50 years, 50 press freedom heroes
By Tom Winship Posted Sat, Apr 1 2000
This is the time for special dates, special occasions and special recognition. The date: the International Press Institute’s 50th birthday, May 2000. The occasion: the General Assembly in Boston. The recognition: 50 world press heroes of the past 50 years.
What better time is there to single out and reflect upon the leadership, the bravery and the dedication these men and women have shown in the name of a free and open press? They know intrinsically that the first thing tyrants extinguish is a press that tells the truth.
And what better place is there to call the roll of these press patriots than in Boston’s internationally known Faneuil Hall, nicknamed the Cradle of Liberty because it was the meeting place of American patriots on the eve of the Revolutionary War?
IPI is the logical organization to prepare a global roll call of free-press heroes of the last half-century because it is the United Nations of the press. No other organization has representatives in as many nations. Today IPI is a community of some 2,000 of the world’s publishers, editors, producers and reporters representing more than 110 countries. Its mission has been to fight for and to memorialize the 1,206 reporters who, according to the Freedom Forum’s Newseum, have died covering the news since IPI’s inception. It is a lifeline linking journalists of democratic societies with those where press freedom is but a dream.
To fully understand the heartbeat of IPI, the seriousness of its mission and the importance of honoring 50 press heroes, we should recall the highlights of its 50-year history. The call for “an international institute of press and information” first came from a technical commission of UNESCO, not from the press. The report, published in 1947, said the main function of such an institute should be as a “research center on technical and professional problems.” This UNESCO draft, which came from a worldwide membership, made no mention of press freedom or the importance of accuracy and fairness. The drafters did realize, however, that if the institute were to be successful, it would have to be managed by journalists independent of governments. Both UNESCO’s second general assembly and the 1948 UN conference on freedom of information at Geneva endorsed the idea.
The UNESCO initiative was a wake-up call for serious practitioners of the press. It focused the minds of prominent editors on the dangers to personal welfare and press freedom posed by totalitarian countries. At the time a British newspaper said, “(An institute) cannot be successful it if were an institution artificially created and imposed from above by some outside agency. It must be an organic growth within the world of the press.”
Lester Markel, the prominent Sunday editor of The New York Times, answered the call to action. He was the catalyst for organic growth. In short order he brought together in New York 34 editors from 15 countries for an initial discussion. Next he convinced the American Society of Newspaper Editors to establish a five-person commission to study the idea. Soon the editors eased UNESCO out of the picture.
Markel, in his own hand, wrote out the objectives of the new organization, so named the International Press Institute. They were:
* The furtherance and safeguarding of freedom of the press, by which is meant: free access to the news, free transmission of news, free publication of newspapers, free expression of views. * The achievement of understanding amongst journalists and so among peoples. * The promotion of the free exchange of accurate and balanced news among nations. * The improvement of the practices of journalism.Markel soon produced the initial financing to launch the organization, $20,000 from about 20 newspapers. The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations pledged $50,000 and $40,000 a year respectively for the first three years.
With that, IPI officially was born in May 1951. Were it not for subsequent infusions from the chief donors, the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Asia Foundation, IPI might never have survived. But survived it has. It is now the leading global institution dedicated solely to the defense of press freedom. This institution has united print and broadcast executives from more than 100 nations.
IPI’s structure and ongoing campaign for press freedom underscore its qualifications to honor the heroes in the following pages. The organizational structure was, for the most part, set from the start and has changed little. A strong director and secretariat make decisions, which are subject to approval by an executive board. The board represents, as far as possible, all geographic areas. Originally the national committees were conceived as the lifeblood of IPI. This is no longer true in most cases. The buck stops at the director’s door, where today in Vienna the ever-energetic Johann Fritz presides.
For most IPI members, the highlight of the year is the annual General Assembly, which is always held in the most agreeable or newsworthy city in the world.
Rosemary Righter, author of a two-volume history of IPI, says these assemblies “provide workaday editors, in some countries completely operating in isolation, an intellectual dimension to their profession — and a consensus at the highest level of issues of cardinal importance to them.”
Or, as the brilliant first IPI director, E.J.B. (Jim) Rose put it, “the General Assemblies avoided becoming the annual junket they might easily have been and were instead easily established as serious forums for often controversial issues.”
After 10 years of leadership, Rohan Vivett succeeded Rose. Vivett, the former editor of the Adelaide News, had to retire after a wearying 16-month term because of poor health. He initiated IPI’s program of intensive seminars on newspaper editing, an enterprise carried on for many years.
Then came Pen Monsen of The Norwegian Arbeiterbladet, who shepherded the organization through five financially difficult years.
Ernest Meyer was inducted in 1969. He was passionately concerned for journalists who were jailed or prohibited from practicing journalism. During his tenure, IPI decided to permit establishment of national committees in countries wherever press freedoms did not exist.
In 1975 Peter Galliner, formerly of The Financial Times, took charge. He is remembered for a particularly strong secretariat, more research projects and constant official travel to all points of the world.
Johann Fritz, who currently leads IPI activities vigorously and enthusiastically, replaced Galliner in 1993.
The emphasis in IPI activities also has changed since its inception. In the ’50s and ’60s, the emphasis was more on regional seminars and hands-on, free-press journalism. Most notable was the Asia program of newsroom workshops, which was masterminded by the late Tarzie Vittachi, IPI Asian Director from 1960-65.
In those years many IPI seminars were sponsored in both Africa and Asia. Their primary aim was to promote discussion among editors on such issues as disarmament, the nonproliferation treaty and the basic problems of the Atlantic community. In the ’70s and ’80s, IPI activities have centered more on UNESCO’s ill-conceived intrusions into free-press performance, press-government relations and mounting protests against attacks on the press, primarily in less-developed countries.
In recent years, IPI’s focus has been in four areas. First and foremost, IPI is ready to intervene wherever necessary on behalf of journalists or nations where freedom is threatened. This means an active Vienna headquarters is constantly monitoring media activities around the globe. Written protests are the normal first responses, but some of the most important efforts have been on the scene in South America, Turkey and Nigeria, among other places.
Second, each year the institute publishes an authoritative report on the journalists killed in action and the circumstances of the deaths.
Third, IPI publishes the quarterly IPI Report, which chronicles threats to the worldwide media.
Fourth, increasingly elaborate and useful annual assemblies are organized for members to discuss common professional concerns. The planning of each assembly is a two- or three-year undertaking for the secretariat and the host committees. The first General Assembly, held in Paris in 1952, drew 101 editors from 21 countries. The assembly in Taiwan last year drew more than 500 journalists from 70 countries.
IPI has fought for freedom of the press throughout the world for 50 years, but it has not acted alone. Without the strength and courage of our 50 World Press Heroes, IPI would have struggled in vain, and the public would have suffered. In a perfect world, these people would not have been jailed, harassed, exiled, injured or killed. As long as people in power try to repress free speech, we need heroes to confront oppression. For the sake of the world’s citizens, we hope the next 50 years will produce global journalists of a similar caliber.