December 10, 2008

No Press Awareness Day – no critical self-reflection!

Now after the ratification of the first Eutropolis Declaration, actually the time has come to reflect critically on our work. Therefore, the Media Watchdogs had organized a Press Awareness Day on Wednesday, 10th December 2008, in order to enforce a critical self-reflection of the media business.
Since nobody showed up at the press conference, the Media Watchdogs unfortunately had to cancel the Press Awareness Day. The journalists neither reported in advance that they will not show up, nor did they react on our cordial invitation. Thus, the journalists of “The Brynn” and “The Eutropian Independent” missed the special opportunity to speak in public about their opinion concerning the freedom of press.
Can we say that we have well-on-going newspapers in Eutropia if they are not willing to reflect on their work critically on a kind of event like this?
Well, we, the Watchdogs also have to admit that the invitation was late, but the constant checking of e-mail-accounts should be taken for granted in the media business. Therefore it also seems to be alarming that delegates from Coastland and Darialand reported during the debriefing teleconference on Monday, 8th December 2008, that their voices have been ignored by “The Eutropian Independent”:
“13:24 Coastland: Our letter to the editor was ignored by the Eutropian Independent. There was no reply whatsoever.”
“13:25 Darialand,: we never got a response to our clarification as well”.
But there was also some positive feedback on the journalist´s work about the conference given by some delegates on the debriefing teleconference: The International Association for Human Rights for example stated that they “especially enjoyed the Independent's satirical work”. Or Brynnland praised the healthy relationship between the Eutropian government and the press by saying that their “press spokesman got in contact with the Brynn several times”.
As a conclusion, we would like to say that we really regret that the journalists did not take the opportunity to reflect on the current situation in Eutropia and on their work.

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