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ICF MISSION STATEMENT

The International Communications Forum (ICF), founded in 1991, recognizes that the media is one of the world’s most powerful forces for good or ill. The media does not just report and reflect society but often shapes its direction. The ICF aims to:

  • strengthen public confidence in the media;
  • promote the bonds of trust within democratic societies;
  • inspire a commitment to service on the part of those who work in the media.

The ICF is committed to media ethics and the freedoms of expression and information. These need to be accompanied by a high sense of responsibility and respect for every audience. The ICF expects of media practitioners the same standards of integrity that they wish to see in all public servants. Through conferences and training programmes, ICF demonstrates its ethos on the basis of people-to-people and conscience-to-conscience dialogue.

Four British journalists spoke about media ethics when they were invited to address students at the Lincoln School of Journalism at the University of Lincoln, UK, on 1 March.

The power of the Indian newsweekly Himmat, an English-language paper published in Mumbai by Rajmohan Gandhi from 1964 to 1981, was ‘the power of the ideas it represented’, said Kumar Ketkar, editor of Loksatta, the largest circulation Marathi-language daily in the state of Maharashtra.

On 18 January, the world honours Martin Luther King’s vision of building bridges across racial divides. In this feature we recall one story of how a racist heart was changed and look at some of King's ongoing legacy through the work of his disciples, the Rev Dr Otis Moss.

Sonali Samarasinghe Wickrematunge now carries the title “Editor in Exile”. In September of 2008, she was the second winner of the Global Shining Light Award in Norway, presented by the International Conference of Investigative Journalists for exposing how a government minister “used his power and connections to the President of the country to run roughshod over the media and the justice system.” Less than four months later her husband of two months, the well known editor of the Leader newspaper, Sri Lanka, was brutally gunned down as he drove to work and Sonali was forced to flee the country, along with other members of her family—hence her unusual title. 

News from Arab-US policymakers’ conference illustrates how media misses the positive

OTHER NEWS

Bill Porter, Founder of the International Communications Forum, has died  

We are sad to announce that ICF Founder Bill Porter died on 1 April.

 

 

 

 

The William and Sonja Porter Memorial Fund

We have launched a Memorial Fund honouring Bill and his wife Sonja. The primary objective of the fund will be to strengthen the on-going work of the ICF. The fund will also help support a number of specific initiatives, including these: