Paraguay President to open IAPA Midyear Meeting

MIAMI, Florida (March 6, 2009)— Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo next week will formally open in Asunción the Midyear Meeting of the Inter American Press Association (IAPA), to be held March 13-16 at the Hotel Yacht y Golf, a meeting that, under the chairmanship of the organization’s president, Enrique Santos Calderón, editor of the Bogotá, Colombia, newspaper El Tiempo, will deal principally with issues concerning freedom of the press, the current crisis in the newspaper industry and journalistic ethics.    

Attending the IAPA’s half-yearly meeting there will be some 250 newspaper editors and publishers from throughout the Americas who among other topics will discuss reports on the state of press freedom in their countries.

At the same time a roundtable discussion will review the 10 years in building a hemispheric agenda on freedom of expression, with the participation of  Catalina Botero, the Organization of American States’ special rapporteur for freedom of expression, and Franklin La Rue, her United Nations counterpart, with the executive secretary of the OAS’ Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Santiago Cantón, acting as moderator.

On Sunday, March 15 the distinguished members of the United States press corps Earl Maucker, editor and 1st vice president of the Sun-Sentinel, Fort Lauderdale; Florida, Liza Gross of The Miami Herald, Miami, Florida; Edward Seaton, The Manhattan Mercury, Kansas; Mark Fitzgerald, Editor&Publisher, New York;  and Milton Coleman, The Washington Post, Washington, DC, will discuss the crisis being faced by the United States newspaper industry and what steps need to be taken to enable a transition to the new multimedia reality. The panel will offer suggestions as to how news companies can maintain and increase circulation and revenues and discuss proposals for action by Latin American media.

Another panel discussion will explore the issue of how to earn credibility and learn from the complaints and comments they obtain from their Ombudsmen, using them to raise the quality of their publication. Panelists will present a plan for overcoming these obstacles. They will focus on the document “Aspirations of de IAPA”.

In addition to a packed agenda dealing with the organization’s internal affairs several other current issues are to be taken up by the IAPA in its conferences, seminars and panel discussions. Among these will be a presentation on strategy employed in the war on drugs to be given by former Colombian president and secretary general of the Organization of America States, César Gaviria.

More information on these and other activities of the IAPA and its Press Institute is available on the Web sites www.sipiapa.org and www.institutodeprensa.com.