Press releases & protests

April 2, 2006

For further information, contact
Mark Bench, Executive Director
World Press Freedom Committee
Telephone: 914 684 0085
Fax: 914 684 0086
EMBench@aol.com

World Press Freedom Committee -- New Chairman Elected

Richard N. Winfield, of counsel to the international law firm of Clifford Chance US LLP, was elected chairman of World Press Freedom Committee today (April 2, 2006) at its biennial meeting in Chicago held in conjunction with the annual convention of the Newspaper Association of America.

Winfield succeeds James H. Ottaway, Jr., of Ottaway Newspapers and board member of Dow Jones, Inc. who has served as WPFC’s chairman for 10 years. Winfield becomes the 4th chairman since WPFC was organized in 1976 to counter the new world information and communication order (NWICO) proposed by third world authoritarian countries and promoted by the Soviet Union at UNESCO and seen as a threat to the free flow of information. Most press freedom advocates believed NWICO to be a serious threat to the objective preparation and distribution of news.

WPFC is unique in that no other organization is primarily dedicated to 1) prevent leading intergovernmental organizations from approving global restrictions on the press, 2) ensure that press freedom values are provided for in the evolution of the Internet and cyberspace, and 3) maintain a united front among leading press freedom organizations to better threats that develop.

The World Press Freedom Committee is a non-profit, non-governmental press freedom organization based in Washington, DC. It administers the global Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations, consisting of nine leading international press freedom advocacy groups.

Winfield’s deep commitment to freedom of the press is reflected in his pro bono volunteer work, his law school teaching, and in his legal case work.

Since the mid-1990s, Winfield has led the media law reform programs of the American Bar Association/Central European Law Initiative in numerous former Soviet bloc nations. More recently, the International Senior Lawyers Project, which he co-founded in 2000, has continued and expanded this work to Algeria, China, Japan and Turkey.

Since 2002, Winfield has taught courses in comparative mass media law and American mass media and Internet law at Columbia Law School and Fordham Law School.

For more than three decades he served as general counsel of the Associated Press while a partner in the firm of Rogers & Wells, which became Clifford Chance US LLP. There, he worked closely with American publishers and editors, and defended AP and other media clients in hundreds of press freedom cases.

Winfield said of his predecessor, “Jim Ottaway was a tireless champion of a world where freedom of the press would be the norm, not the exception. Jim combined idealism with a pragmatism born of a productive lifetime in journalism. Happily, Jim has committed to remain involved with the work of the World Press Freedom Committee, which salutes his decade of leadership.”

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