Media

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Earlier this year, Amazon.com announced that e-books had eclipsed the sales of paperbacks, with 115 Kindle books sold for every 100 print versions, signalling a dramatic change in the worldwide publishing industry. In March last year, the Geneva-based International Publishers Association (IPA) launched its first annual global survey on VAT on books and e-publications. It is now releasing an updated version with 88 countries surveyed. In a global context where standard VAT rates increasing, special treatment for books remains the norm. As far as e-publications are concerned, a small number of countries have already adopted a real non-discriminatory, consistent tax regime. The study concludes that Korea, which boasts the world's 8th largest publishing industry, should serve as a model in this respect.

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Radio Frontier, the Lake Geneva region's third English-language station with Radio 74 and World Radio Switzerland, has begun  broadcasting from its studios in Meyrin. According to its producers, the station is specifically geared reaching all sectors of the international community living on both sides of the border, but will also be aimed at Swiss and French speaking English as a second or third language.

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Do foreigners really need to know anything about Switzerland? The Federal Parliament in Bern is in the process of deciding where to make major cuts in the country's public broadcasting and informantion system. Swissinfo is on the chopping block. Anyone who objects can sign the petition.

Geneva -- Teaching journalists to investigate is all very well. What we really need are more news organizations willing to print the truth, and innovative ways of using what we already know.

So what exactly should you expect from a Global Investigative Journalism Conference (GIJC) on 22-25 April in Geneva, home of a particularly sycophantic kind of reporting in a country whose newspapers largely keep to the political line of the parties that support them?

Geneva -- The Media21 Global Journalism Network is holding its tenth human rights' journalism workshop in parallel with the United Nations Human Rights Council's periodic review in Geneva. The nearly two-week workshop is designed to help broaden understanding of human rights principles among experienced editors and journalists worldwide. Developed in conjunction with the United Nations Office for Human Rights , World Organization Against Torture (WOAT/OMCT) , Tracking Justice Always (TRIAL) and Human Rights Watch , the workshop not only allows journalists to cover the Council for domestic media in their own countries but also to interact with different players, such as UN agencies, NGOs and diplomats, active in the field of human rights.

GENEVA -- There is rising concern that IRIN, a unique information project of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), may be in for some serious financial cutbacks or even closure. Given estimated shortfalls of up to 30 million dollars, OCHA is currently evaluating IRIN to see whether the project should be nixed, or at least heavily slashed. When aid agencies need to save money, information initiatives are usually the first to go. Officially, OCHA knows nothing, with one representative informally commenting that it was no more than a "storm in a teacup."

According to several inside sources, however, there is a very realistic possibility that IRIN, which has been providing informed coverage and analysis by specialist reporters of humanitarian situations in Africa, parts of Asia and the Middle East for well over a decade, may have its funding curtailed.  And this despite the fact that IRIN journalists are often the only ones to be reporting on a regular basis from hazardous locations such as Somalia. IRIN, which also produces news videos, documentary films and photos, some of them of exceptional quality, has proved an increasingly utilized information resource for local and international media, the humanitarian community and the public-at-large.

Since its creation in June, 2006, the Geneva-based Human Rights Tribune (HRT) has provided invaluable coverage in English and French of the United Nations Human Rights Council, an institution broadly supported by the major donors. Sadly, the HRT is in danger of collapse because of financial constraints. Donor patronage of the Council becomes meaningless if there is no one properly – and independently - reporting its sessions, including what goes on behind the scenes. It also smacks of political agenda without accountability. Without credible and investigative media coverage by organizations such as the HRT, there is no way of knowing whether the Council is actually performing a credible function or whether it is just another costly talk-shop pretending to the world that it is taking human rights seriously.

Tamil mourners crowded into a small Catholic church a few blocks form the Palais Nations on Friday to pay their last respects to Murukathasan Vanakulasingam.  The 27-year old former computer science graduate had doused himself with gasoline turning into a human torch in front of the main gates to the United Nations at eight o’clock on Thursday night, February 12.  His suicide was intended to protest what he believed to be the failure of the UN and the international community to respond effectively to the massacre of innocent Tamil civilians in Sri Lanka.
Tamils at the funeral told me that they believed the lack of media interest was one reason that the slaughter was allowed to continue. TIME Magazine had recently listed Sri Lanka as one of the three most under reported international stories.  The irony in Murukathasan’s martyrdom is that it went virtually unreported in both the Swiss and international press.  His parents in England, where he was currently as a stock clerk in a Sainsbury supermarket, only learned that he had died by scouring Tamil internet blogs. In a letter that was found 30 feet from Murukathasan’s charred body, he explained, “I have no words to wake up the international community. The flames over my body will be a torch to guide Tamils to the path of liberation.”

The move by French President Nicolas Sarkozy to support the media by stimulating a new generation of readers through  free newspaper subscriptions to teenagers  is an excellent initiative. It is also one which the Swiss authorities - and the international agencies in Geneva - should consider. Unless they’re reading the free web newssites such as the BBC, Christian Science Monitor or Global Post, young people simply cannot rely on U-tube, the Daily Show or 160-character SMS items alone as reliable information sources about their society and world events. There needs to be far more creative thinking of how to develop new readership, whether in print, broadcasting or new media, that is both critical and discerning. Just handing out subscriptions will not be enough. We need to get to kids even younger.

For those interested in what is happening - or not happening - at the Human Rights Council here in Geneva over the next two weeks, then you need to read the online Human Rights Tribune. http://www.humanrights-geneva.info This is an independent daily news site in English and French compiled by editors and journalists of InfoSud, a Geneva-based non-profit news agency. Unfortunately, while international donors are willing to support the Council - and the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights -  there is precious little support for initiatives such as this. This is extremely short-sighted and serves few interests other than governments who do not want the outside world, particularly the grass roots, to know what is going on. Judge for yourself. Here is a sampling of today's two main stories.

• A Geneva NGO upsets Arab countries - Over the past four years, the Geneva based NGO, Alkarama has filed thousands of complaints to the UN regarding human rights violations by Arab states. Algeria has launched regular attacks on one of its members in Switzerland but relations between Bern and Algiers appear unaffected. Read here
  
• Burundi wants no Special Rapporteur after all - Last September (2007) the government of Burundi agreed to the renewal for one year of the mandate for the Special Rapporter from the Human Rights Council, Akich Okola. Today it considers the work of this expert to be terminated, according to diplomatic sources in Geneva. The African group at the Council, which seeks to suppress this mandate, was not previously opposed to Burundi renewing it. Today it seems they have changed their minds. Read here

In October 2006, Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who wrote extensively about the war in Chechnya, was assassinated. Her killers have still not been brought to justice. One of her colleagues, Oksana Chelysheva, spoke to British journalist Claire Doole writing for Geneva’s Human Rights Tribune about the state of the media in Putin’s Russia.

(The Human Rights Tribune is an independent and non-for-profit online newsjournal produced daily by the Media21/InfoSud news agency on the Human Rights Council and other related issues.) For further details on the HRT and the Media21 Global Journalism Network see: www.humanrights-geneva.info and www.media21geneva.org