Carlos Roberto Tiburcio de Oliveira presenting Media Editors recommendations

As the leaders of the IBSA and BRIC groupings met in Brasilia last week IPS hosted an official meeting of leading media editors from Brazil, India and South Africa. IPS Director General Mario Lubetkin and the chair of the IPS core donors group, Carlos Roberto Tiburcio de Oliveira, presented the recommendations from the meeting to President Lula, Prime Minister Singh, President Zuma, their Ministers and delegations, in a segment broadcast live on Brazilian national television.

The IBSA Editors Forum is the latest initiative of IPS’s strategy to foster strengthened South-South communication and media channels, to accompany the new global geography of power. The Forum in Brasilia was supported by the Government of Brazil and the World Bank with the South-South Cooperation Unit of UNDP joining the meeting.

More than twenty media editors and senior journalists participated in the Forum, concluding with proposals including that IBSA add an official working group on communication, create a web site for information about IBSA, and establish a programme to wake journalists up to these new developments.

Mario Lubetkin presenting Media Editor's recommendations.

“Our countries should not continue to receive news about each other via New York or London,” but directly, said the Brazilian ambassador to South Africa, Jose Vicente Pimentel, at the Editors Forum, where Brazil’s deputy minister for communication, Ottoni Fernandes, proposed cooperation between public television broadcasters across IBSA.

Read more IPS coverage of the Forum, and other news from the IBSA and BRIC meetings at the IPS website on South-South co-operation.