his part, according to several sources inside the UN, Williams facilitated the arrangement."
Yesterday, while engaging in my daily perusal of online Moonbat outlets, I saw an article by none other than Anora Mahmudova! An article of hers ran in Maximsnews and AlterNet. The article itself isn't much--it reads like a high school journalism assignment--but what interested me was this:
According to FrontPage, Mahmudova holds a U.S. I-visa. "All foreign journalists are required to have them. Under these visas, moreover, foreign reporters are prohibited from working except for the organizations that sponsored them in the first place"--which in Mahmudova's case is the BBC, according to FrontPage. According to her bio on MaximsNews, she "is the BBC World Central Asian Service correspondent in the US and at the United Nations."
Hmmmm..... I hope for her sake that she can write for AlterNet and MaximsNews! These are a couple of flaky little Internet Moonbatteries. Do they pay? Dunno.
But if they do.....well, then I think Cliff Kincaid of AIM had a point when he said, "apparent violations of U.S. immigration law are not a trivial matter and deserve serious scrutiny by the appropriate U.S. authorities. 'The U.N. and its reporters are not above U.S. law,' said Kincaid." Nope. Reporters aren't above the law, and neither are payola pundits and their spouses--or even grimy, has-been"journalism organizations" such as UNCA.
posted by Mediacrity at 9:41 AM
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