Address by Mr Koichiro Matsuura on the occasion of the World Congress of News Agencies

2004-24-09 (Moscow)

 

Mr President,
Mr Director-General of ITAR-TASS,
Excellencies,
Distinguished Participants,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

am very pleased to be with you in Moscow today and to have this opportunity to address you at this event, which allows us also to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of ITAR-TASS, one of the foremost news agencies in the world. ITAR-TASS deserves our warm congratulations and best wishes on this memorable occasion.

I am very pleased to meet once again with President Putin, but I must say that my heart is heavy with sorrow. The terrible incident in Beslan earlier this month, in which so many young and innocent lives were lost, has deeply affected the whole world. On behalf of UNESCO and in my own name, I would like once again to extend my sincere condolences to the victims of this tragic event, to their families and friends, to their communities and, indeed, to all of the citizens of the Russian Federation.

Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

This gathering of news agencies at the global level might best be seen as a platform for dialogue and the exchange of ideas, information and experience among some of the world’s leading news providers. This event provides a useful forum for conducting professional debate on issues of vital interest to news agencies. Freedom of expression and the free flow of information are two such issues in this globalizing era.

It is an era in which the relation between media freedom and democracy has never been closer. Editorial independence, unfettered access to information and rigorous professional standards are especially important for news agencies since they provide the news material and footage for so many other media outlets, particularly those lacking the resources to be present in the world’s hot-spots, to perform investigative reporting or to cover issues that require large staff deployments or special knowledge. If news agencies did not exist, we would have to invent them!

As you know, UNESCO is a specialized agency of the United Nations system that has particular responsibilities regarding mass communication and "the free flow of ideas by word and image". We take these responsibilities seriously and, over the years, we have done our utmost to defend freedom of expression, media freedom, media pluralism and media development. As is appropriate for an intergovernmental organization, our work has been undertaken through processes of cooperation and solidarity. A case in point is the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC). I am pleased to point out that the Russian Federation is a member of the Bureau of the IPDC Intergovernmental Council. Also, it is through the IPDC framework that the Russian Federation provides twenty scholarships each year for a course on news media technologies for the benefit of countries in the Asia and Europe sub-regions. ITAR-TASS, please note, provides the actual training.

UNESCO’s collaboration with the Russian Federation is also channelled through the Information for All Programme. The Russian Federation is a member of the Programme’s Intergovernmental Council and there is an active National IFAP Committee under the chairmanship of Mr Evgeny Kuzmin. In June of this year, the committee organized a conference on UNESCO’s Information for All Programme on the theme of "universal access to information". By all accounts, it was a useful and productive meeting.

In recent years, UNESCO has been deeply engaged with the processes of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In the preparatory meetings leading up to the Geneva Summit in December 2003, UNESCO elaborated upon the concept of "knowledge societies", maintaining that social, cultural and institutional dimensions must be fully integrated into the debate as well as technological and infrastructural aspects. Furthermore, we consistently argued that knowledge societies should be conceived as plural, variable and open to democratic choice.

Underpinning our approach to the WSIS process was a set of four inter-linked principles rooted in the origins and character of the Organization: freedom of expression; equal access to education; universal access to information, including a strong public domain of information; and the preservation and promotion of cultural diversity, including multilingualism.

I was immensely gratified that the Geneva Summit recognized the key role of these principles in the building of inclusive knowledge societies. The main task now, of course, is to bring about the actual enjoyment of those basic freedoms and rights in practice. I firmly believe that the freedom of news media, including news agencies, as well as their pluralism are vital in this matter. Their freedom cannot be left at an abstract level but must take concrete form in the daily activities of media professionals and media organizations. This is why UNESCO is so keen, through its own work and through its encouragement of media partners, to build and strengthen media capacities, especially through the training of journalists and other media professionals.

At this moment, we are located in the transition between the Geneva and Tunis Summits of the WSIS process. I am pleased to inform you that, with a view to clarifying the next steps and key issues, an international conference will be held in St Petersburg in May 2005. The idea of holding this conference was launched at the meeting of the High Council of Culture and Arts, chaired by President Putin, that I attended in Moscow last November. Organized by the Russian National Committee for the Information for All Programme and the Ministry of Culture and Communications, and convened under the auspices of President Putin and UNESCO, the conference will have the following title: "UNESCO Between Two Phases of the World Summit on the Information Society". The WSIS Executive Secretariat has accorded this conference the status of "WSIS Thematic Meeting". For its part, UNESCO will focus on the question of "cultural diversity in knowledge societies", a subject of topical interest given the fact that UNESCO is preparing a draft preliminary international convention on the protection of the diversity of cultural contents and artistic expressions, which will be submitted for consideration to the next session of the General Conference in autumn 2005. The conference in St Petersburg, therefore, will be a most timely event for several reasons.

Mr President,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

I have given you some examples of UNESCO’s engagement with several dimensions of the information and communication challenges facing the world today. In this task, we always work in partnership with others, notably the national bodies devoted to these areas and the media organizations actively involved. The conference opening today fits into this framework of commitments and activities. Creating a global platform for local, national and regional news agencies to come together and discuss these exciting challenges is a very laudable initiative and it is with great pleasure that UNESCO takes part in launching this dialogue.

Thank you.

Koichiro Matsuura
Director-General of the United Nations Educational,Mbr> Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)