BY BRIAN BONITTO

Associate Editor — Entertainment & Auto

bonittob@jamaicaobserver.com

BRAVING annihilation threats from its northern neighbour, South Korea successfully staged an eight-day inaugural World Journalists Conference

in Seoul.

Held under the theme Communication and the Future of Global Journalism, the confab, which closed on April 21, saw 110 participants from 75 countries discussing issues affecting the profession globally, meeting government ministers as well as touring cutting-edge corporations and historic sites.

Issues such as the media in a digital age and ‘the role exchange’ of digital media and journalists were debated.

South Korea’s Prime Minister Chung Hongwon welcomed journalists at the official opening ceremony held at the Press Centre. He said there is a new era of hope on the peninsula.

“The Korean people are hoping for peace. We are trying to be role models that contribute [positively] to the world,” Chung said, adding that it cannot be done without the media’s participation.

Park Chong-Ryul, Journalists Association of Korea (JAK) president, said despite differences in nationalities, gender, skin colour, religion and ideologies, there was a common bond among members of the media fraternity around the world.

“We are journalists who are always seeking to convey the truth, monitor abuses of power and corruption and extend our warm hands to the socially disadvantaged, while seeking to create a global village reflecting freedom and peace,” Park told his audience.

Park, president of the 49-year-old JAK, also spoke of existing tensions between South and North Korea, the quest for peace being pursued by the South and the media’s role in the process.

“The Republic of Korea remains the only divided country in the world and with tension on the Korean Peninsula again emerging as a global issue in recent weeks, this conference will become an occasion to highlight the importance of peace on the Korean Peninsula,” he said.

Jim Boumelha, president of the International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), highlighted the plight affecting news organisations around the world.

“Media houses everywhere are in turmoil and in the new media landscape, technologies are changing the field of journalism beyond recognition, as the majority of traditional market models are no longer profitable. In fact, media employers in Western countries are taking advantage of new technologies and using them as an excuse to decimate their newsrooms,” he said.

Amid these changes, however, he said journalists should remain the whistleblowers — even in their newsrooms — by telling the public the impact that these job cuts will have on the quality of information.

“The big lie you’ll find all over the world from media corporations is that staff and resource cuts will not damage the news quality produced,” he said.

Boumelha said this was not the first time media had been impacted by new technologies, as the introduction of television and the computer were once innovations of the Technological Age.

“We have always embraced new technologies. However, since the 1980s it has not just been about new communication technologies impacting the profession, but there has been heavy pressure from international businesses pushing through global deals done under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade or the aegis of the World Bank. They say the Internet is the problem and the credit crunch has made it worse, but they have already ransacked the newsrooms for profit. And every time the profit is not there, the newspaper is just closed down,” Boumelha said.

The president offered some prescriptions which, he felt, could reignite the positive ethics of the profession.

“Our demands are simple: decent staffing levels; rebuilding the network of front line reporters; giving truth primacy over the ‘news factory’ response; retrieving the news from the public relations agenda and propaganda; reforming our media laws and giving all honest reporters a genuine public interest defence,” the IFJ president said.

“Journalism isn’t in its death throes. It’s just in another transition. And as long as the public continues to value information and analysis, journalism will continue to be alive and kicking and will even flourish,” said Boumelha.

Delegates attending the conference were taken on several site visits to the National Assembly, Korean Broadcasting System, telecoms provider SK T.um, the National Museum of Korea, Changdeokgung Palace, Samsung Electronics, Electronics and Telecoms Research Institute, the Changwon Solar Tower, the highest photovoltaic power generation building; and the tense Demilitarised Zone which serves as a buffer between North and South Korea.