• by Mario Lubetkin
• Wednesday, March 16, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Paradoxically, just as history is proving the World Social Forum right in many of its predictions and analyses, the major media, the "shapers of public opinion", are not increasing but decreasing their coverage of it, writes Mario Lubetkin, Director-General of IPS news agency.

In this article the author writes that this silent treatment is a clear obstacle to the expansion of the WSF and a cause of real concern for many of its innumerable organisers and participants. Part of this situation has to do with the characteristics and errors of the WSF itself. The analysis of this matter is important given that the Forum constitutes the largest agglomeration of civil society in the world.

The structure of the forums consists of numerous simultaneous meetings on different themes. Thus the journalists must choose which they would like to attend and may find it difficult to make an assessment of the forum as a whole. which can divert attention from the ideas that it generates. The author also calls for a rethinking of the Forum's communications strategy that factors in the new modes of exchange made possible by the Internet and electronic devices, social networks, and major alternative media like Al Jazeera and blogs like the Huffington Post.

(*) Mario Lubetkin is Director-General of IPS news agency.

//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, AND THE UNITED STATES//

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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