About/Acerca de IPS
from
Alejandro Kirk
on Dec 19, 2013 06:59 PM
Entre el personal de la FAO circula esta noticia que me llamó la atención.
Como todos saben, IPS funciona en el edificio de la FAO, en Roma, y está
atravesando una crisis terminal, reducida a apenas cinco noticias diarias
en todo el mundo. El tan publicitado servicio de TV por Internet fue
cortado abruptamente en diciembre y el personal despedido sin
explicaciones. El actual director, Mario Lubetkin anunció su renuncia, pero
por asumir su responsabildad en la sitiuación. Al revés, en su comunicado
de despedida reivindica grandes éxitos, y por ello será él mismo quien
decida el nombre de su sucesor/a. Al renunciar, Lubetkin no informó al
personal de IPS el por qué de su abandono. Este despacho arroja luces sobre
ello.
*Lubetkin new FAO Communications Czar*
December 17, 2013
By INSIDER NEWSDESK
ROME–FAO has signed Mario Lubetkin, head of IPS news agency, as its
Communications chief, climaxing the unusual rapport between the UN agency
and the Italian-funded news agency, FAO sources say.
Senor Lubetkin, an earnest Uruguayan, signed the contract for the dlrs
200,000 plus D2 job earlier this month though the UN Food and Agriculture
Organisation has not yet announced the appointment while Senor Lubotken
serves out his notice at IPS, where he is due to leave in February.
Since the Brazilian FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva took
office last year relations between FAO and IPS have become increasingly
symbiotic, with IPS moving out of its longtstanding headquarters in
downtown Rome and moving into spacious new offices at the FAO headquarters,
including a brand new television editing suite.
No IPS journalists are trained to use the state of the art editing suite
but FAO staff have helped them to make web broadcasts, though it is
understood that these have now been suspended.
IPS was founded by Italian journalists from Bettino Craxi`s Socialist
Party with the aim of providing a counterweight to the alleged bias against
developing countries that the Socialists claimed is practised by western
news agencies such as United Press International and Reuter.
In recent years IPS largely has survived thanks to funding from the
Italian Foreign Ministry as well as a sprinkling of clients and governments
in Latin America.
It is unclear how IPS could write objectively about the FAO now that it
has its offices inside the UN agency. IPS has never been critical of the UN
agency in its coverage but while it retained an independent headquarters
was positioned to remain apparently objective potentially.
Senor Lubotken takes over a position that previously was held by respected
former Reuter journalist Nicholas Parsons. He will inherit a media
department that has had its image dented by disclosures of the rigging of
the appointment of its Latin American communications officer, Juan Jose
Toha, to the exclusion of two highly qualified women.
Insiders at the agency attribute the FAO`s embracing of IPS to a close
friendship between Dr Graziano and a senior staff member at the radical
news agency, the sources said.
At the helm of IPS, Senor Lubetkin has worn another hat as alternate
permanent representative of Uruguay to the UN agencies, a rare combination
of journalism and diplomacy. It is unclear whether he will continue to
represent Montevideo once he begins his new role at FAO, the sources said.