Inner City Press

Inner City Press[1] is a public interest organization founded by Matthew Lee, who serves as executive director. Inner City Press is best known for its investigations of the banking industry's treatment of low-income communities of color, at first within the United States and more recently around the world, for example with regard to HSBC, Deutsche Bank and others. In the spring of 2013, in the US, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch has raised fair lending issues regarding Investors Bank.[2] In 2018, Inner City Press / Fair Finance Watch challenged a merger by People's United Bank.[3] In 2018, Inner City Press' resident correspondent status at United Nations (UN) was downgraded to non-resident correspondent. In August 2018, Lee was permanently banned from the UN premises because of his non compliance with the restrictions of his new non-resident correspondent status [4]

Inner City Press
Typenon-profit organization
Genreinvestigative journalism
Founded1987
FounderMatthew Lee (lawyer)
HeadquartersSouth Bronx, New York
United States
Websiteinnercitypress.org

History

Inner City Press was founded in 1987 in the South Bronx of New York City. Its first projects involved under-housed people fixing up abandoned buildings. By the 1990s, Inner City Press began working on issues of exclusion of financial services, overburdening with environmental toxins, and lack of accountability by government and corporations to low-income areas.

The global work is done through the Fair Finance Watch. Inner City Press' executive director is Matthew Lee, who is the author of the non-fiction book Predatory Lending: Toxic Credit in the Global Inner City and the novel Predatory Bender and an accredited journalist at the United Nations. In August 2011, Inner City Press exclusively put online the UN's internal plan for post-Gaddafi Libya, as credited and covered by Al Jazeera English.[5] In October 2012, Lee and Inner City Press raised fair lending and compliance issues about M&T Bank's application to acquire Hudson City Bancorp.[6] The deal went through in 2015. Inner City Press was profiled in the Columbia Journalism Review Guide.[7]

In mid-2006, investigative journalism at the United Nations by Inner City Press alleged human rights abuses in the forcible disarmament programs carried out by the Uganda People's Defense Force in the Karamoja region of Uganda.[8]

On February 13, 2008 Google removed Inner City Press from Google News, allegedly due to pressure from the United Nations.[9]

In 2012, after Inner City Press's reporting on Sri Lanka, Syria and United Nations corruption, the United Nations apparently reneged on a commitment to renew Inner City Press' accreditation, amid a "Board of Examination" to expel Inner City Press, started by the President and Executive Committee of the UN Correspondents Association.[10] Despite suggestions to the contrary, Inner City Press' United Nations accreditation was renewed and he remains a member of the UN press corps in good standing. Inner City Press' Lee became a subject of controversy for soe over the last year. Some UNCA Executive Committee members acted against Inner City Press' Lee after he reported that the UNCA President had a previous financial relationship with Sri Lanka's Permanent Representative to the United Nations, then agreed to screen for this ambassador his government's film denying war crimes.[11] In December 2012 along with Luiz Rampelotto of Europa Newswire, Inner City Press co-founded as an alternative to UNCA the new Free UN Coalition for Access.[12]

In August 2018, Lee was permanently banned from the UN premises because of his non compliance with the restrictions of his new non-resident correspondent status.[13]

Notes
  1. "Nonprofit Report for INNER CITY PRESS COMMUNITY ON THE MOVE INC".
  2. See "Investors, Roma bank merger still awaiting regulator's approval". NJ.com. April 30, 2013.
  3. French, Howard. "Bank buyout challenged over lending record". Journal Inquirer. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  4. "Independent journalist Matt Lee forcibly removed from UN, stripped of press credentials". U.S. Press Freedom Tracker. Retrieved 2018-12-17.
  5. "UN 'plan for post-Gaddafi Libya' leaked". Al Jazeera English.
  6. "Strictly Business". Archived from the original on 2013-04-05. Retrieved 2013-06-01.
  7. "Inner City Press". Columbia Journalism Review.
  8. UNDP suspends Karamoja projects Archived 2007-02-14 at the Wayback Machine - The New Vision, 6/28/06
  9. Journalist Who Exposes U.N. Corruption Disappears From Google - Fox News, 2/19/08
  10. Good Journalism at the U.N.? It might become harder to find - National Review, 6/18/12
  11. "UN journalists threaten to expel reporter". the Guardian. 20 June 2012.
  12. "Free United Nations Coalition for Access".
  13. "DocumentCloud".
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