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Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information Shashi Tharoor,
during the panel discussion "The Media as a Force for Change"
3 May 2006
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Friends and Colleagues,
Thank you for your patience. The topic we have chosen to tackle this year in our panel discussion -- the Media as a Force for Change -- is both broad and extremely interesting. A multitude of vital issues fall under its rubric, from the freedom and responsibilities of the press, to the safety and security of journalists, and the role of the media as a catalyst for change and development.
And we are very fortunate to have with us an excellent panel of experts who will, I am confident, probe these issues and more.
Please join me in welcoming Ms. Helene Gosselin, the Director of UNESCO’s New York office; Ms. Ann Cooper, the Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists; Mr. Geoffrey Nyarota, the 2002 UNESCO World Press Freedom Prize laureate; and Mariana Sanchez, Al Jazeera International’s correspondent in Venezuela.
I will invite each of our experts to make a brief presentation, and then we will open up the discussion to questions from the floor.
Prior to taking up the post of Director of UNESCO’s New York office, our first speaker, Helene Gosselin, was responsible for UNESCO’s Caribbean Cluster Office in Kingston, Jamaica, which covers 20 English and Dutch-speaking Caribbean countries. She has also served as Director of UNESCO’s Office of Public Information, Commissioner General for the UN at the World Exposition Expo in Lisbon in 1998 and for Expo 2005, Aichi, Japan.
Hélène, the floor is yours.
[Ms. Gosselin speaks]
Thank you, Hélène.
Now I’d like to give the floor to Ann Cooper, Executive Director of the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Ms. Cooper was an award-winning journalist, filing for a variety of high profile newspapers, radio stations and magazines before joining CPJ in July 1998. Her voice is well known to radio listeners in the United States from her nine years as a correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR), including at the UN where I knew her well. As a journalist she covered many of the major international news stories of the late twentieth century, including the 1989 protests in Tiananmen Square and the 1991 failed coup attempt in Moscow. Ms. Cooper, the floor is yours.
[Ms. Cooper speaks]
Thank you, Ms. Cooper.
Our next panellist is another award-winning journalist.
Mr. Geoffrey Nyarota has been an investigative journalist, a newspaper editor and a media entrepreneur, and was the winner of UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Prize in 2002. He was one of a team of journalists who drafted the famed Windhoek Declaration, which championed a free, independent and pluralistic media for Africa, in 1991, and which World Press Freedom Day commemorates. Eight years later, in 1999, he launched an independent daily newspaper, the Daily News, in Zimbabwe. That paper's printing press was totally destroyed in a bomb explosion in 2001, but the paper never missed a single issue and even won an international award for publishing excellence in 2003.
Mr. Nyarota has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and a research fellow at Harvard’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy, and he is currently Visiting Professor of Political Studies at Bard College in New York. Mr. Nyarota, the floor is yours.
[Mr. Nyarota speaks]
Thank you, Mr. Nyarota.
Our final panellist this morning is Ms. Mariana Sanchez, who has recently joined Al Jazeera International’s Caracas bureau. She is a former news anchor for Panamericana Television whose work has also featured in The Los Angeles Times, The Wall Street Journal Americas, CNN Espanol, Deutche Welle, UNIVISION and Agence France Presse.
Mariana has filed from many conflict zones, including Kosovo, East Timor and United Nations Headquarters, but she won her Emmy for reporting on children and guns in New York City.
Ms. Sanchez, you have the floor.
[Ms. Sanchez speaks]
Thank you.
With that, I’d like to open the floor. I will take several questions or comments before asking each of our panellists to respond to any or all of them.
Please tell us your name and your affiliation before speaking, and keep your remark as brief as possible.
[Q & A]
Please join me in thanking our panellists.
And thank you all for your participation.
Press release>>
Video of the panel discussion>>
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