18 February 2003
IFEX MEMBERS ISSUE STATEMENTS ON INFORMATION SOCIETY SUMMIT
Some are calling it a potential threat to press freedom, while others say it should discuss ways of curbing media concentration. Whatever the views, the World Summit on the Information Society, set to take place in Geneva in December, is generating lots of debate in the free-expression community and IFEX members are among its most vocal participants.
This week, the second Preparatory Committee Meeting began in Geneva, bringing together representatives of government, business and civil society to draft a declaration and action plan to be submitted for approval at the December summit.
Reporters Without Borders (Reporters sans frontières, RSF) has urged the United Nations and government leaders not to let the summit be used as a means of further impeding press freedom on the Internet.
RSF says during previous regional preparatory meetings, it became clear that many governments were planning to use the fight against Internet-based criminal activities as justification for imposing censorship. At these meetings it was also evident that these governments were preventing representatives of civil society and non-governmental organisations from participating, notes RSF.
The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) says the summit presents "a potentially serious threat to press freedom" because some non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are pushing for discussion around "information as a common public good, ethics or implications for economic, social and cultural development."
These are code words for censorship, WPFC says, and the summit should not adopt content rules for the Internet that would restrict online news.
The Inter American Press Association (IAPA) argues that private media outlets, not governments, should bear the sole responsibility for regulating media practices, and states should restrict their role to the distribution and administration of broadcast frequencies assigned to them by the international community.
That view is shared by the International Press Institute and the World Association of Newspapers, all of them members of the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organisations (CCPFC).
In a November 2002 statement, the organisations said those who seek answers to the so-called "digital divide" forget that previous communication technologies, such as radio and television, started in advanced, more developed countries and spread throughout the world as a result of "natural market processes."
In contrast, the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) says the democratic objectives of the information society, such as expanding world-wide access to the Internet, cannot be achieved by relying solely on the global marketplace.
"A market only approach will lead to greater media concentration and undue influence by global media conglomerates. News and information sources are already dominated by northern media companies and the voices of people from the south are rarely heard," IFJ argues.
In a position paper released last week, IFJ stresses that poverty reduction and improvements in public services, including public media, are essential if the information society is to have lasting meaning for people around the world. The exclusion of the poor from access to information technologies requires a political commitment to universal service and access, says IFJ.
"Everyone must have easy and affordable access to broadband services to obtain employment, enjoy leisure, receive information and exercise citizenship."
ARTICLE 19, the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) and the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC) echo that view.
"Technology itself cannot create change," they say. Numerous barriers to Africa's participation in the information society confront the continent, including illiteracy and a limited access to communications infrastructure, "all of this in an increasingly globalised world that favours the world's stronger economies."
In partnership with the Association of Progressive Communications (APC) and Southern Africa for Communications and Development (SACOD), ARTICLE 19, MISA and AMARC have published "Our Side of the Divide," a document outlining African civil society perspectives on the digital divide in the context of the information society.
Read the report here:
www.misa.org
For more information on the Summit, go to:
- WSIS:
www.itu.int/wsis
- UNESCO:
http://portal.unesco.org
Visit these links:
- RSF:
www.rsf.org
- WPFC:
www.wpfc.org
- IAPA:
www.sipiapa.com
- CCPFC Statement:
www.freemedia.at
- IFJ:
www.ifj.org
- ARTICLE 19:
www.article19.org
- AMARC Africa:
www.africa.amarc.org/
- International Federation of Library Associations:
www.ifla.org
- APC:
www.apc.org
- SACOD:
www.sacod.org.za/
- Communication Rights in the Information Society:
www.crisinfo.org
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