Newsweek's UN Propagandist-'Correspondent'

Newsweek's Extra-Special Correspondent!

The folks at Newsweek apparently felt they has to do something to one-up TIME in the bad taste department. TIME published a sanitized Q&A with Louis Farrakhan that allowed the disgusting old bigot to lie about his record -- so the ever-ambitious Newsweek has sunk even lower. Nope, you can't get any lower than the UN's Propaganda Minister, Shashi Tharoor.

Newsweek International has hired the man in charge of making excuses for Kofi Annan -- the UN minion in charge of its bloated Department of Public Information -- as a "Special Correspondent." What this means is that Tharoor, when not putting on Israel-bashing seminars featuring anti-Semites, or telling us how squeaky-clean Kofi is, is working for a major US media outlet.

How "special" is our intrepid propagandist-correspondent? Well, Newsweek doesn't even bother to disclose, in either its press releases or Tharoor's articles, distributed by MSNBC.com, that Tharoor is a UN Undersecretary.

Gosh, how nice for Newsweek, wouldn't you say? No wonder this advertising-starved, also-ran publication hasn't run a single major article critical of the UN as far back as anyone can remember.

Imagine the outcry if Newsweek or TIME had hired a Defense Department undersecretary as a "special correspondent." It's hard to think of a better example of the incestuous, cozy relationship between the UN, its minions and the mainstream media.

Well, there actually may be a better example. As I noted in a recent item, CNBC International regularly broadcasts a UN-produced fake-news interview show, hosted by UN correspondent assn. honcho Tony Jenkins.

This is yet another example of a subject that isn't going to be touched by the Columbia Journalism Review, whose chairman, Victor Navasky, publishes the fanatically pro-UN, left-wing rag The Nation.