Coalition to United Nations: Honor World Press Freedom Day by Allowing Press Freedom

The United Nations Condemned by Groups from Across the Globe for Silencing the Media and Attacking Press Freedom
Taxpayer groups, government watchdog organizations and think tanks from six continents demand transparency and accountability from the taxpayer-funded UN

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Government watchdog groups, taxpayer organizations and think tanks from across the globe have united to condemn the taxpayer-funded United Nations (UN) for denying freedom of the press just hours before the launch of the UN’s annual “World Press Freedom Day.”

More than 30 organizations representing 14 countries on six continents signed an open letter (click here) to the UN recounting examples of the organization’s unacceptable treatment of the media. The letter demands that the UN uphold the same standards of press freedom it expects from its member nations.

World Press Freedom Day, which takes place on Sunday, May 3, is a celebration of the vital role the media plays in a free society and an attempt to promote a free, independent press in countries where that right is not yet appropriately valued. But the UN’s shameless assault on the same press freedoms the organization claims to defend has turned the event into a mockery and an embarrassment.

Last October, in a tobacco control meeting held in Moscow by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), members of the international press were physically removed from the conference and then banned from the proceedings. The meeting, which the UN and WHO pledged would be open to the media, discussed issues of great importance, such as public health and global taxation. Further, the conference cost world taxpayers more than $20 million.

“The United Nations is a first-rate fraud when it comes to press freedom,” said Drew Johnson, a Washington Times columnist who was one of the media members kicked out of the WHO’s tobacco control summit in Moscow. “The organization simply refuses to practice what it preaches when it comes to transparency and freedom of the press.”

The same mob of unelected and unaccountable taxpayer-funded international bureaucrats outlawed members of the press from a similar WHO meeting two years earlier in Seoul.

In another example of the UN’s mistreatment of the press, the organization secretly blacklisted a prominent investigative reporter, refusing to provide her with information about the Ebola outbreak in West Africa after the journalist exposed flaws in the UN’s response to the health crisis.

Signers of the letter also call on governments to cease funding organizations, such as the UN, “that operate behind closed doors, absent openness and transparency.”

“Taxpayers around the world should be furious that the UN makes a practice of banning journalists from meetings and conferences, and preventing the public from knowing how their hard-earned dollars are spent,” according to David Williams, president of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, the organization that spearheaded the coalition letter.

“The United Nations has no business hosting the World Press Freedom Day. It is a travesty and an injustice to the brave men and women around the world devoting their lives to promoting freedom of the press.”

Please see the full letter below:

April 30, 2015

On May 3, the United Nations (UN) will celebrate “World Press Freedom Day,” even though the organization has an abysmal track record of press freedom.

In October of last year, at a tobacco control meeting in Moscow hosted by the UN’s World Health Organization (WHO), the media was banned from reporting and physically removed from the conference site just before the body voted to adopt an international tobacco tax. That meeting, complete with caviar dinners and luxury hotel stays for WHO officials, cost taxpayers from around the world more than $20 million.

Two years earlier, at a similar WHO meeting in Seoul, the same cabal of unelected and unaccountable taxpayer-funded international bureaucrats barred media.

There are numerous other examples of attempts by the UN to silence the media, including the blacklisting by the WHO of a prominent reporter investigating that agency’s failure to appropriately respond to last year’s West African Ebola outbreak. These instances paint a disturbing portrait of taxpayers unknowingly funding anti-democratic actions they would never tolerate by their own governments.

To date, neither the UN nor the WHO has made any effort to explain why it kicked journalists out of taxpayer-funded conferences or blacklisted members of the media from covering important stories.

The undersigned taxpayer groups, watchdog organizations and free market think tanks from around the world are asking the United Nations for a full explanation of why these attacks on the press were allowed to happen.

At the foundation of any free and fair society is a government that respects the freedom of the press and upholds that principle by guarding against any efforts to dilute the open exchange of news and ideas.

Taxpayers should never be put in a position where their hard-earned contributions to government coffers are used to support organizations that do no respect the freedom of the press. Unfortunately, in the case of the United Nations, this is exactly what taxpayers around the world are being forced to do.

Organizations from across the globe have a message for the UN: We will not tolerate our governments wasting taxpayers’ money on organizations that do not respect the values we cherish most and we call on governments to cease funding organizations that operate behind closed doors absent openness and transparency.

Yours,

Daniel Greenberg
Advance Arkansas Institute

Adedayo Thomas
African Liberty Organization for Development

Isack C. Danford
African Students For Liberty

Susan A. Carleson
American Civil Rights Union

Grover Norquist
Americans for Tax Reform

Tim Andrews
Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance

John F. Tate
Campaign for Liberty

Kristin Fecteau
Campaign to Free America

Troy Lanigan
Canadian Taxpayers Federation

Rocio Guijarro
CEDICE-Libertad, Venezuela

Tim Knox
Centre For Policy Studies

Lisl Biggs-Davison
Centre for Research into Post-Communist Economies

Mahmoud Farouk
Egyptian Center for Public Policy Studies

Guillermo Peña Panting
The Eleuthera Foundation, Honduras

George Landrith
Frontiers of Freedom

Martín Simonetta
Fundación Atlas para una Sociedad Libre, Argentina

Raja Juli Antoni
The Indonesian Institute Center for Public Policy Research

Amin Ahmad
Institute for Leadership and Development Studies, Malaysia

Luis E. Loria
Instituto de Desarrollo Empresarial y Acción Social, Costa Rica

Andrew Langer
Institute for Liberty

Masaru Uchiyama
Japanese for Tax Reform

Seton Motley
Less Government

Orhan Ceka
Liberal Alternative Institute, Macedonia

Brent Bozell
Media Research Center

Pete Sepp
National Taxpayers Union

Linda Whetstone
Network for a Free Society

Jordan Williams
New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union

Omar Shaban
Palthink for Strategic Studies, Palestine

Lorenzo Monatnari
Property Rights Alliance

Lori Sanders
R Street Institute

Paul Gessing
Rio Grande Foundation

Robin Sitoula
Samriddhi, The Prosperity Foundation, Nepal

Adinda Tenriangke Muchtar
SuaraKebebasan.org (Freedom Voice, Indonesia)

Jonathan Isaby
TaxPayers’ Alliance

Frank Asiedu Bekoe
Taxpayers Alliance of Ghana  

David Williams
Taxpayers Protection Alliance

Judson Phillips
Tea Party Nation

Muhamad Iksan
Youth Freedom Network