India to host world editors' meet

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India to host world editors' meet

The Hindu (New Delhi)
June 5, 2000

NEW DELHI, JUNE 4. After a gap of 35 years, India will host the world
congress of the international Press Institute (IPI), a global network of
editors and media executives devoted to the freedom of the press, In
January next.

The Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Bhari Vajpayee, will inaugurate the
three-day congress here on January 27, which will also be addressed by
the Dalai Lama and Nobel laureate, Mr. Amartya Sen, according to a press
release.

Based in Vienna, the IPI represents the collective voice of some 2,000
editors, publishers, broadcasting executives and leading journalists
form more than 100 countries. The meet will deliberate on Asian
challenges, freedom of the press and the communications industry.

The congress will have panel discussion on India-unity in diversity;
Globalisation- a phenomenon for or against the developing world; Media
reporting on the conflicts in the subcontinent; the global information
revolution and freedom of expression in the infotech era.

IPI congresses have been mega media events attended by world leaders
such as Mrs. Indira Gandhi, Mr. Nelson Mandela and Mr. Willy Brandt,
Nobel prize winners, U.N. Secretaries General and philanthropes like Mr.
Nelson Rockefeller. Attendance at the IPI congress in New Delhi would
also be high profile and offers an opportunity for interaction with
cultural luminaries, decision makers and top editors from a hundred
countries.

The congress focuses on political hot spots around the globe. It was
held in South Africa in the year of President Mandela's election and in
Israel a few month after Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's assassination.
Moscow held the congress in 1998.

For half a century, IPI has been promoting free flow of information and
improving the practice of journalism. It enjoys consultative status with
the United Nations, Unesco and the Council of Europe. - PTI