IAPA General Assembly today

EDITORS AND publishers of publications from throughout the Western Hemisphere meet in Washington, DC, today for the 57th General Assembly of the Inter-American Press Association (IAPA), considered a special gathering and a strong response to terrorism.

During the five-day meeting, delegates will review the state of press freedom in the Americas during the last six months.

Danilo Arbilla, IAPA president and editor of Busqueda, a news weekly in Montevideo, Uruguay, said that following the events of September 11 in New York and Washington, DC, holding the association's annual assembly in the US capital, which has a confirmed registration of more than 400 participants representing news companies in 27 countries, "is especially significant because it will be an opportunity to reaffirm our commitment to democracy and rejection of violence in all its forms."

United States President George W. Bush has been invited to the assembly's official opening ceremony, to be held on Monday. Senior officials of the US State Department and other federal government agencies have already confirmed their attendance. There will be a roundtable discussion of aspects of the war on terrorism, and of other topics.

The review of the state of press freedom in the Americas will include accounts of violations reported during the last six months, the murder of 12 journalists in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guate-mala and Mexico, and the existence of current and proposed legislation curtailing freedom of the press in Chile, Nicaragua, Paraguay and Venezuela, in addition to many other major restrictions.

Also to be discussed in the framework of the general assembly will be legal setbacks in the United States, where a journalist remains in jail for having refused to reveal her sources of information, and in Brazil, where huge damage awards by the courts are crippling the work of the news media, even putting their very survival at risk.

Among the scheduled IAPA meeting activities will be the presentation of awards for excellence in journalism, with the Grand Prize for Press Freedom going this year to the Peruvian newspapers El Comercio, La Republica and La Industria de Trujillo and the magazine Caretas for their outstanding battle for press freedom during the regime of ousted President Alberto Fujimori.

IAPA is made up of more than 1,300 member-publications in the Americas. Its headquarters are in Miami, Florida.

Back to Lead Stories