(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 15 November 2006 IAPA press release: Costa Rica’s President Arias calls during IAPA conference on ethics for a press that’s pluralist, independent, responsible, and constructive The Nobel Peace Prize winner urges media role in reducing military expenditure, controlling transfer of weapons, halting global warming SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (November […]
(IAPA/IFEX) – The following is a 15 November 2006 IAPA press release:
Costa Rica’s President Arias calls during IAPA conference on ethics for a press that’s pluralist, independent, responsible, and constructive
The Nobel Peace Prize winner urges media role in reducing military expenditure, controlling transfer of weapons, halting global warming
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica (November 15, 2006) – Costa Rica’s President Oscar Arias today called on the news media and the Inter American Press Association (IAPA) to defend democracy as a principal objective, saying that, in doing so, more important than having a free press is the need to have a press that is pluralist, independent, responsible and constructive.
In this way Arias, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987, laid the groundwork for discussions that the IAPA is holding here in its Hemisphere Conference on Journalism Values in the 21st Century. The event opened this morning with a debate on ethics in journalism, with more than 100 prominent figures and experts in a number of areas of specialization from throughout the western hemisphere, and invited participants from elsewhere in the world taking part.
“Democracy needs not only a free press,” Arias declared, “but an independent press, in regard to not only political power but also economic power. If we are to passionately defend press freedom, then let us concern ourselves with being consistent in our liberal advocacy. Let us show distrust of any kind of excessive concentration of power, and not only that in which the government engages.”
The IAPA’s president, Rafael Molina, in introducing Arias said that “it is very important for our organization that emphasis be placed on the ethical aspect of journalism, which is, above any technological progress and advancement of the media, the core and strength of press freedom and free speech.”
Molina, editor of the Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, daily newspaper El Día, was joined at the top table by Colombian Vice President Francisco Santos; the chairman of the IAPA’s Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, Gonzalo Marroquín, from Prensa Libre, Guatemala City, Guatemala, and Chapultepec Committee Chairman Bartolomé Mitre, from La Nación, Buenos Aires, Argentina, among others.
The debate during the conference, which is being held through tomorrow and is funded by the Robert R. McCormick Tribune Foundation as part of the IAPA’s Chapultepec Project, is focused on some burning issues for the press, among them: impartiality and fairness; the role of the news media in a free society; editorial independence and conflicts of interest in relations with advertisers and/or government; news leaks and protection of sources; the quest for the truth and accuracy, and the question of privacy and public figures.
In much of his speech Arias was very explicit in referring to the responsible role that democracy requires of the news media. “For democracy to realize its full potential for the building of freer and fairer societies, then, it is equally important that together with a free press we be able to form a pluralist, independent, responsible and constructive press,” he said. Describing himself as “a Costa Rican lover of freedom,” Arias said that he hoped legislative bill number 15974 on freedom of expression and press freedom would be given priority treatment in the Legislative Assembly. “This initiative, which merits careful review, contains many of the keys for improving the legal protection of press freedom in Costa Rica and thus enriching our democracy.”
Arias took the opportunity also to underscore “the importance and value of freedom of the press in the modern world, in which the news media and press freedom should be used not only to denounce corruption but also to educate and to pass on civic values so as to help develop humankind and make better citizens and better communities.”
In this regard, and going into greater detail on his political views, Arias said that there are three causes that should be a priority for society and on which it was for the media to promote dialogue and debate – “reducing military expenditure, regulating the transfer of weapons, and halting global warming.”
“Only in that way will the battle for the expansion of press freedom have full meaning, when those engaged in it commit themselves to much greater causes than press freedom itself, only when the prodigious power of the written word, the voice and the image are put at the service of a reconciled humanity,” he declared.
Several times during his 30-minute speech, Arias recognized the merit and work of the IAPA, stating that the organization “is one of those mainly responsible for Latin America, despite all its problems, today speaking a different language than it did in the past. Today our region speaks more the language of freedom than that of repression, more of hope than of fear, more of the people’s dignity than of government’s absolute power, more the language of enlightenment than that of obscurantism.”
In a special appeal to the members of the IAPA and recognizing the role of the organization in the defense of democracy for the past six decades, he said that there is now a new challenge. “It is essential that you understand that democracy is asking for more; it is also asking you to be pluralists, to be independent, not only of the political powers-that-be but just independent, to be aware of the immense responsibility that goes along with your influence, and to make a commitment to use freedom of the press to build free society,” he said.
This evening, Federico Mayor Zaragoza, former director general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and founding president of the Culture of Peace Foundation, is scheduled to provide a summary of the main points raised during the day which will serve as orientation for the discussions that will continue through tomorrow evening, when the conference comes to an end.
