NEW MEDIA CONFERENCE

WPFC organized a major conference with more than 200 participants entitled “New Media: The Press Freedom Dimension/Challenges and Opportunities of New Media for Press Freedom” at UNESCO Headquarters in Paris February 15-16, 2007.

It brought together 43 speakers from 26 countries for panels on “New Media in New Democracies” (Latvia, Georgia, South Africa, Rwanda, El Salvador); “New Media Under Challenge” (Russia, China, Iran, Somalia); “News Online” (Tehelka of India, Reuters, Yahoo! News); “Direct Satellite, Public and Private Broadcasting” (Tolo TV of Afghanistan, Slovenian TV, International Assn. of Broadcasting); the future of media with “How Young People Get Their News” (World Assn. of Newspapers [WAN], UNICEF, Argentine Education Ministry Media Education, the French teaching and news media liaison center [CLEMI], D-Code of Toronto); “Bloggers as Journalists/Citizen Media” (OhmyNews of South Korea, Al Dustour of Egypt, Nepal Community Media Center, Morris Digital and CNET News of the United States); “Circumventing the Censors” (Reporters Sans Frontieres, Privacy International, Mizzima for Burma, SW Radio Africa for Zimbabwe, Freedom House).

It was co-sponsored by WAN and UNESCO, in partnership with the other member groups of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations. Press freedom and human rights advocacy leaders spoke for the Center for Democracy & Technology, Highway Africa, International Press Institute, Inter American Press Association, Committee to Protect Journalists, Human Rights in China, Freedom House, International Association of Broadcasting, Reporters Sans Frontieres [RSF], Privacy International, World Editors Forum.

The conference was made possible by a grant of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

WPFC Chairman Richard Winfield spoke of the “arms race … between the press of the new media and the would-be regulators.” Julien Pain of RSF pinpointed China as “the superpower of Internet control.” Guy Berger of Rhodes University, South Africa, noted that new and old media need to recognize their joint interest in supporting each other’s press freedoms. Several speakers from the developing world noted that despite the impressive spread of new media in their regions, for many populations old media such as radio are in fact still the new media.

The new importance of new media in the press freedom struggle was underlined within days and weeks after the conference by moves against the participants’ media outlets back home. Mizzima online news for Burma, operating from exile in India, was temporarily closed on a pretext by Indian tax police, The chief editor and two other Tolo satellite TV journalists were arrested in a raid on the station ordered by Afghanistan’s chief prosecutor because he disliked the way it reported a speech he made. South Africa temporarily blocked the web site of the London-based Zimbabwe exile SW Radio Africa. Russia announced elaborate plans to control online news outlets. In the first three cases, protests forced the authorities to back off.

The conference ended with unanimous endorsement of a statement by the nine-member Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations concluding, “There must be press freedom in all the new spaces created for communication.” A 90-page joint account of the conference with texts and summaries of the proceedings is available here and on the Web sites of WAN and UNESCO. Print copies may be obtained from any of these organizations on request.

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New Media Conference Report
Statement in English
Statement in French