Small protest outside editors conference

Monday June 09, 2003 14:59

by paul cummins - indymedia

Bonos groupies Vs Gr groupies

As you know a huge conference of the world's newspapers editors is being held in Dublin today. Just after 12 a dozen or so members of GR turned up to protest outside the entrance to the RDS(or is that Lisdoonvarne) with Bono and the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern due to talk at the 3 day conference, this morning.

Although I tried to ask the protestors how the saw the efforts of WAN to increase press freedom as it is top of their aims, they replied fairly that they were there to increase the pressure for true press independence and although there are some worthy writers out there they are outnumbered by in right-wing or simply inaccurate articles.

An example of the balance of Mondays conference
World Trends in the Newspaper Industry:
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First Session: Journalism under Threat
Robert Fisk, Middle East
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Zhanna Litvina, President, Belarus Association of Journalists
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How they keep us free-and under watch
Pius Njawe, President, Union of Publishers in Central Africa (UEPAC)
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Innovation International Media Consulting Group.
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Cultural evening, with dinner and entertainment, at the Guinness Storehouse, hosted by Tourism Ireland

In a list of seven threats facing press journalism in regards to freedom(from wan-press.org), only two out of the seven may have applied to Ireland most dealing with war, violence and dictatorships although these are serious problems in a lot of countries it seems perhaps that the more subtle types of press interference experienced in countries like ours don’t matter once you have the appearance of press freedom?

Most Irish newspapers focused either on the plight of journalist injured or killed in the line or duty or the Corr's set list from last night.

There was little activity from the hall with only the occasional attendee or Merc exiting, although there was a good number of police around. One persons protest was directly towards Bono for talking to the powers that be but not specifically denouncing the war, for trying to reduce the debt but seemingly not being so hard against wars or certain foreign polices with them all being interconnected. However U2 didn’t agree with her and defended Bono and admonished her for getting in the way of her fandom.

One unidentified protestor after hanging around the gate for a while decided, it seems, to get himself arrested by pushing up against a Guard and then when a van came along he immediately jumped in when the side door opened without any help from anyone else, and seemingly without being arrested first??? Maybe that’ll get him an inch in the papers?

Media savvy Joe spent most of his time talking on his mobile to News 106 and some other photographers came along and the protest was also reported in some of the main newspapers.

Further protests are being planned for the banquet tonight being held at 8:00 at the Guiness Storehouse.