61ª Asamblea General The Westin Hotel Indianápolis, Indiana 7 al 11 de octubre de 2005

ALEJO MIRÓ QUESADA
Report at the 61st General Assembly
Indianapolis, Indiana
October 7 - 11, 2005

I want to begin by thanking you all for being here this morning.

The report to members is an important part of our General Assembly, because it is the time when those of us who have been given the responsibility to act during the year want to tell you what we have done. And it is required in our bylaws.

This year we instituted an important change that will also make this meeting more interesting. It is the 2004-2005 Annual Plan. The document was drafted last November at a working session in Miami at which the committee chairmen presented their plans for action.

It contains the following: the relationship of the members of each committee and their responsibilities; the background required to be part of the committee, and the committee’s functions. Finally, and most important: the 2004-2005 goals of each committee.

This leadership’s term has ended and the document that you received has an evaluation of how these goals were achieved in percentages.

Fortunately, they are high. In any case, I ask for your indulgence for the goals that we have not covered, fortunately there were few. And there are so many goals! When they are all put together in one document we recognize the size of the IAPA today, the great work it does and how it has grown.

I want to direct your attention to some of these goals:
*The Program Committee is making a tremendous effort to give your meeting added value. That is, we are aiming for you to return to your countries with the conviction that not only have you helped to support press freedom, but you return with new knowledge that will add to the value of the trip and the time it has taken.
*We have begun to have special programs: The journalists in charge of electronic newspapers met separately on Sunday to analyze more technical and specialized topics with the same speakers who addressed you. I believe that this first experience has been successful, although we should move the meeting to Saturdays.
*On Friday the brand new Investigative Journalism Institute met for the first time, with the mandate of becoming a great forum of discussion on this sensitive topic in the hemisphere.
*The Committee on Freedom of the Press and Information, as you saw yesterday, has changed its program to make the meeting more interesting. I hope you liked it. In any case we still have some improvements to make.
*Diana Daniels is leading a Strategic Plan for IAPA which will make it possible to face our challenges with a greater vision for the future. This afternoon we will have a session to move forward on that topic.
Also today, after lunch, we will have a session on a subject that I consider a priority for the future of IAPA: the Hemisphere Conference on Journalism Values.
*For my part, I have had the honor to represent the IAPA in 21 countries on four continents for more than 100 days.
-November: Miami (Annual Plan)
-December: Caracas (press freedom forum)
- Washington (meeting at the OAS)
February: Geneva (meeting of the World Freedom Committee)
March: Buenos Aires (press freedom mission to evaluate the use of
government advertising)
April: Washington (emergency forum to defend the right of confidentiality)
May: Nairobi (IPI)
June: Seoul (WAN)
Santiago de Chile (Legislative Forum)
Washington (presentation to the OAS General Assembly)
July: Panama (President Martin Torrijos’s signature of the Declaration of Chapultepec)
Berlin (Konrad Adenauer donation to the Investigative Journalism Institute)
August: Washington (to visit Judith Martin in jail)
New York (visit to The New York Times and Sen. Richard
Lugar)
Sao Paulo
Rio de Janeiro (new members mission)
September: Pucallpa (impunity mission)
October: Moscow (WAN panel)
Indianapolis (General Assembly)

If this list of trips seems long, the list of Julio Muñoz and Ricardo Trotti is much more demanding. And we have had activities in 52 cities around the world!

I leave you now to the committee chairmen who have made it possible to achieve many of the goals that were proposed.

(Committee chairmen’s reports)

In conclusion: As you have seen, the financial situation is good, we have more and more members, the organization’s influence is more and more forceful, the IAPA’s influence is wider and we are developing concrete plans so that we will always to seek the correct future for IAPA.

Thank you