Ordinarily, journalists
are never so uncomfortable as when they
are forced to relinquish their
customary role as news-gatherers because
circumstances have made them news-makers.
That is the position that the staffers
of The Earth Times have been in for
the past few days. And the whole incident
reinforces
the cynical old adage that: "No
good deed goes unpunished."
The
good deed in this case was a superb news story written
for Sunday's edition of the newspaper by Roman Rollnick,
who for years has been helping set standards for good
reporting on three continents--a South African by birth,
he is based in London and is currently working in New
York. Rollnick recognized a huge story that the journalists
around him in the World Economic Forum's press center
had missed: the growing uproar among members of the
press corps about their exclusion from the Waldorf-Astoria,
where the Forum was taking place, while others were
being allowed in.
The
headline was "Media Apartheid: Uproar
grows over 'caste system' undermining Forum news
coverage." In the story, Rollnick reported
that photographers and television crews had been
banned altogether from the meeting and that "some
journalists have decided to cut their losses
and go home without covering the meeting."
What happened next was that Forum officials,
apparently incensed that their policies were
being criticized, confiscated all copies of the
paper that had been put on display in the Waldorf's
public areas. They physically barred an Earth
Times photographer from covering a Forum-related
press conference. They invalidated the badges
of Earth Times reporters and barred further distribution
of the newspaper in the hotel.
Neither
Klaus Schwab, founder and President of the
Forum,
or Charles D. McLean, its press
spokesman, would return the newspaper's telephone
calls and e-mails. However, after Rollnick wrote
a follow-up article documenting these actions,
the Forum relented and said it would allow the
newspaper to be distributed and its staffers
to continue working. At a news conference Monday,
the final day of the meeting, Theodore W. Kheel,
Publisher and Chairman of The Earth Times, called
that action "a triumph for the First Amendment," which
guarantees freedom of speech and of the press.
As of today, we, the reporters and photographers
of The Earth Times, look forward to resuming
our former occupations as news gatherers. With
the Forum over, we will be re-focusing our efforts
on covering the PrepCom for the World Summit
on Sustainable Development--an event far less
glitzy than the World Economic Forum but possibly
of much greater global significance.
The Earth Times has been covering international
conferences and global issues for more than a
decade, since before the Earth Summit in Rio
de Janeiro. In addition to our daily conference
editions, we also publish a monthly magazine
and we produce a daily Web page carrying news
about a range of global issues but focusing on
environment and development--issues that are
of particular interest to the Forum as well.
We are looking forward to covering quite a few
UN conferences in the months ahead: the upcoming
conference in Madrid on Aging, next month's conference
in Monterrey, Mexico on Funding for Development
and, of course, the World Summit on Sustainable
Development, to be held this summer in Johannesburg,
South Africa. And I think I speak for all of
my colleagues at The Earth Times when I say I
hope that we'll be able to focus on gathering
and publishing the news--without being part of
the news ourselves.
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