A Newspaper for Dialogue and for Peace

Mario Lubetkin
IPS - Director General

Terraviva, the newspaper of IPS, once again is being distributed among the tens of thousands of participants at the World Social Forum (WSF).

And once again the IPS news agency has accepted the challenge to provide news coverage about the most important gathering of the global civil society for the delegates who are present, for the hundreds of thousands who are following the events with passion -- and perhaps a bit of envy -- via the Internet, and also the millions of readers of the media outlets that subscribe to IPS in all corners of the world.

For this major effort, IPS has brought 17 journalists from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and Latin America to Porto Alegre, with back-up from dozens more IPS colleagues around the world. The endeavour is possible thanks to the support of our friends at the international organisations that believe in this communications project as a valid tool for a strategic sector in which civil society must have an ever-increasing presence.

It is impossible today to think about changing the negative trends of our world -- many of which will be treated with serious analysis by Forum panellists -- without generating greater participation and awareness among the citizens of our global village. If we are to foment participatory democracy, communication is vital. This will be manifest in the numerous debates on communications issues, far outnumbering the events related to this theme at the 2002 WSF, as well as in the informative initiatives that our friends in various non-governmental organisations have put together to cover this great event, and in the growing presence of thousands of media colleagues from around the world here to cover the Forum.

Many synergies are being created or will be achieved in this terrain. The joining of forces includes the IPS and Le Monde Diplomatique launch in 2002, and re-edition in 2003, of the news site on the WSF (www.portoalegre2003.net) in six languages, which has received hundreds of thousands of visits in the past few months. It is with this same spirit that, alongside Le Monde Diplomatique and other friends, IPS has promoted from the outset Global Media Watch, a true laboratory for the analysis of news ethics and coverage in each of our countries and in the global arena. Global Media Watch will premiere on a grand scale at the WSF III, with the active participation of journalists, academics and media consumer representatives.

Given the major problems confronting humanity -- ranging from widespread hunger to the lack of clean water, from the destruction of our natural environment to the unpayable foreign debt, from the increasingly dramatic digital divide to continued illiteracy, from corporate control over genetic wealth to the HIV/AIDS epidemic -- in this unjust and exclusive globalisation process, it is essential to demand a critical view that provides viable alternatives and promotes greater active participation of the citizens of our world. In addition to these and other issues, discussed in depth at the previous two Forums, this year holds an even more urgent matter: an impending war with unforseeable consequences. For a more complete coverage of the major issues of the Porto Alegre Forum, IPS is also present in Davos, Switzerland, at the World Economic Forum. It is an attempt to create understanding, based on the development of each of the two Forums, of the positions of others when it comes to the problems that afflict humanity.

Welcome, friends, to Terraviva!