78th IAPA General Assembly
Michael Greenspon, The New York Times October 30, 2022
Madrid, Spain
Thank you very much, Jorge, for your words and good wishes. I would have liked you to continue for another year, becoming king of the IAPA, but alas, democracy has prevailed. You have given me the unenviable task of following in your footsteps and attempting to fill your shoes.
Your leadership has been fruitful, especially on two essential and inseparable issues: press freedom and media sustainability.
This Assembly, once again, showed us that in the face of extraordinary challenges, our mission remains as essential as it has been since our founding 80 years ago. The IAPA has always been a community of men and women convinced that there can be no true democracy without press freedom. But unfortunately, the country reports we heard in this Assembly speak of a revival of authoritarianism – where leaders prefer to turn their backs on the will and freedom of their citizens – and populistism whose leaders use the media as a scapegoat and a punching bag.
Today I renew the commitment that reconciles our past and present for IAPA to continue to be a beacon in the darkness of authoritarianism and populism. We will continue amplifying the voice of the most vulnerable media and journalists, such as the closed La Prensa of Nicaragua and its general manager, Juan Lorenzo Holmann, who is still in prison. On Friday, we promised his daughter, Renata, that we would never forget about the fate of her father and the other incarcerated Nicaraguan journalists.
My relationship with the IAPA is not new, in fact, it long predates my first Assembly in 2011.
My step-grandfather, Andrew Heiskell, was the IAPA president in 1961-1962. His romance with my grandmother Marian Dryfoos Sulzberger started at the IAPA meetings in the early-60s. They got married in 1965. In his memoirs, he wrote that there was "romance in the air" during the IAPA annual meetings and that he did not know how he was able to persuade The New York Times to send my grandmother as its representative. The fact that they were still both married to other people at the time of those assemblies, well... it all worked out in the end. There is an even better story about their relationship but I will save that for when we are having drinks.
Beyond facing the challenges of our industry and press freedom, I am committed to fighting for the sustainability of our institution. We all must assume the commitment to enhance the IAPA and its vital mission in favor of democracy.
To do this, I rely on the help of the Advisory Council, our executive director Ricardo Trotti, and especially a group of committed women and men whom I thank for agreeing to join me this year. They are:
● Carlos Jornet, La Voz del Interior, Córdoba, Argentina: Freedom of the Press and Information Committee
● Juan Francisco Ealy Lanz-Duret, El Universal, Mexico City, Mexico: Impunity Subcommittee
● Armando Castilla, Vanguardia, Saltillo, Mexico: Chapultepec Subcommittee
● Laura Puertas, Medcom, Panama City, Panama: Salta Subcommittee
● Miguel Henrique Otero, El Nacional, Caracas, Venezuela: International Affairs Committee
● Leonor Mulero, El Nuevo Día, San Juan, Puerto Rico: Awards Committee
● Luciano Pascoe Rippey, TV Azteca, Mexico City, Mexico: Finance Committee
● Pedro Rivero, El Deber, Santa Cruz, Bolivia: Audit Committee
● Martín Etchevers, Clarín, Buenos Aires, Argentina: Legal Committee
● Silvia Miró Quesada, El Comercio, Lima, Peru: Membership Committee
● Sebastian Pastor, Televicentro, Tegucigalpa, Honduras: Investment Committee
● Martha Ramos, Organización Editorial Mexicana, Mexico City, Mexico: Diversity and Inclusion Committee
● Gilberto Urdaneta, El Regional del Zulia, Ciudad Ojeda, Venezuela: Scholarships Committee
● And Ernesto Kraiselburd, El Día, La Plata, Argentina: Press Institute
I am also formally creating a Sustainability Subcommittee to help us continue the great work undertaken by two of my predecessors, Christopher Barnes and Jorge Canahuati. Due to his experience working with the platforms, I have asked Jorge to lead this subcommittee.
In my presidency, I will also focus on increasing participation and membership in our organization. I will help strengthen SIPConnect, the training we carry out with CLAEP, and other activities to assist the media in the challenge of digital transformation and sustainability.
The sustainability of independent media is essential. Unfortunately, the economic crisis and pandemic have strongly impacted the media's finances. In this Assembly, we discussed the information deserts stretching from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego.
We need to keep talking to the big platforms, and we will continue to argue that they should pay a fair, reasonable, and equitable price for our news content. That position was established by the IAPA in 2021 and is inspired by the Salta Declaration of 2018.
In conversations with Google, we have told them that for the IAPA, the sustainability of the media is tied to digital transformation and that support for press freedom is fundamental. We have pushed for an expansion of Showcase and other paid media programs, especially for media in countries with greater vulnerability. These conversations with Google, which we hope to expand to other platforms, are aimed at achieving a fair and reasonable payment for media throughout the hemisphere. It is our hope that these objectives can be achieved through private agreements with media and national associations and that through these negotiations it can be done sooner and more broadley.
Likewise, IAPA respects the efforts of other media associations that consider a need for public policies on this matter, such as the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act in my country.
We have a lot of work to do. Regarding freedom of the press, I want to take the mandate from the resolutions that this Assembly approved so we can soon send missions to Peru and Guatemala. In these two countries, freedom of the press and independent media need our support. May our voice amplify the voice of the media and journalists from these countries, as we have done in these two years with Nicaragua, not allowing these countries to be forgotten or left out of the international public agenda.
Thank you all so much for granting me this privilege to serve the cause of press freedom. It is an honor.
