[Media Caucus] Media Caucus nominations for WGIG

[Tracey Naughton]

Please find below the two candidates for the UN Working Group on Internet
Governance that are submitted by the WSIS Civil Society Media Caucus,
following a consultative process.

Our selection has been made on the basis of people with the capacity,
expertise and institutional resources to participate. Candidates from two
developing contexts did not accept their nominations, based on lack of
institutional resources to enable participation.

I am pleased to be able to put forward two strong and well informed
candidates to this critical process in which the principles upheld by the
media caucus have a fundamental bearing on governance generally, but
particularly in this instance, of the Internet.

Because the media is a cornerstone of any concept of an information society,
the Media Caucus would like to see both our candidates selected to the
working group.

Thank you.

Submitted by Tracey Naughton
Chair, WSIS Civil Society Media Caucus
September 17th, 2004



Summary of Media Caucus candidates:


Aidan White
Secretary General, 
International Federation of Journalists
Based in Brussels 
aidan.white at ifj.org


Ronald Koven
Vice Chair, WSIS Civil Society Media Caucus
European Representative,
World Press Freedom Committee
Based in Paris
rkoven at compuserve.com



Background of Media Caucus Candidates

Aidan White

White is the General secretary of the International Federation of
Journalists (IFJ).
The IFJ covers journalists' groups in every part of the world. It has
offices in Asia, Africa,
Latin America and Europe and speaks on behalf of the professional and social
rights of journalists.

White has  specific experience, knowledge and interest arising out of
representation of 
the world's largest journalists' group for the last 17
years.

White is the author of a number of texts on this subject including Pluralism
and
Democracy in the Information Society (1996) and the extensive IFJ submission
to the WSIS Part One (2001). He was the chair of the European Union
Working Party on Social and Democratic Values in the Information Society,
1998-2000 and has written for and acted as a consultant for Council of
Europe and UNESCO on aspects of this subject.


Ronald Koven

Ronald Koven has been the European Representative of the World Press
Freedom Committee since 1981.

It is an umbrella organization of journalistic organizations -- 45
international, regional and national affiliated groups on five continents,
representing broadcast and print press, labor and management -- united in
the defense and promotion of press freedom.

Koven has written and spoken widely on free speech and press freedom on the
Internet. His initial statement on the subject was in a speech at the
UNESCO General Conference in 1995. He drafted a joint statement on Internet
governance adopted for World Press Freedom Day 2004 by the Coordinating
Committee of Press Freedom Organizations, consisting of nine leading world
groups -- Commonwealth Press Union (London), Committee to Protect
Journalists (New York City), Inter American Press Association (Miami),
International Association of Broadcasting (Montevideo), International
Association of the Periodical Press (London), International Press Institute
(Vienna), North American Broadcasters Association (Toronto), World
Association of Newspapers (Paris), and World Press Freedom Committee
(Washington, DC). He would present that statement to the Working Group on
Internet Governance.

During the 1960s, Koven was the "De Gaulle watcher" of the International
Herald Tribune. He joined The Washington Post in 1969 and was successively
its Canada Correspondent, Diplomatic Editor, Foreign Editor and Paris-based
Correspondent for Latin Europe and the Maghreb. He was the Paris
Correspondent of The Boston Globe 1981-91 and has taught at the Political
Sciences Institute of Paris.

Starting from the fall of the Berlin Wall, he undertook for WPFC an
extensive program of aid to the emerging independent press in Eastern
Europe and the ex-Soviet Union, including organizing conferences and
seminars, publishing training manuals, legal aid projects, and providing
targeted material help to news outlets and journalists unions and
associations.


Submitted by Tracey Naughton
Chair, WSIS Civil Society Media Caucus
 
Nyaka - Communication & Development
Tracey Naughton
Consultant
201 Somerset Hall
239 Oxford Road
Illovo  2196
South Africa

Phone/fax:    +27 (0) 11 880 5030
cell:                 +27 (0) 82 821 1771
Email:              tracey at traceynaughton.com

Please note: as of 15.9.2004 I am migrating from t.naughton at iafrica.com to
the above email. Mail to the iafrica address will be forwarded for some
time, but please update your records.


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