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

Diana Daniels
Indianapolis, Indiana
October 7 - 11, 2005

Buenas noches, damas y caballeros, amigos. Boa noite damas e cavalheiros, amigos.  Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, friends. 
Gracias, Scott  y al Comité Anfitrión de Indianápolis por haber ofrecido a la SIP la mejor bienvenida tipo “hoosier” es decir de gran hospitalidad.  Thank you, Scott and the Indianapolis host committee for having provided IAPA with the best Hoosier welcome ever.
Gracias a cada uno de Uds. por la oportunidad que me han dado de dirigir esta augusta organización.  Thank you one and all for the opportunity you have given me to lead this august organization.  Uds. me han otorgado un gran honor. You have done me a great honor. Acepto esta responsabilidad con humildad y haré lo mejor que pueda para confirmar la confianza que han depositado en mi. I accept this responsibility with humility and I will do my best to confirm the confidence you have placed in me.  Voy a trabajar para servir a los principios fundamentales de nuestra institución que tanto queremos y trabajaré con todos Uds. para analizar los temas, orquestar nuestra defensa y tomar acción, todo ello para respaldar la libertad de expresión.    I will act to serve the bedrock principles we hold dear, working with all of you to analyze the issues, speak out as advocates and take action, all in support of freedom of expression.
Basta ya de mi insuficiente español. Enough of my limited Spanish.
I follow in the footsteps of so many great presidents.  But, there is one who deserves special mention for all her encouragement to get me to take on leadership roles in IAPA and, that is, Tina Hills, the first woman president of this organization.  And, on behalf of  press freedom everywhere and our organization, I salute my predecessor Alejo Miró Quesada for his extraordinary year as President and for all the work he has done for IAPA over the many years.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to Don Graham and The Washington Post Company for having gotten me involved in IAPA and for continuing to support my work with IAPA.
As many of you know from working with me in the past, I believe in keeping speeches to a minimum and tonight will be no different.
The world is a very different place from when I attended my first meeting in the Spring of 1996 in Panama City.  The internet as an outlet for news and information was in its infancy.  There were no Blackberries, Treos, iPods or blogs.  In 1996, there were 44 million cellular subscribers in the US, today there are over 196 million wireless subscribers.  The profound changes in the way people everywhere communicate and receive information are shaping and remaking the world and with it IAPA.  As the times change, so too IAPA must change.  The pre-eminent mission of the new IAPA is the same as the old, begun some 63 years ago – to promote freedom of expression throughout the hemisphere. The challenge for us is to preserve IAPA for generations to come and in so doing to embrace change. To renew IAPA, we must be bold.
Thus, in the year to come, I plan to focus on three areas:
First, to continue to find ways to defend and strengthen press freedom everywhere in the hemisphere from Argentina to the United States, from Canada to Venezuela.  And, one day there will be freedom of the press in Cuba because of men and women with the courage of Raúl Rivero and Manuel Vásquez Portal.  I would remind the Hugo Chávez and Fidel Castro of the world that merely because IAPA has changed presidents does not mean that we will cease to be vigilant in our efforts to continue to seek adherence to the rule of law and a free press in Venezuela and Cuba and anywhere else in the hemisphere where freedom of expression is under attack.
Journalists continue to be jailed and many face injury and threats, violence and intimidation and even death in the pursuit of freedom of expression and in the course of doing their jobs.  Together with the chairman of the Freedom of the Press Committee Gonzalo Marroquín and others, I want to keep the attention of the people of the hemisphere focused on the threats to a free press through continuing contacts with the highest officials of each country, through publicizing the causes and consequences of crimes against journalist, through providing journalists with the tools to do investigative journalism. 
As part of the continuing Chapultepec Project efforts to build constructive dialogues on the role governments and lawyers play in protecting press freedom, in three weeks I leave for Argentina to attend a legislative conference and legal workshop.
Although IAPA’s sphere of interest has been primarily on the Americas, we continue to be mindful of the potentials risks to press freedom everywhere associated with the World Summit on the Information Society.  The final phase will take place in Tunis on November 16-18 and, while we will be ably represented by Andrés García Gamboa, Jorge Canahuati, Julio Muñoz and Ricardo Trotti, it is incumbent on all of us to ensure that the delegations from each of our countries to the Summit strongly support freedom of expression, freedom of the press and the principles of the Declaration of Chapultepec.                                    
Second, I want to complete the strategic planning process begun this year to build an IAPA that will endure into the future.  We need to ask tough questions about IAPA’s place in the world of instant communications, of cellphones and the internet, of declining newspaper readership.  We need to transform the IAPA of today into the IAPA of tomorrow, to ensure that IAPA remains the most dynamic, relevant and forward looking press organization in the hemisphere. 
We need to keep the support of so many friends of IAPA – the McCormick Tribune Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Fundacion Angel Ramos, The Freedom Forum, James S. Copley Foundation, The MacArthur Foundation, The Ellen Browning Scripps Foundation, The Scripps Howard Foundation, to name but a few, and to find new support among the members of IAPA and others.  We will also need to renew the memberships of all of you here and, with the help of Jorge Fascetto, Honorary Chairman, and Edward Seaton and Jayme Sirotsky, Co-chairmen of the  Membership Committee to bring in new members everywhere, but most particularly Canada, the United States and Brazil. 
Third, I want to develop support among the peoples of the Americas for a free press.  In choosing this area I am building on the need for credibility and the work that will be done at the conference to be headed by Jack Fuller on journalistic values. Democracy and freedom of expression go hand in hand.  In societies where freedom of expression thrives so too the opportunities for justice and better lives for all improve. 
But, why should the hungry and malnourished care about a free press?  Why should a family suffering from typhoid or dysentery and no access to healthcare care about a free press?  Why should a family whose children have to work to supplement the meager wages of the parents care about a free press?  Why should a rural farmer who has moved to the fringes of a major metropolis care about a free press? 
Because a free press will help get food to the starving, medical care to the ill, education to the illiterate, decent housing to the poor by revealing the causes of hunger, illness and poverty, by exposing corruption, by shining a spotlight. 
I have asked Juan Luis Correa and Gustavo Mohme to head a committee that will be looking to develop a non-traditional advertising campaign to focus attention of the ordinary citizen on why a free press matters to him or her in their daily lives.  As Katharine Graham once noted:  “The simple fact is this:  “freedom of the press” is not so much the press’s freedom as the citizen’s right to be informed….Without information of the highest quality and deepest penetration, we lose our ability to govern ourselves in our kind of democracy.  We surrender out thoughts to those who would do our thinking for us.  If we surrender our critical judgment to dictators of the minds, our liberties will surely follow.  If people do not understand what our liberties are and why they are essential, people won’t fight to keep them and may sit passively by as liberties erode. The best way to keep freedom of the press, like freedom itself, is to know what it means and to exercise it wisely and well.”
The strength of this organization is all of you, its many members from every country in the hemisphere other than Cuba.  In your hands, more than mine, will rest the success of this organization.  So as I begin my term of office, I will be looking to you to support IAPA and its mission through active participation and funds.
In particular, I have asked Gonzalo Marroquín to continue as chair of the Freedom of the Press Committee and Andres Garcia Gamboa to chair the subcommittee on the World Summit on the Information Society.  I have appointed Gustavo Mohme and José Santiago Healy as co-chairs of the Awards Committee; Sergio Munoz and Bartolomé Mitre will co-chair the Chapultepec Committee; Fabricio Altamirano has been appointed to chair the Electronic Media Committee; Luis Alberto Ferré is to become chairman of the Finance Committee; Jesus Diaz is to become chairman of the Audit Committee.  I have appointed Edward Seaton and Scott Schurz to co-chair the Foundations Committee; Milton Coleman to chair the Future Sites Committee; Enrique Santos Calderon to continue as chair of the Impunity Committee; Armando González Rodicio to become chair of the Legal Committee; Jorge Canahuati Larach and Nelida Rajneri to co-chair the International Affairs Committee;  Rafael Molina to chair the Strategic Plan Committee; and as I already mentioned, Edward Seaton and Jayme Sirotsky to co-chair the Membership Committee.  I have asked Bruce Brugmann to chair the North American Membership  SubCommittee and Andres Jungblut to chair the Latin American and Caribbean Membership SubCommittee; Liza Gross to chair the New Members Orientation SubCommittee; and Tony Pederson to chair Inter American Sub Committee.  I have appointed Silvia Miró Quesada to chair the Newspapers-in-Education Committee; Rafael Molina to chair the Program Committee; Alejo Miró Quesada to become chair of the Nominations Committee; and Tom Fiedler to chair the Advisory Board of the Institute of Investigative Journalism.
I ask that you recognize these individuals for their willingness to take on responsibility for these critical roles.  In recognizing these individuals, I would also ask that we applaud the work done by the IAPA staff so ably led by Julio Muñoz and Ricardo Trotti, without whose efforts IAPA could not exist.  Lastly, I would ask that you give yourselves a round of applause for without your hard work and financial support there would be no IAPA.
Y, entonces, quisiera terminar con las siguientes palabras del inmortal Miguel de Cervantes sobre la trascendencia de la libertad de expresión.  And, so I would like to close with the following words by the immortal Miguel de Cervantes on the transcendence of freedom of expression:  "La libertad -- le dice el Ingenioso Hidalgo a su escudero -- es uno de los más preciados dones que los cielos dieron a los hombres".  “Freedom, said the knight to his squire, is one of the most precious gifts that the heavens have given to men.”