Platform for Action supports press freedom

BEIJING (JP): Women journalists are hopeful that the Platform for Action to be adopted by the United Nations' Fourth World Conference on Women today will help them in their efforts to achieve and preserve freedom of expression.

"The Beijing document is strategic for women and the media...because (it covers issues such as) the need for training for women in the profession, for access to information, the need to establish alternative networks," senior journalist Anne S. Walker told a special panel discussion on women and the media held by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the conference yesterday.

The discussion was opened by Aida de Fishman, who represents Costa Rica on UNESCO's executive board.

Anne S. Walker, Annie de Wiest and about 130 other media professionals played an instrumental role in the March adoption of the Toronto Platform for Action, which calls for action to ensure women's access to expression in and through the media.

The Toronto document outlines strategies for media enterprises, professional associations, educational and media training institutions and governments to encourage women's representation and leadership in the media.

Among the "specific and immediate actions" recommended in the Toronto document is the promotion of equal opportunity programs to ensure equal access by women and men to expression and decision-making.

It also calls for training in new technologies, the preparation of guidelines for non-discriminatory reporting and the monitoring and denunciation of attacks on media professionals.

The document has also reportedly been helpful to the UN Commission on the Status of Women in finalizing the draft text Beijing conference's Platform for Action. The section of the draft on the issue of women and media has been one of the least contentious at the conference.

The draft Platform for Action "takes into account two fundamental demands of the media professionals, namely the respect for freedom of expression and the principle of non- intervention of governments in professional matters, thus encouraging self-regulation," UNESCO Director General Federico Mayor said in a statement yesterday.

"Media issues are for the first time prominently on the agenda of a conference on women," Mayor said. "Therefore, the international community recognizes not only the place of the media in our societies and its...role in shaping opinions and attitudes toward women and gender issues, but also its potential to (contribute) to the advancement of women worldwide."

Walker said that the Beijing document would help stop the media exploiting women as sex objects.

De Wiest, however, lamented the lack of coverage, in the general media, of women's issues. That situation needs to be addressed soon, she said. She suggested several long-term solutions to the problem, including the establishment of more media. "The obstacles, certainly, are funds and censorship imposed on the media," she said.

She also suggested that female media professionals establish wider networks among themselves.

The draft Platform for Action states that governments should "aim at gender balance in the appointment of women and men to all advisory, management, regulatory or monitoring bodies, including those connected to the private and State or public media".

In 1994 UNESCO organized regional workshops on women and the media in West Samoa, Cuba, Malaysia, Ecuador, Bulgaria, Tunisia and Zimbabwe. (swe)