Bernard Margueritte ICF Annual Report (July 2001- July 2002) It is absolutely right that our annual reports run from July to July. It is a way to remember the role that plays in our motivation and determination "the spirit of Caux" and how vital it is for us to rebuild our strength and energy in the atmosphere of Mountain House. It is never easy to assess the result of our activity. Even more so this time, since when I started to work as the ICF president on July 2001 we embarked on a two years programme that is therefore under way. Nonetheless we should concentrate not on what we have done well, but on where we have not done enough. Let us remember what our goals were last July for the coming two years: 1/ we intended to be faithful to what makes the uniqueness of the ICF: to always promote first of all a person-to person, conscience-to-conscience dialogue aiming at building a network of people of good will in the media. 2/ to build nevertheless a stronger administrative structure...without becoming a "bureaucratised organization". 3/ to publish a 10-year ICF brochure and a printed programme. 4/ to continue our programme of conferences in Scotland, but also in Lebanon and South Africa. 5/ to start expanded programmes in various areas, making the best use of our worldwide presence. 6/ to find new, dedicated people, particularly among media professionals, and build new links with valid institutions. 7/ to establish a true cooperation with all the great initiatives supported by MRA (I.of C.), like Hope in the Cities, Jubilee Plus, the CRT, etc... 8/ to launch a fund raising effort to give us a permanent budget. What have I done to progress along those lines? Not to mention the writing of letters and hundreds of e-mails and the making of thousands of phone calls I went: - to London for the Caux Round Table (September 8-12) - to Prague for the anti-corruption Transparency International Congress (October 6-11) - to Scotland for our Forum in 3 cities (November) - to Lebanon for a first preparatory trip (December) - to South Africa for another preparatory trip (February 19-26) - to London for an internal meeting (April1) - to the USA for meetings and fund-raising (May) - to Bruges (Belgium) for the WAN Congress (June) - to Paris for meetings with journalists (June) - to Lebanon (June 27- July 4) - to Caux (July-August) What have been the results of all these efforts? Let us go point after point: 1/ Thank God we are not wavering in our determination to be faithful to the ICF principles. Should we fail, the best among us, like Henry Heald, are always there to remind us who we are. This should nevertheless be always present in our mind. We have to be aware that it will not be easy to build a better structure and a stronger budget and remain ourselves! 2/ The administrative structure has been improved. The Executive Committee is working very well. Robin Williamson, as Executive Director, is doing a tremendous job and those, who threatened to take some distance, have seen clearly that we could not go very far without their continuous and brilliant presence. In general, the vice-presidents have been quite supportive. The situation is less satisfactory with the Regional Representatives, who in many cases have not been as dedicated as we could have expected. 3/ It was a great challenge for me to bring together the 10-years brochure. Bill did a great job and, as always, Hugh Nowell, was the "deus ex machina" in all this. We have also to express here our tremendous gratitude for the admirable work done by Blair Cummock. We also produced a printed programme. 4/ The Scotland conference in 3 cities was an exciting success. In Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Glasgow, we had a new approach, having four kinds of meetings with the political leadership of the city, the media professionals, the students, but also with the public at large. This worked very well (Martyn Lewis and Magnus Linklater made impressive contributions) and we should try to use again this blueprint. The two trips to Lebanon and the one to South Africa were very promising and confirmed the determination of the people there to have a forum. Unfortunately, some problems in Lebanon, political and otherwise, forced us to postpone the Lebanese conference, which should now take place in the autumn. By a domino effect, the South African forum had to be rescheduled for March 2003. 5/ We have made remarkable progress in the building of important new programmes. Sanjoy Hazarika is in charge of a programme of exchange of journalists between media companies and organizations accepting the Sarajevo Commitment, Gordon Graham is supervising the Sonja Porter Award, Jerry Lanson is ready to take on the Media workshop programme, Ingrid Volkmer is willing to coordinate our research programme, Ian Corcoran continues to oversee the Video programme, Robin Williamson has done an impressive work to make our web site truly efficient, producing valuable contacts even from remote places, such as Fiji, Haiti, Mongolia and Nepal and Alan Kania could be involved with Robin and Carl Gottlieb in organizing a kind of international journal on our web site. All those programmes will be available in writing by the end of the summer. The foundations, as potential donors, are waiting for them. 6/ We have been blessed to find new, bright and dedicated media people ready to work with us. A year ago we had links with people in 100 countries. We are now present in 116 countries. Many first-rate people have come on board, in France with for example Ignacio Ramonet, the president of "Le Monde Diplomatique" or Francois-Regis Hutin, president of "Ouest-France" and his daughter Jeanne-Emmanuelle, editorialist, in the US the list is even longer, with Andy Glass, from "The Hill" (previously the Cox), Roger Cohen, from "The New York Times", Jerry Lanson, the dean of the School of journalism at Emerson College in Boston, Alex Jones, director of the Center on the Press at Harvard, and last but not least Ingrid Volkmer, the brilliant media researcher working at Harvard. We should of course mention many, many more names, like for example Peter Vandermeersch, the editor-in-chief of the best newspaper in Belgium, "De Standaard". We are also developing a closer relationship with a variety of institutions, like Transparency International, WAN, IPI, ICFJ, RTNDA and many journalism centres at various universities. The list can be found in our new programme. 7/ I am pleased to report that everywhere I went I had an excellent relationship with MRA (I of C) people, let it be in Lebanon, South Africa, France, Switzerland or America. In this last instance, I am particularly happy that we could with Dick Ruffin, who is helping the ICF so much, build the foundation for a truly close cooperation. I attended also the CRT meeting, but the synergy with MRA should definitely be improved. The link of friendship I developed with Cornelio Sommaruga should help in this. 8/ We started our fund-raising effort. In the USA I had a very good response from the Ford Foundation, which is giving serious consideration to our demand. Yinka Adeyemi in New York is keeping a close contact with the Ford people. High ranking officers at the Soros Foundation, thank to the help of Cornelio Sommaruga and Frances Pinter, are also studying our case. We still have a good contact with the Knight Foundation and since the people there expressed the hope that we build a better relationship with the International Center for Journalists, the fact that after my meetings with David Anable, its president, we are doing just that is very hopeful. In Europe, I had a first contact with former France's Prime Minister Michel Rocard, at the European Parliament (where he is the head of the Commission on Media and Culture). What is next? During the second year of this two-year plan, we should continue and expand on what has been done. We should move forward with the planned conferences and think of new ones. We should make clear to everyone what are the attributions of the vice-presidents and the regional representatives and ask everyone to answer in conscience if he/she has the willingness and the determination to do it. If not, some new, dedicated people should take over. Our seven additional programmes should be available in writing quite soon (we should decide what title to give to the people in charge: curator, coordinator or director?) and this will allow us to expand an all-out fund-raising effort, in which many should get involved. I received for example the names of the people in charge of the media at the European Union and at the OSCE in Vienna. Those are just a few of the new paths to follow and I am grateful to Bela Hatvany for his pump-priming effort. We should also continue to build our network of people of good will in the media with a particular emphasis, it seems to me, on working journalists, who are practitioners in all kinds of media. The synergy with all positive "Initiatives of Change" has to be expressed in very practical terms and made workable. By doing all this, many among us will have the conviction that they are fulfilling, as Marvin Kalb called it, "God's work". Indeed we should never be so overwhelmed by what we are doing that we do not see anymore the purpose of it and don't find anymore the time to reflect in the silence of our conscience and remain clear that our goal is not so much to improve the media here and there than to serve the dignity of the human being, in a world where such an effort is more necessary than ever.