The Media Missionaries

5. LATIN AMERICA (CONTINUED)

KEY MEDIA DEVELOPMENT ORGANIZATIONS IN LATIN AMERICA

1. Centro Latinamerico de Periodismo (CELAP) http://www.celap.net in Panama. See case study, p. 36. Contact: Mirabel Cuervo de Paredes (mcdeparedes@celap.net)

2. Centro de Periodistas de Investigacion, A.C. (IRE-Mexico) (http://investigacion.org.mx) in Mexico City is supported by a $300,000 grant from the McCormick Tribune Foundation for 2000-2003. The Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) set this up with MTF funding at the request of Mexican journalists in 1995. IRE-Mexico would like to find a better home. This organization was an immediate hit and has become popular outside Mexico, including Central America, Colombia, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile, Peru and Brazil, where speakers are paid for training. The goal is to create and expand a network of journalists and academics to cooperate in investigating news stories. In addition to newsroom and Internet training and evening discussions with policymakers and journalists, IRE-Mexico sponsors an annual conference on coverage of US-Mexico border issues. Contact: Executive Director Pedro Armendares, formerly an investigative reporter with La Jornada, an experienced teacher who is completely trilingual.

3. InterAmerican Press Association (IAPA) in Miami (http://www.sipiapa.org) is one of the most important Latin American press organizations, which most Americans turn to first when working to assist Latin American print journalists. For years the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Freedom Forum and others have helped Latin Americans through IAPA. They do training and fight against outmoded laws that criminalize defamation and an avalanche of frivolous litigation that hounds newspapers in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Jamaica, Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, Paraguay and Uruguay. They say there is a "damages industry" of spurious emotional distress complaints against journalists. Contacts: Ricardo Trotti, Julio Munoz in Miami.

However, this is a publisher's organization, rather than a professional editors' or journalists' organization. It is a club of owners. It's engaged in some causes, but not others. If one of the critical issues is the failure of owners to support investigative journalism, this may not be the organization to challenge that culture.

The IAPA Press Institute, run by Ricardo Trotti in Miami (formerly in Reston, Va.), has for many years offered a respected training program covering everything from reporting and editing to selling ads. These programs were supported by the Freedom Forum for the past eight years for about $25,000 to $50,000 (20) a year. One $175,000 IAPA project, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, is to accredit Latin American journalism schools.

IAPA's "Impunity Project" got the Guatemalan government to accept responsibility for the disappearance and murder of Guatemalan journalist Irma Flaquer in 1980, and now her family is being compensated and a street is being named after her. The project is attempting to unravel government complicities in a number of journalists' deaths, and has brought 15 cases to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights.

IAPA's Chapultepec Declaration posits that freedom of expression is "fundamental to the survival of democracy and civilization in our hemisphere. Not only is this freedom a bulwark and an antidote against every abuse of authority, it is society's lifeblood." McCormick Tribune Foundation is the sole donor to the Chapultepec project, giving $1.725 million for 1996-2000 for national forums to promote the declaration in each country of the Americas, and award an annual prize. MTF in 1999 gave IAPA another $2.3 million for a new headquarters in Miami. The Freedom Forum plans to continue funding for its library at this site.

4. ICFJ, Knight Fellows. (http://www.icfj.org) ICFJ has sent more than 25 U.S. media professionals to Latin America over the past seven years, to do training and consulting projects for up to nine months at a time. ICFJ's press freedom seminars in Latin America and the Knight fellowships program, sending Americans overseas to help international media, are excellent. "I was skeptical about the freedom of expression seminars but they ended up being a very good experience," says Prof. Alves. Contact: ICFJ's Vice President Whayne Dillehay is highly experienced and knowledgeable about all aspects of international media development. McCormick Tribune Foundation has sponsored ICFJ's Americas Program (more than $1.5 million since 1996, $897,000 for 1999-2002), headed by Panamanian journalist Luis Botello in Washington.

The first 3-year project was a continent-wide effort to promote ethical codes and professional journalism standards; it produced a training video, "Journalism Ethics: The New Debate" (in three languages).

The second 3-year project involves single-country conferences for some 20 local journalists, targeting a few well-known editors but primarily reaching working journalists from more remote cities and towns who are not the "usual suspects" to be invited to such gatherings. The team of presenters often includes ICFJ's Luis Botello, press-freedom attorney Fernando Guier or Gregoria Badeni, an expert in local laws, and Pedro Armendares of IRE-Mexico or Rosental Alves of the University of Texas at Austin.

"Unlike the earlier MTF-funded initiative on journalism ethics, which held 4 conferences that were meant for journalists gathered from several countries each, the idea here is to focus first on journalists from a single country, with the idea that at some future date those who emerge as the 'leaders' from these earlier conferences might be gathered for a conference on press-freedom issues," said MTF's Mark Hallett. "Part of the success of this initiative is the way that ICFJ's many tentacles help out-Knight Fellows in a given country help scope out the terrain prior to the conference, ICFJ's IJNet helps to promote the conferences as well as the listserv, etc."

5. Nieman, Shorenstein, Stanford, University of Michigan, and other fellowships in the U.S. are excellent, exposing Latin American journalists for extended periods of learning and interaction with American journalists and scholarship. They also help some journalists have "time away from danger," added Cecilia Alvear, a former Nieman fellow who is president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. Harvard's nine-month Nieman program is the most prestigious journalism fellowship in America; Stanford and Michigan offer comparable journalist sabbaticals; the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy invites fellows to do research and teaching while they spend a semester at Harvard.

6. Periodistas in Argentina offers defense for free press, denunciations of violence against journalists, etc. Contact: Horacio Verbitsky, who just received an award from the Committee to Protect Journalists. horacio.verbitsky@attglobal.net.

7. Instituto Prensa y Sociedad (IPYS) (http://www.geocities.com/ipyspe) in Lima, Peru, monitors attacks on press freedom in the Andean region and provides advocacy and legal support on journalists' behalf. Mark Hallett of MTF viewed them as "a model of the local press-freedom monitoring group." MTF provides $100,000 for 2000-2002. IPYS was an important press-freedom advocate throughout the Fujimori 90s. IPYS has expanded to Colombia. Contact: Ricardo Uceda, former head of the investigative unit at El Comerica. (21)

8. Northwestern Media Management Center (http://www.mediamanagement.northwestern.edu) Northwestern has trained many of Latin America's top newspaper publishers. This is a business school operation, rather than professional training about journalism. Based in Evanston, Ill. at Northwestern University, the Media Management Center hosts conferences for managers and executives of newspapers. The MMC was founded in 1989 with a Knight grant.

The Creighton Scholars Fellowship Program, sponsored by McCormick Tribune Foundation, brings two Latin American news executives to MMC's advanced executive program each year. MTF is funding them with $250,000 from 1999-2004.

The MMC, headed by Mike Smith, has energetic networking and collaborations with IAPA (cost and revenue studies, Miami-based program in Spanish, etc.) They also run a management conference for Latin American newspapers each year in Central or South America.

The MMC sets financial benchmarks for newspapers in Latin America and tries to help owners transition their newspapers from the model of family ownership and political organs to professionally managed community voices.

9. Institute of International Education Journalist Exchange has for the past 9 years sponsored a journalists' exchange among the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It was funded by the Freedom Forum, so its future may be clouded.

10. Committee to Protect Journalists (http://www.cpj.org) has a grant of $300,000 for 1999-2003 from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to monitor and fight attacks against journalists in the Americas. Another grant of $35,000 is granted for 20001 to support editorial coverage of press freedom in the Americas. The CPJ Americas program does not include training per se, but MTF finds CPJ "invaluable" in its ability to verify cases of attacks against journalists and to put an international spotlight on the plight of local journalists. CPJ has increasingly been incubating local press freedom monitors, helping to create such groups as IPYS in Peru and Periodistas in Argentina.

Because the current CPJ Americas director, Marylene Smeets, is an attorney, work on the legal front has increased in recent years. With the Tinker Foundation, CPJ held a Buenos Aires conference on "desacato" laws last year. CPJ has talked about creating an endowment and purchasing a building or permanent space.

11. Inter-American Institute of Human Rights (http://www.iidh.ed.cr) in San Jose, Costa Rica, has $280,000 for 2000-2002 from the McCormick Tribune Foundation to promote press freedom among legislators, judges, journalists, and civil-sector leaders in Paraguay and Venezuela. The idea was to target a group where there might be some progress, in two countries that sorely needed an infusion of awareness about press freedom and the law. Participants met several times over an 18-month period, working on practical projects in between. For example, a Paraguayan judge worked on a potential revamp of the country's press-freedom law and presented it to the group at the second gathering.

This project is currently stalled because MTF could not continue support when the current round ended in November, 2001, and project head Javier Mariezcurrena left to go to the University of Notre Dame to work for Juan Mendes. Staff would like to extend this program in Venezuela, where it was well received despite the current political climate, and in other countries such as Chile and Panama. (22)

12.Inter-American Dialogue (IAD) (http://www.thedialogue.org) in Washington, D.C. sponsors three annual conferences for high-level policymakers, journalists and civil-sector leaders to promote press freedom throughout the Americas. MTF has funded them with $210,000 for 1999-2002. The IAD is turning up ideas that MTF finds interesting but cannot fund.

13. Alfred Friendly Foundation (http://www.pressfellowships.org) in Washington, D.C. includes eight Latin American fellows each year sponsored by the McCormick Tribune Foundation ($165,000 for 2000-2004).

14. James M. Cox Jr. Center for International Mass Communication, Training and Research, Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia, http://www.grady.uga.edu/coxcenter/) supports independent media around the world, including Latin America and Eastern Europe. Works with local partners, expecting a financial or in-kind contribution from them for the project. They host Latin American and other journalists in Athems, Ga. and offer interactive courses on the Internet. They have a forthcoming book on copyright issues. Contact: Lee Becker.

15. International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX) (http://www.ifex.org) is global, including efforts in the Americas (with $140,000 from MTF for 1999-2001) to produce electronic alerts when journalists are attacked and to offer technical and institutional assistance. Canadian-run IFEX has helped to create local monitoring entities in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Mexico and elsewhere. There is training for locals at an annual conference, and when staff visit journalists in Latin America.

16. International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF) (http://www.IWMF.org) has a new Latin America initiative. It held workshops in Nicaragua, Argentina and Ecuador in 2001 to define its objectives. Contact: Sherry Rockey.

17. AMARC (http://www.amarc.org) is an international ngo been active in Latin America and Africa, where it serves the community radio movement. It says it has 3,000 members in 106 countries.