Community radio stations are not allowed, says the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nor are other community media outlets that want to cover the IMF and World Bank spring 2000 meetings. According to Media Alliance, a San Francisco-based media advocacy organisation, just one week before its spring meeting the IMF has issued letters denying access to […]
Community radio stations are not allowed, says the International Monetary Fund (IMF), nor are other community media outlets that want to cover the IMF and World Bank spring 2000 meetings.
According to Media Alliance, a San Francisco-based media advocacy organisation, just one week before its spring meeting the IMF has issued letters denying access to its meetings to many independent media organisations. This appears to be an attempt to prevent unfavourable media coverage of IMF policies, according to Media Alliance.
WORT-FM, The Boulder Weekly, KAOS radio of Olympia, Washington, CorporateWatch website, and other independent media groups have all been denied access.
“To prevent independent journalists from covering IMF meetings is tantamount to an attack on freedom of the press,” says Andrea Buffa, executive director of Media Alliance. “The IMF might prefer to keep under wraps (issues) like environmental destruction and economic inequality,” she says.
Media Alliance, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and Project Censored are calling on the IMF to immediately clarify its policy on giving press credentials and start crediting independent media journalists.
AMARC joins in this request. AMARC insists that the right to communicate is an extension of the right to freedom of expression under which all journalists are protected.
According to the Independent Media Center, an IMF press office staff person stated that the organisation “does not provide press accreditation to public access TV, community radio, student or academic publications.” It has yet to explain its policy.
16 April 2000 is the first day of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank. Thousands of people will go to Washington, D.C. on this day to demonstrate against these organisations in solidarity with protestors of the World Trade Organisation last November in Seattle.
In solidarity with the progressive organizations noted above, AMARC agrees that it is crucial that the independent journalists who will attend from all over the world have full access to the IMF and World Bank in order to ensure that advocacy and community-based perspectives are represented in the news.
Recommended Action
Send appeal to the IMF press registration office:
– asking for an explanation of why community journalists are denied press credentials
Appeals To
APPEALS TO:
William Murray
IMF Press Office
International Monetary Fund
Washington, DC 20431
Tel: +202 623 7100
Fax: +202 623 6772
E-mail : wmurray@imf.org
If you have been denied press credentials, contact: sheri@speakeasy.org
Please copy appeals to the source if possible.
For further information, contact Elvira Truglia, at the AMARC International Secretariat, 3575 Saint-Laurent Blvd. #611, Montréal, Québec, H2X 2T7, Canada, tel: +514 982 03 51, fax: +514 849 71 29, e-mail: interad@amarc.org, Internet: http://www.amarc.org
