Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General and Caroline Petit, UN DPI Chief, Partnerships Unit, News and Media Division. Credit: IPS.

On September 18th IPS-Inter Press Service signed a broadcast agreement with the UN Department of Public Information, in the framework of the new IPS WebTV project.

With this broadcast agreement, IPS WebTV will be able to reproduce selected video materials from UN television programmes within its own programmes.

The agreement was signed from the UN side by Ms. Caroline Petit, Chief, Partnerships Unit, for Mr. Stéphane Dujarric, Director, News and Media Division, Department of Public Information. Mario Lubetkin, IPS Director General, signed for Inter Press Service.

Starting 2013, the new WebTV will draw on more than 400 journalists in 140 countries, many of whom already have substantial expertise in multi-media. This IPS network of journalists, mostly from or based in the global South, will bring a new visual dimension to reporting on issues relating primarily to development, rights, energy, food, civil society, gender empowerment, the environment – and the growing emergence of the South on the world stage.

The formal IPS Web TV announcement took place in June this year, on the sidelines of the Rio+20 summit of world leaders in Brazil.

The pilot phase of IPS Web TV will be launched in early 2013 with daily broadcasts through the web originating from its studios in Rome.