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COMMUNICATIONS:
Filling the
Information Void
Raúl Pierri
MONTEVIDEO, (IPS) - How can the
information void on issues of
development and globalisation be
effectively filled? That
question was addressed Wednesday
at activities organised by the
IPS news agency to celebrate the
10th anniversary of its
Tierramérica publication and the
inauguration of the agency's
Latin American regional
headquarters in the Uruguayan
capital.
"Without good communication,
there cannot be good
information, or sensitisation of
public opinion," and without
this, "there is no social
participation" in the pursuit of
development, declared the
Uruguayan director-general of
IPS, Mario Lubetkin, addressing
a gathering of Uruguayan
authorities, civil society
representatives and journalists.
Lubetkin pointed to the unique
news agenda of IPS (Inter Press
Service), which focuses on the
themes of development and the
sociocultural effects of
globalisation, along with the
many voices of civil society and
their new role as leading actors
in current events.
IPS was founded in 1964 with the
goal of redressing the
informational imbalance between
the North and the South, at a
time of growing concentration of
control over the media, a
phenomenon that is much more
serious today, Lubetkin noted.
Today, the agency's priority in
coverage of development issues
is to report what individual
countries are doing,
particularly in the South, to
fulfil the Millennium
Development Goals, established
by the United Nations in 2000 as
a strategy for combating poverty
and inequality.
The first of the eight
Millennium Development Goals is
to halve the proportion of the
world's population living in
extreme poverty by 2015.
Lubetkin explained that the IPS
Latin American regional office
was established in Montevideo in
1995 "for four main reasons: the
technological advances achieved
here in this capital, the
facilities offered by the
government, the high level of
human resources, and the fact
that IPS has always accompanied
political changes in Latin
America, and this area, with the
birth of Mercosur (the Southern
Common Market, made up of
Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and
Uruguay) had become the
information centre of the
region."
The anniversary celebration held
Wednesday at the Montevideo
offices of IPS was attended by
Uruguayan President Tabaré
Vázquez, Public Health Minister
María Julia Muñoz, and
Montevideo Mayor Adolfo Pérez
Piera, along with other
government officials, lawmakers,
and representatives of U.N.
agencies and civil society
organisations.
Vázquez congratulated IPS on its
anniversary and stressed that
his government, which took
office in March, would work to
protect freedom of the press.
"Today we Uruguayans enjoy the
fullest possible freedom of
expression and information,
which will be guaranteed by this
government. Today all Uruguayans
can freely express themselves
with no fear of reprisals of any
kind," he said.
"The microphones, television
screens and newspaper pages in
Uruguay today express a
diversity of opinions. This is
an achievement made by all of
society, and will be guaranteed
by the government," he added.
Pérez Piera highlighted the
agency's history and its
journalistic independence, as
well as its emphasis on the
issues of concern to the
developing South and society in
general.
"It is a distinction for
Montevideo to be the
headquarters of the regional
office of such a prestigious
international news agency...We
believe Uruguay is strategically
placed because of its insertion
in the Mercosur and its ties
with international agencies,"
said Pérez Piera.
The mayor said he became
familiar with IPS in the late
1960s, when he was studying in
Rome, where the agency's world
desk is located.
"Back then, the media were not
as developed as they are today.
When I was first told about IPS,
I began to visit the office
frequently to find out what was
happening in Uruguay" and in the
region, he said.
IPS, which was founded by
Argentine-Italian journalist
Roberto Savio, has a network of
400 reporters today,
three-quarters of whom are in
the developing South, who cover
150 countries and more than 230
cities. The agency offers news
articles in 17 languages,
including Swahili, Hindi and
Thai.
More than 3,000 media outlets
and thousands of academic
institutions and civil society
organisations are clients of IPS,
which is an international,
not-for-profit association of
professional journalists and
others in the field of
communications.
On Wednesday, IPS also
celebrated the 10th anniversary
of Tierramérica, a specialised
weekly news supplement on the
environment and sustainable
development published by 20
newspapers in 11 countries in
Latin America.
Tierramérica, which also
produces a weekly radio
programme broadcast by some 400
community, commercial and
cultural stations, is a
cooperative project of the
United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) and the United
Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The UNDP representative in
Uruguay, Pablo Mandeville, said
Tierramérica's success over the
past 10 years demonstrates the
value of the publication, as an
instrument of dialogue and
debate of environmental issues
in the region.
Federico Fasano, the director of
the daily newspaper La República,
which publishes Tierramérica in
Uruguay, stressed the
"multi-media" nature of the
product and its ability to "give
a voice to so many actors who
have an influence on
environmental policy-making."
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