Soliven off to IPI meeting

Leading the Philippine delegation to the World Congress and 50th General Assembly of the International Press Institute (IPI) which is being held in New Delhi, India, from Friday to Monday, STAR publisher and chairman Max V. Soliven left the other day via Singapore.

The 800 IPI delegates, who comprise editors, publishers, radio-television and other media directors and owners from more than 100 countries around the world, will be guests of honor at India’s national festival, the Republic Day Parade today, and, three days later (Jan. 29) at the internationally famous "Beating Retreat," the show of massed bands of the armed forces there, conducted in the ceremonial tradition introduced during the former British Raj.

The four-day conference is expected to discuss such issues as the tensions and conflicts in the Indian subcontinent with emphasis on Indo-Pakistan relations, the Global Information Revolution (India, now a modern Information Technology or IT center, particularly in the cyber-city of Bangalore is in the forefront of this movement), the exploitation of the Internet for Publishing companies, the current challenges to press freedom, and other current topics.

Soliven will attend the annual meeting of the IPI Board of Directors in his capacity as a "Lifetime Fellow" of the organization. He is also the chairman of the Philippine National Committee.

The conference will be hosted this year by Ms. Shobhana Bhartia, chairperson of IPI India, and Philip Mathew, International Board Member of the IPI. The Director, as always, will be Johann P. Fritz, who is based at the IPI World Headquarters in Vienna, Austria.

The IPI was founded in 1950 by newspaper editors from 15 countries who met in New York City and undertook to organize a global network for newspaper professionals. It now operates on every continent, with its main office in Vienna and its business headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland. All the major Philippine newspapers and radio-TV networks, including ABS-CBN, belong to the IPI, with GMA-7 affiliating this year.