Over 1000 journalists descend on Summit of Americas
The Fifth Summit of the Americas starts on Friday, but this morning in Port of Spain, summit activities went in full gear. Regional leaders and a throng of reporters from Latin America and the Caribbean have descended on the Island of Trinidad. Everyone is waiting to hear the address by U.S. President Barack Obama. But security issues have made the preparations hectic and cumbersome. Channel 5’s William Neal spoke to several journalists about the challenges in getting accredited to the event.
Felipe Noguera, Communications Cord., 5th Summit of Americas
“The number of journalists is looking like twelve-fifty and counting. The accommodations are prepared both on the cruise ship and the local hotels. I think the challenge we’ll be facing is how to accredit all these people; local, regional and international and that difficulty is because we’re using a very sound security system to ensure that all of the people who come pass through the security clearances. So I think that’s been our most daunting challenge.”
William Neal
“People have been—in the media we’ve picked up that people have been complaining about the pooling of the journalists. How will that work and why is that necessary?”
Felipe Noguera
“With so many media personnel in rooms that are relatively small in terms of accommodating delegates and especially the heads of government, there is obviously a space limitation in capacity. In addition there is the question of security and the ability to focus on the agenda and so the pooling is something—it’s a standard practice internationally at events such as this. It’s a solution to enable fair representation of media from throughout the hemisphere. They will be rotated. There will be pools that are limited to the size of the event, which event is taking place and so on and we intend to ensure that at least every country is represented in every pool to the best of our ability.”
Fabian Tierry, Journalist
“One of the interesting things is that—one of the questions that the media may want to ask you will not get to ask it because on representative is chosen then how much can you really do? How much can you really ask? How much can you really find out? So far in addition, to an outsider you have the problem of accreditation as well and all these people here have been—some of them have been standing here for four hours, some of them have been here from yesterday and told to come back. Some practitioners have brought their parties and others haven’t because the organizers don’t know whose names are on the list, they don’t have them even though parties have already sent two of the respective media house. So all these are raising a lot of concerns in the minds of media practitioners at how disorganized and maybe the task is a little bit too for the amount of staff that was hired in the first place to do what they have to do.”
Kristy Ramnerine, Chief Reporter, Express
“Honestly, I think a lot more could have been done. They started doing the media briefings about two weeks ago for editors. However, at yesterday’s media briefing a lot of people were a bit confused as to what really was taking place in terms of the pooling system. We understand that not everybody would be allowed to go to cover a specific event but they’re not letting the local media know what is the—how they are going to chose the actual persons who will be covering the event. At the media briefing a lot of people were dissatisfied because every media house, they are in competition with the other and they want to ensure that they get the best coverage of the event. So I think a lot of people were discouraged when they were told that there would be media pools. However, the organizers could not confirm how many people would be in the media pools and also they could not confirm how the selection process would take place.”
William Neal
“Accommodating more than twelve hundred journalists is no easy task for the organizers. In fact, with the encroaching timeline, it seems like something near impossible and there are also security concerns that need to be addressed. As a matter of fact, while we wait outside, a fire drill was called and as a result we have everybody from the media center coming outside to take a break whether they wanted to or not.”
A thousand plus reporters fight to find their place and space for the coverage of Barack Obama’s speech on Friday. The previous visit by a U.S. president to the region was by former President Bill Clinton who met with Caribbean leaders during his term in office in Barbados. We’ll have more of the summit tomorrow morning with live coverage from Port of Spain on Open Your Eyes with William Neal and Marleni Cuellar.
