• Communication commission discussion

  • 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.