Liberian Journalists attending the conference include, Managing Editor of the NEW VISION Newspaper, Josephus Moses Gray; Augustus Fallah, Chairperson, Liberia Editors Association; Robert Kpadeh , Publisher/Secretary General Publishers Association Of Liberia and Crispin Tulay, Program Officer/Senior Staff Writer Newspaper In Education Liberia.
Four top senior Liberian Newspaper Editors are in the South African city of Cape Town, attending the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum, which brings together 1,600 senior editors, managers, executives and stakeholders.
The participants represent 105 countries from the seven continents while the Congress and Forum bring together each year publishers, editors, chief executives and managers from all levels of the newspaper industry.
The four Liberian editors include the Managing Editor of the NEW VISION Newspaper, Josephus Moses Gray; Augustus Fallah, Chairperson, Liberia Editors Association; Robert Kpadeh , Publisher/Secretary General Publishers Association Of Liberia and Crispin Tulay, Program Officer/Senior Staff Writer Newspaper In Education Liberia.
The theme of the 60th World Newspaper Congress is ‘Shaping the Future of the Newspaper’ and the theme of the 14th World Editors Forum is ‘Quality Journalism in the Digital Age’. The Congress and Forum bring together each year publishers, editors, chief executives and managers from all levels of the newspaper industry.
The Forum is organized by the World Editors Forum, the organization for editors-in-chief within the World Association of Newspapers, which organizes the Congress. Events from the Congress and the Forum are held separately in Cape Town but members are free to attend any events from both conferences.
A diverse series of roundtable seminars take place this week and features Bill Keller, the Executive Editor of The New York Times, Olav Mugass, the CEO of Aftenposten in Norway while a host of other newspaper leaders who are attending the World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo, will be present for the events.
The roundtables -- on digital media, press freedom and young reader strategies -- are a regular feature of the eve of the Congress, Forum and Expo, the annual meetings of the world’s press organised by the World Association of Newspapers.
The conference which formally opened on Monday, June 4 at the Cape Town National Conference Center, with a Chinese journalist serving a 10-year prison sentence for revealing his government’s orders to newspapers to censor their reporting of the Tiananmen Square massacre anniversary, has been awarded the 2007 Golden Pen of Freedom, the annual press freedom prize from the World Association of Newspapers.
The award to Shi Tao, who was imprisoned after the American search engine company Yahoo provided information to the Chinese authorities that led to his arrest, was made today, 4 June, the 18th anniversary of the massacre."Even today, most Chinese know nothing about what happened that day. The Communist regime continues to prevent the Chinese media from talking and writing about it openly and honestly and will go to great lengths to silence any such revelations and to severely punish those who make them," said George Brock, President of the World Editors Forum, who presented the award.
"Shi Tao, whom we are honouring here today, has learned this to his own great cost. He revealed what the state did not want known and he pays the price in prison today," he said.The award was accepted by the mother of the jailed journalist, Gao Qinsheng, who said her son was "a direct victim of the shackles of press freedom."
The Golden Pen Award "proves that my son is indeed innocent. He has only done what a courageous journalist should do. That is why he has got the support and the sympathy from his colleagues all over the world, who uphold justice, the colleagues who have been concerned about Shi Tao who has lost his freedom, been locked up in prison," she said. The Golden Pen Award was presented Monday during the opening ceremonies of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum, the global meetings of the world’s press, which drew more than 1,600 newspaper executives and editors from 105 countries to Cape Town, South Africa.
WAN also announced a campaign to win the release of Mr Shi and dozens of other journalists and cyber-dissidents in Chinese jails, to keep the cases in the forefront of news coverage in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics next year.
Mr Shi is serving a 10-year sentence on charges of "leaking state secrets" for writing an e-mail about media restrictions in the run-up to the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 2004. The e-mail was picked up by several overseas internet portals -- and also by Chinese authorities, with the assistance of Yahoo. The internet service provider gave state security authorities information that allowed them to trace the message to a computer he used at the newspaper where he worked, the Dangdai Shang Bao (Contemporary Business News).
"How the Chinese authorities traced this e-mail, and discovered that Shi Tao was the author, is a cautionary tale with widespread implications for on-line privacy, and for the way that western communications companies do business in their understandably difficult dealings with repressive regimes," said Mr Brock.
"While those who do business around the globe must often deal with non-democratic countries, we believe that new media companies that provide more and more of the means for global communications have a special responsibility" he said. "They have an obligation to ensure that the basic human rights of their users will be protected, and they must carefully guard against becoming accomplices in repression."
Mr Shi distributed information that had been sent to his newspaper by the Chinese authorities, warning journalists of the dangers of "social destabilisation" and risks linked to the return of certain dissidents to China for the commemoration of the massacre, in which democracy supporters, mostly students, were brutally gunned down by Chinese troops on 4 June 1989.
Mr Shi, a poet as well as a journalist, had published numerous essays and political problems relating to social problems in China on pro-democracy web sites. He worked as a reporter, editor and division director at several newspapers, joining the Contemporary Business News in 2004 as an editorial director and assistant to its Chief Editor. He resigned from the paper in May 2004 to become a free-lance journalist and was arrested six months later.
He is one of dozens of journalists and cyber-dissidents in prison in China, the world’s largest jailer of journalists.The award to Shi Tao has already provoked the ire of the Chinese authorities. The official China Newspaper Association has demanded the award be withdraw because a Chinese court "handled the case according to law and made the appropriate sentence" and that China’s constitution protects press freedom.
"We are not impressed by this argument," said Mr Brock. "If the law makes it possible to send a journalist to jail in such a case, the law should be abolished immediately since it contradicts every conceivable international standard and convention on freedom of information and human rights.
"As for the claim that the Chinese constitution protects freedom of speech, this guarantee is nothing more than a mere fiction. Such freedoms simply do not exist in China. Indeed, if they did, Shi Tao would not be in prison today, nor would dozens of other journalists."
WAN, the global association of the newspaper industry, has awarded the Golden Pen annually since 1961. Past winners include Argentina’s Jacobo Timerman (1980), South Africa’s Anthony Head (1986), China’s Dai Qing (1992), Vietnam’s Doan Viet Hoat of Vietnam (1998), Zimbabwe’s Geoffrey Nyarota (2002), and Sudan’s Mahjoub Mohamed Salih (2005). Last year’s winner was Akbar Ganji of Iran.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups. Meanwhile, the absence of press freedom in many African nations is inhibiting development on the continent and depriving millions of Africans of their rights, the President of the World Association of Newspapers said Monday.
"In dozens of African nations, political transformation has been deeply flawed, if not stillborn, because of the failure to secure one of the absolutely fundamental conditions for full, living democracy and pluralism - I’m talking, of course, about freedom of the press, which continues to be violated on a daily basis across the length and breadth of this continent," said Gavin O’Reilly at the opening of the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town, South Africa.
"This freedom, whose defence and promotion was set by the founding fathers of WAN as our first and over-riding mission, is not only a human right to which every African man and woman is entitled, but a pre-condition for the establishment of good governance and durable economic, political, social and cultural development," he said.
"It is also, I would contend, a powerful tool in the fight against corruption, famine, poverty, violent conflict, disease and lack of education - afflictions of which African people’s have much more than their fair share."
Addressing more than 1,600 senior newspaper executives from 109 countries, in the presence of South African President Thabo Mbeki, officials of the African Union, foreign ambassadors and nearly 400 African newspaper professionals from 43 countries, Mr O’Reilly said: "The daily persecution and harassment of the free press must cease. But press freedom must also be much higher on the agenda of African development proposals and programmes."
"This gives me the opportunity to pay homage to the men and women of the press in Africa and to express our deep admiration for their treasures of imagination, courage and resilience, that they demonstrate on a daily basis to bring out their publications, often under very difficult conditions, and so play their role in keeping democratic debate alive," he said.
It is the first time that WAN has organised the annual meetings of the world’s press in Africa, though the organisation has held numerous other events on the continent. It marked the occasion with the Declaration of Table Mountain, which calls on African states to recognize the indivisibility of press freedom and to respect their commitments to international and African protocols upholding this freedom and independence.
Mr O’Reilly noted that the text calls for the elimination of criminal defamation and "insult" laws, which outlaw criticism of politicians and those in authority. He called the laws "the greatest durable scourge of press freedom in Africa." Besides, Leaders of the world’s press, meeting in South Africa this week, have called on African governments "as a matter of urgency" to abolish all laws that restrict press freedom, and have pledged to increase "aggressive and persistent campaigning against press freedom violations and restrictions in Africa."
The Declaration of Table Mountain, approved on the eve of the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum in Cape Town, calls on African governments to release jailed journalist, abolish draconian press laws and recognise the importance of press freedom for economic, political and social development.
"In country after country, the African press is crippled by a panoply of repressive measures, from jailing and persecution of journalists to the widespread scourge of ’insult’ laws and criminal defamation which are used, ruthlessly, by governments to prevent critical appraisal of their performances and to deprive the public from information about their misdemeanours," said the declaration. More than 1,600 newspaper publishers, chief editors, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives and their guests from 105 countries are meeting in Cape Town through Wednesday at the World Newspaper Congress and World Editors Forum, the global meetings of the world’s press organised by the World Association of Newspapers.
The Declaration of Table Mountain, named for the prominent landmark overlooking Cape Town, was endorsed by the boards of the Paris-based WAN and the WEF, which represent 18,000 newspapers world-wide.
The declaration: calls for African governments to abolish insult laws and all other laws that restrict press freedom "as a matter of urgency." calls for the immediate release of all jailed journalists and the return of journalists who have been forced into exile; condemns the repression of African media by censorship and "the use of other devices such as levying import duties on newsprint and printing materials and withholding advertising."
Also calls on governments to promote "the highest standards of press freedom" and to provide constitutional guarantees of freedom of the press; calls on the African Union immediately to include press freedom and independent media in the criteria for "good governance" in the African Peer Review Mechanism; calls on international institutions to promote progress in press freedom in Africa through such steps as assisting newspapers in legal defence, skills development and access to capital and equipment.
"WAN and WEF make this declaration from Table Mountain at the southern tip of Africa in an earnest appeal to all Africans to recognise that the political and economic progress they seek flourishes in a climate of freedom and where the press is free and independent of governmental, political or economic control."
The Declaration will be presented to UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon with the request that it be presented to the General Assembly, to UNESCO Director-General Koïchiro Matsuura, with a request that it be placed before the General Conference, and to African Union Commission Chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare with a request that it be distributed to all members of the AU and endorsed by the organisation at its next summit meetings of heads of state.
The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 77 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.
Newspaper circulations world-wide rose 2.3 percent in 2006 while newspaper advertising revenues showed substantial gains, the World Association of Newspapers announced today (Monday).
WAN said global newspaper sales were up +2.3 percent over the year, and had increased +9.48 percent over the past five years. Newspaper sales increased year-on-year in Asia, Europe, Africa, South America, with North America the sole continent to register a decline.
When free dailies are added to the paid newspaper circulation, global circulation increased +4.61 percent last year, and +14.76 percent over the past five years. Free dailies now account for nearly 8 percent percent of all global newspaper circulation and 31.94 percent in Europe alone.
Advertising revenues in paid dailies were up +3.77 percent last year from a year earlier, and up +15.77 percent over five years, WAN said. No figures were available for free daily advertising revenues.
"Newspapers in developing markets continue to increase circulation by leaps and bounds, and in mature markets are showing remarkable resilience against the onslaught of digital media. Even in many developed nations the industry is maintaining or even increasing sales," said Timothy Balding, Chief Executive Officer of the Paris-based WAN . "At the same time, newspapers are exploiting to the full all the new opportunities provided by the digital distribution channels to increase their audiences.
"As the digital tide gathers strength, it is remarkable that the press in print continues to be the media of preference for the majority of readers who want to remain informed."
Mr Balding added: "These results are even better than we expected from provisional data available a few months ago. .Once again we can see that far from being an industry in decline, as the ill-informed and short-sighted continue to contend, newspapers are alive and well and exhibiting enormous innovation and energy to maintain their place as the news media of preference for hundreds of millions of people daily".
The new data, from WAN’s annual survey of world press trends, was released to more than 1,600 publishers, editors and other senior newspaper executives from 109 countries attending the 60th World Newspaper Congress and 14th World Editors Forum in Cape Town, South Africa. The main figures showed that global circulations and advertising revenues are increasing world-wide. In addition, the free daily market is giving renewed impetus to newspaper reading, and newspaper web traffic continues high growth.
