Inter-Press Service (IPS), civil society’s leading news agency, is offering special coverage of the World Summit on the Information Society, to be held at Tunis, from November 16-18, 2005. IPS, unlike the mainstream global news agencies which are mostly focused on the affluent world, calls itself an "independent voice from the South and for development".
At Tunis, the major UN-sponsored conference about information and communication has particular relevance to the future of Third World built on its access to effective communication.
IPS’s www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/wsis will feature global reporting about the information society and the final run-up to Tunis.
"An RSS feed is available to take headlines directly to other websites," Claudia Diez de Medina
[‘RSS feeds’ allow internet users to quickly scan through news. It is specially useful for sites that add content regularly. Each new article shows up as a line or two, and a link to the full article. Unlike subscriptions to printed newspapers or magazines, most RSS subscriptions are free.]
In addition, during the week of the Summit, an international team of journalists in Tunis will produce a daily, virtual edition of the IPS conference newspaper ‘TerraViva’.
This will cover reporting in English, French, Spanish and Arabic, and news feeds and radio broadcasts from other partners, via the site http://www.ipsterraviva.net/TV/tunis/
IPS has a network of journalists in more than 100 countries, with satellite communication links to 1,200 outlets.
Among the ‘critical issues’ it focuses on are concerns about the global environment, development, emergency aid, and conflict watch in Africa.
IPS works as an international wire service that deals mainly with issues and events of interest to the "developing" countries, and people who are interested in these regions.
Its news comes across as being different from other global news-flows, mainly because of its emphasis on a different news angle; IPS’s attempt to get the "news behind the news" and its in-depth stories about civil society.
It also puts out stories are one does not otherwise find in the mainstream, or stories from places where the
international media seldom reports upon.
Currently, apart from English, IPS has its regular services coming through in a number of other languages — Arabic, Burmese, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Khmer, Spanish, Swedish, Portuguese, Tamil, Thai, Nepali and Kiswahili.
Inter Press Service was founded in 1964 in Rome as a communications bridge between the countries of the North and the South.
Quickly expanding, it first spread through Latin American, and then to North America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
IPS currently provides information on global issues through satellite communications, the internet, printed materials, and email.
Unlike others, IPS orients its coverage to look at how and why events occur, with an emphasis on issues like human rights, conflict and peace-keeping, the gap between rich and poor, the environment and population issues, refugees and international migration patterns, and international trade issues.
Information society issues are one of its concerns too.
According to IPS, vast areas of the world are often under-reported, ignored, or noticed only in times of
emergency or crisis.
To counter this trend, IPS focuses attention on the countries of the South, and the marginalised in the North. It goes beyond breaking news to help people understand what lies behind day-to-day events.
More details on the WSIS coverage are available via wsis@ips.org
