EDITORIAL
Enemy of a free press: The World Economic Forum
> BY ROMAN ROLLNICK
Copyright © 2002 by The Earth Times. All rights reserved

Besides constituting a clear violation, on American soil, of the US First Amendment upholding the freedom of the press, the forum, founded by the Swiss-German impresario Klaus Schwab, has further damaged an already tarnished reputation on the way it organises meetings of the world business and political leaders aimed at fostering its dream of a more open and democratic world.

The ban came in the form of a terse e-mail message to Editor-in-Chief Pranay Gupte, from Donna Redel, one of the forum's three managing directors, and herself an American. She gave no reason for the action, other than say: "... It would be best for everyone to have a 'cooling off'period. I recognize that you have a long-standing history of attending the meeting, but the events of the recent past need to recede and for all to re-establish a mutual sense of trust and goodwill." The Earth Times staff are thus denied accreditation.

So the Earth Times will not be welcome in Washington. As of this writing, its editors have no idea whether they will be welcome at the WEF's annual meeting next year in Davos, the Swiss mountain resort which has for 30 years lent its name to the gathering of the world's elite.

Gupte, like his colleagues, was incredulous. He said he also felt insulted by the action because the Earth Times does not have any dispute or differences with the WEF. Indeed, it supports the same goals of "improving the state of the world", as the WEF logo proudly states. It has also been the paper of record at WEF annual meetings providing delegates with a lively in-depth daily coverage. So what went wrong?

Someone, somewhere in the WEF forgot, it is clear now, that the Earth Times is also proudly independent, and that like all reputable media organisations, it sometimes publishes stories and material even its friends and supporters do not like. It is a role from which we cannot waver, and we take pride in it.

And so it came to pass that this year, when the WEF moved it's annual meeting to New York in an expression of solidarity with the city following the Sept. 11 attacks last year, that we published a story on an uproar among the media that the forum had instituted an apartheid-style "caste system" by only admitting a handful of carefully selected journalists to cover their meetings. They left hundreds of other journalists, restricted to a hotel away from the meetings at the Waldorf, to pick up the crumbs from their banquet table. Like lawyers defending the indefensible, we reported with scrupulous accuracy, how many journalists had decided to cut their losses and leave New York, the media capital of the world.

Journalists were angry that the forum had failed, as promised, to broadcast key meetings to them at the neighbouring hotel. This was why, the highlight of the annual meeting on its opening day in February -- a discussion of the world post-Sept. 11 with key American, European, and Arab leaders -- went virtually unreported. The WEF chose instead to broadcast a meeting on artificial intelligence. When the Earth Times ran the story of discrimination under the banner headline, "Media Apartheid", on Feb. 3, WEF officials reacted by attempting to stop distribution of the newspaper, denying its staff access to meetings, and showing an openly hostile attitude towards us which made it still more difficult to work normally.

Such was the furor, that our publisher, Theodore W. Kheel, called a news conference to laud our impact for the cause of freedom of speech, and to say he had decided that action had to be taken against the WEF for violating our first amendment rights. On Feb. 4, the forum spokesman, Charles D. McClean, formerly an award winning producer for NBC News, even sought to physically prevent us from distributing a luncheon invitation by Kheel to journalists for his news conference.

Damaging as the situation had become to the reputation of the WEF -- long branded by anti-globalisation activists as elitist -- the action against us was simply brutish. The media were being treated as they are in a dictatorship -- with contempt. In this context, however, the behaviour was childish. The kind of behaviour, as we wrote, that one comes to expect of people who pay more attention to glittering banquets; people who would never get their shiny shoes dirty in a remote refugee camp. The analogy was made because the WEF's philosophy is to improve the state of the world, and because they therefore have a moral duty to behave better.

Not so, inferred McClean. In a radio panel discussion with this reporter after the summit, he said there simply was not space enough in the Waldorf to accommodate every journalist; neither, he added, was the forum a public organisation like the United Nations or the World Trade Organisation which has to hold itself publicly accountable. By the time the WEF meetings in New York ended, there were more questions at Scwab's final news conference about the treatment of the media than the substance of the meetings themselves. This visibly angered Schwab, who is not used to being asked embarrassing questions in public, especially about the bullying treatment meted out to a "small" publication like ours. McClean said, it was a "nightmare" job he had, and that next year he would have to decide whether to restrict the press even further. The WEF directors have every right to do this because their meetings are private.

But news organisations, like the BBC, CNN, the Financial Times, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeiting, and others questioned this philosophy too. And there, the bad press would have perhaps calmed down, as the men with tan leather briefcases packed up to take their leave of New York.

Weeks went by, and suddenly McClean in a letter to Kheel last week, further sought to justify the WEF's actions. He again repeated the difficulties with accommodating everyone, saying there had been misunderstandings, that the Earth Times had been accredited to the Waldorf, and that even some of its staff had apologised to him over the uproar.

Apologised? We told him at the time we were sorry events had come to such a pass, and that nothing personal was intended by our reporting. We wanted to keep the peace. We had hoped matters could be left there, that the dust would settle and that we would all get together at the next WEF meeting without bad blood. But no-one apologises for straight reporting, and his letter appeared more intended as an attempt to drive a wedge between the publisher, his editor and their staff. Nothing could be further from the truth.

So why are we dredging this up again? Fristly, we believe the WEF needs more public scrutiny than ever given the fact that our elected leaders attend their meetings. Secondly, we are angered and insulted at the ban. And we warn the managing director Donna Redel, who appears through her e-mail message to have taken on the job McClean should be doing, that in this modern, more democratic world, it is highly dangerous to try and shoot the bearer of ill tidings. Beware.