Let me get this straight. Unesco set up a conference about Wikileaks but doesn't give the voice to Wikileaks. Seems legit.
Hi Ann. Who is UNESCO? Just wondering. I did go out to google and looked it up myself (even though google is ass raping me on privacy) but nowhere does it state who UNESCO is or why I should give a fuck. For everyone else UNESCO means United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. A completely non important thing in most peoples lives. Except they are yet another organization that tries to insinuate themselves into American's lives without them ever having to deal with them in a real way and wondering why other people have a say in how your children are taught.
I love this. We got a lot of feel good things going on there. But I didn't notice any change on the part anyone else. Meanwhile, Wikileaks is pissed at a lot of the people that probably support them. Funny. http://www2.ed.gov/about/inits/ed/internationaled/unesco.html
Sure. We got a conference set up to discuss wikileaks. Then wikileaks gets banned from the same conference. This is being set up by the same people that are an Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Those are fun things to string together. Education, science and culture. That's a great thing to have one organization overlooking. An organization like this probably has some kind of links to the media. They absolutely have a link to the US government because of the US becoming recently involved with them. So, is this a media play to bring sympathy to wikileaks or do we have dark evil government forces trying to fuck with wikileaks? UNESCO seems to be both. Also I love you Ann. Don't deny our love.
A bit like setting up a conference about Scientology and not letting Scientology address the conference? UNESCO isn't censoring Wikileaks. Wikileaks is able to say all that it needs or wants to outside the conference and in other media. Wikileaks' freedom of expression is not hampered in any way.
It's a good comparison, because we would support, for example, the right of Ursula Caberta's government department to hold a conference about scientology and to invite Exes (and Anons) along, but to exclude scientologists from addressing the group. And we did. "fairness and balance" - sounds good. Too often, media organisations (and UNESCO is not such an organisation) water down their obligations of fairness and balance to allowing the targeted party to have its say. Fairness and balance should be about having content that is true and fair, no matter from whom it comes. But that's for the media, on whom the general public relies for its news (facts). Is UNESCO under the same obligation? Who is the audience for this conference? Are they capable of finding Wikileaks' perspective on the issues? Are the UNESCO speakers presenting "facts" / "news" or their own perspective. Are people not allowed to gather persons of their own persuasion and hear from them? I'm not claiming to have all the answers or to have asked the right questions, even. I just don't think that fairness and balance means that one should always have to share the microphone with the object of one's criticism. I'm pro-Wikileaks. I just remember the hamburg conferences and found the echoes of the CoS in what Wikileaks was saying to be striking.
Some differences: The Hamburg conference was held by a public entity in charge of fighting the abuses of cults. Is UNESCO in charge of fighting leaks ? You forgot the term "balance" and wonder whether UNESCO should comply with basic journalistic principles. You just forgot to mention who co-organised the meeting: the World Press Freedom Committee. I can't follow on this. Too much Herro in your reasoning.
