Press Freedom Day Honors Journalists p. 48

By: Editorial Staff UNESCO organizes activities around the world sp.

NEWSPEOPLE KILLED IN Bosnia-Herzegovina, Somalia and other trouble spots throughout the world were remembered on United Nations World Press Freedom Day May 3.
More than 75 print and broadcast journalists were killed last year while on assignment, international media organizations reported, and various activities aimed at commemorating their deaths and drawing attention to the need for an independent and free press were held worldwide.
"Journalism has become an increasingly dangerous profession, yet this has not deterred men and women from doing their part in the search for truth, the sharing of information, the building of peace and democracy," said Federico Mayor, director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
"There can be no democracy without free media. There can be no free media without the means to be free."
From Paris to the Pacific, UNESCO organized activities to mark the day.
At its Paris headquarters, UNESCO hosted a photography exhibit arranged by Reuters and the Associated Press to honor the work of four newspeople killed in Somalia last July.
The exhibit included pictures by Reuters photographers Dan Eldon and Hos Maina, Reuters Television sound technician Anthony Macharia and AP photographer Hansi Krauss, who were attacked and killed by an angry mob as they tried to cover the aftermath of a U.N. helicopter assault in the Somali capital Mogadishu.
A ceremony in Santiago, Chile, was held to inaugurate Freedom of the Press Square. The event coincided with a UNESCO-organized seminar, "Media Development and Democracy in Latin America and the Caribbean."
In Sarajevo, UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists, International Federation of Newspaper Publishers, European Broadcasting Union and Council of Europe unveiled a memorial to journalists killed during the unrest there.
At least 60 journalists have been killed while covering the war in the former Yugoslavia, media organizations reported.
UNESCO and the Russian Union of Journalists organized a conference in Moscow, "Independence and Pluralism in Radio and Television as a Guarantee of Truthful Information," which attracted journalists, media executives and politicians.
At the U.N. office in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, journalists from national TV stations worked toward developing the first Central Asian television news exchange service. In Kyrgyzstan, newspeople held a workshop to establish the region's first independent broadcasters' association.
UNESCO also organized press freedom seminars and a high school writing competition in Western Samoa.
In Africa, the Media Institute of Southern Africa published a magazine on press freedom that was distributed to schools, parliaments and other organizations.
Namibian Broadcasting Corp. aired programs on the press, and in Nairobi, Kenya, UNESCO sponsored a discussion on ethics and press liberties.