[WSIS CS-Plenary] Summit CS Media guidelines for comment

Mon Oct 17 12:56:54 BST 2005

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Chrysantus Ayangafac 

Civil Society Watch Intern
CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation
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-----Original Message-----
From: plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org [mailto:plenary-admin at wsis-cs.org] On
Behalf Of Tracey Naughton
Sent: Saturday, October 15, 2005 10:11 PM
To: plenary at wsis-cs.org
Subject: [WSIS CS-Plenary] Summit CS Media guidelines for comment

Dear all,

I have received the guidelines for press events, and proposed operations
plan for civil society media liaison from Francine Lambert at the ITU.
Here they are for comment. 

Tracey Naughton

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15 October 2005 8:26:19 PM:

Dear Tracey,

Many thanks for your response. The function of the person is called
"Media Relations Officer". This is important because the Media Relations
Officer has special access rights and privileges on behalf of a group.
Let me confirm how I see things:

*	the generally agreed code of conduct for journalists as well as
the standard UN rules should be what guide civil society in what they
can do, say and raise. Essentially this means that the purpose of the
press event should be relevant to the Summit's agenda and objectives,
should be consistent with the principles found in the Declaration of
Principles of the first phase of the Summit, not contain material which
the authors know or could reasonably be expected to know is false, or
for which they have failed to take reasonable steps to check the
accuracy of their information. While it is understood that all
accredited entities have the right to circulate viewpoints, critical
comments cannot be defamatory.  They should present comment honestly and
fairly and must make facts and opinions clearly distinguishable, should
not misrepresent or suppress relevant facts and should not distort
facts. What this means in practice will be a judgement call from the
Media Relations Officer. 

*	Civil society press conferences in the Media Centre can either
be one slot of 45 minutes or two slots of 20 minutes daily. If two slots
are chosen, they should be back-to-back but the entity, speakers and
topics can be different. The Media Relations Officer books the press
events directly through the Web after consultation with his/her
constituencies to decide who/what. 

*	The way that meetings with the press are organized in the Civil
Society Pavilion (what Sanjay called open area but in fact it is closed)
is up to you, provided the agreed guidelines are also adhered to. I
think there is one maybe two meeting rooms in your Pavilion which could
also be used for press meetings. Please check the layout of your
Pavilion to find out how you may wish to organize. 

*	For distribution of material in the Media Centre, we will
provide the Media Relations Officer with 20 Media Centre Overpasses.
These will be managed by the Media Relations Officer. As they are not
nominative, they can be used by various people as the Media Relations
Officer sees fit. These Overpasses give access to all areas of the Media
Centre except the Working Press Room which is exclusively accessible by
accredited media. These Overpasses can be used to access the press
conference rooms, distribute documents to the media via the
Documentation Service, meet journalists, etc. 

*	The Media Relations Officer is also responsible for ensuring
that CS documentation is compliant with the Document distribution
policy. This policy, applicable to all WSIS paraticipants, will be on
the web this week. We'll send you the link as soon as it is posted. The
link will also be included in the E-Flash going out this week. So it
will be known by all well ahead of the Summit. It should be stressed
that the purpose of this policy is to ensure that all documents that
meet the usual requirements for distribution at UN meetings and summits
will remain available in the various areas foreseen for distribution. In
Geneva, documents were vanishing from the distribution points for
reasons unrelated to availability of stocks and we want to make sure, as
far as we possibly can, that this does not happen in Tunis. While some
civil society might perceive this policy as a way to curtail their
freedom of expression, it should be made very clear to them that this
is, in fact, in their best interest. It will also send a signal to
delegations that as long as documents are consistent with the policy,
political pressure will not prevail. 

*	Based on the feedback from the person who was doing this work in
2003, this is a full time job. I would therefore be cautious about your
doing too many things at a time. If necessary, you act as the Media
Relations Officer and delegate your authority to someone else who would
act on your behalf. But this means you should have full confidence in
that person as officially, it would be you. Alternatively, you could
find a Media Relations Officer to whom you would provide support,
guidance etc based on your time availability or whenever delicate
situations arise.

On your second point, the matter at PrepCom-3 was different because the
Press Conference was booked by ITU and was considered by the UN
Information Service as an ITU-sponsored event and announced as such to
media. In Tunisia however, the Media Relations Office book press events
and take responsibility. That said, making WSIS a Summit on Tunisia
instead of in Tunisia is in my view missing the point. Do you really
believe that negative media coverage (no matter how much) will have any
serious impact on the situation of human rights in Tunisia? On the other
hand, the media would be focusing on this single issue and would
disregard the rest of what WSIS is trying to achieve. To me it would be
losing on a unique opportunity to get ICT for development at the top of
the world's public agenda (the main purpose of the second phase) and
therefore deprive millions of men and women of the hope that their
living condition can improve. But again, this is up to the collective
wisdom of Civil Society. I believe that the Media Caucus should defend
the freedom of expression all over the world and not only in Tunisia.

Hope I have answered all of your questions. Let me know if you need
anything else. Time is running as no press activities can be undertaken
by civil society until the Media Relations Officer is in place to
coordinate and interface with the Media Service.

Tracey Naughton 
Communication for Development Consultant
(to November 9th)
Pact Mongolia Office
Peace Avenue 24
Ulaan Bataar
Mongolia
Tel:                   +976 11 46 09 01
Mobile:             +976 9989 6965
Fax:                  +976 11 46 10 48
Skype: tracey_naughton
Email:  <mailto:tracey at traceynaughton.com> tracey at traceynaughton.com 

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