Beirut World Newspaper Congress called off,
World Editors Forum postponed
World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers (WAN-IFRA) has called off the World Newspaper Congress and postponed the World Editors Forum, planned for Beirut from June 07-10 this year.
The president of India Pratibha Devisingh Patil at the joint session of the 62nd World Newspaper Congress and the 16th World Editors’ Forum in Hyderabad. Also seen are K Rosaiah, the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh and Gavin O’Reilly, the president of WAN- IFRA.
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“It is with immense disappointment that we are forced to call off our events in Beirut, but it was simply impossible to go ahead without the commitment of our Lebanese colleagues, who were responsible for security and other significant infrastructural and service expenses,” said Gavin O’Reilly, president of WAN-IFRA, adding, “We deeply regret that we cannot bring these events to Lebanon, particularly as this will cause immense inconvenience for our members, which is not feasible without a local partner.”
The World Editors Forum will be rescheduled for October 06-08, 2010, to be held in conjunction with the IFRA Expo in Hamburg, Germany, which runs from October 04-06. Both Congress and Editors Forum delegates will be invited to attend the rescheduled event, which will feature key elements scheduled for Beirut, including the Golden Pen of Freedom presentation, World Press Trends update, and other presentations.
The World Newspaper Congress, World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo will be held in 2011. Delegates to the Beirut events will also be invited to attend other WAN-IFRA events in 2010 dedicated to the issues that were on the Congress programme. Some 700 people were already registered for the Beirut events, which was on target to reach the expected level of at least 1,000 publishers, CEOs, chief editors, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives.
Previously, for the first time in South Asia, the prestigious annual global summit meetings of the world’s press - including the 62nd World Newspaper Congress, 16th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 09 – were successfully organised (from Nov 30-Dec 3, 2009) in the historic city of Hyderabad, a representative of a resurgent India, bringing together more than 900 publishers, chief editors, managing directors and other senior newspaper executives from 87 countries to discuss the emerging scenario with focused transformation of the news publishing industry into the digital age.
It was also going to happen for the first time in the Arab world, making Beirut (Lebanon) the host city for the 63rd World Newspaper Congress, 17th World Editors Forum and Info Services Expo 2010. It was said that the time is right for the world’s press to meet in the Arab world, which has so much influence on world affairs, where the media is developing at a rapid rate, but which continues to struggle with repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression. And it is particularly appropriate to hold these meetings in Beirut, where the independent press has played a leading role for freedom and the right to speak out, not only in Lebanon, but in the entire Arab world.
