Director’s annual report at FMP’s first AGM on July 5, 2009
Foundation for Media Professionals (FMP)
Annual Report presented by Director Manoj Mitta at the first Annual General Meeting (AGM) of members held on July 5, 2009 at India International Centre, New Delhi.
Dear Friends,
It is my pleasure and honor to present the first annual report of the Foundation for Media Professionals, a society founded by 12 of us about a year ago. It had taken several meetings and brain-storming sessions before we registered FMP as a society in Delhi on April 25, 2008. It was set up with the conviction that none of the existing media associations were addressing the issue of professionalism, much less so of its steady erosion. None of the existing associations seemed concerned about, or were at any rate doing far too little, about the threats to the integrity of our profession, whether from outside or within the media. This is how, by paying Rs 1 lakh each as a token of their commitment, the dozen founding members established FMP with the vision of promoting quality journalism and upholding media freedom, of keeping alive the romance of journalism and the spirit of the Fourth Estate.
In keeping with this lofty vision, we set ambitious targets for FMP right from the first year – in terms of enrolling other journalists who share such concerns and organizing activities that help us nurture our professionalism. Much as we have come a long way since we started, our targets have proved to be a little too ambitious not only because of teething problems but also due to the unforeseen economic downturn and its impact on the media.
Let me briefly report on the degree to which we have progressed on each of our targets.
Membership: While our target was to enter three figures by the end of the first year, we have barely trebled our membership from the dozen who launched FMP. And we have so far been able to get only one patron member, who is required to pay Rs 1 lakh as admission fee. These modest figures are by no means indicative of the much larger number of journalists who attended our programs and appreciated our noble enterprise. If such journalists have not necessarily turned into FMP members, it is because many of them apparently find even our basic membership fee of Rs 6,000 per annum too high, especially because of the prevailing environment of job losses and salary cuts. But then any reduction of membership fee would inevitably increase FMP’s dependence on donations and endowments, not only to fund its activities but also to meet its operational expenses. Given the imperative of widening our member base, our challenge therefore is to deliver greater value to all those journalists who have invested in FMP (our foundation that is, not fixed maturity plans!).
Website: Since we don’t yet have an office, we are all the more dependent on our digital headquarters, www.fmp.org.in. In terms of information and layout, the website has turned out to be reasonably good. But the content obviously has to be more dynamic and updated on a daily basis if the website were to emerge as a must-visit for serious journalists across the country. This is possible only when we raise enough money to afford the required staff.
Series of media dialogues: Our greatest achievement no doubt has been the holding of five media dialogues, responding to events in the course of the year. The shock of 26/11 and the criticism of its media coverage triggered our first panel discussion, “Who is to blame for media hysteria on terror – journalists or viewers? Lessons from Mumbai siege”. The bulk of the panelists were from Mumbai and the debate, held in Press Club of India barely a fortnight after the terror attack, was of a high order and the response from the audience was overwhelming. The second media dialogue held in FICCI premises was a lecture by a global pundit on corporate governance in the wake of the Satyam scam. The third media dialogue was a panel discussion on blasphemy in response to the arrests of three editors in quick succession allegedly for offending religious sentiment. The arrested editors were among the speakers who debated this question, “Is religion beyond media scrutiny?” Our decision to hold the discussion in the larger auditorium at India International Centre was amply warranted by the audience response. The fourth media dialogue at the same venue has turned out to be even more successful going not only by the audience response but also the media buzz created by it, thanks partly to the gratuitous intervention of religious miscreants. The provocation for them was our audacious move to bring together journalists from Pakistan and India to debate the proposition, “Is media jingoism fanning Indo-Pak tensions?” Our last panel discussion, held at Claridges shortly after the rout of LTTE, focused on another vital media issue, “Can conflict reporting be non-partisan?” We constituted a panel of conflict reporters from India and abroad. Emboldened by our success in holding media dialogues on such diverse issues, we are now in the process of forming a panel of top media owners and managers to discuss the sensitive issue of the blurring of the line between news and ads and between quality press and popular press. The big picture is, our media-dialogue series promises to foster a culture of introspection among journalists on the state of the media. Though we have members from other parts of the country, we have not as yet organized any activity outside Delhi. We should remedy this omission in the coming year.
Workshops: Based on the premise that more discerning readers and viewers would force media organizations to be more quality conscious, we hit upon this radical idea of holding workshops for media consumers in schools and colleges. This project is however yet to take off as we are still in the process of finalizing the curriculum and finding the necessary resources. But the one workshop we did conduct this year turned out to be for the benefit of journalists from Thailand. It was an assignment that came our way courtesy of a German NGO, Friedrich Ebert Stiftung (FES), and its themes had much Indian resonance: reporting of minorities, gender issues and conflicts.
Survey: This is by far our ambitious venture and, given the scale of logistics and finance involved, it is still at the planning stage. It will be the first ever survey of media freedom in states across the country. The idea is to rank states on a media freedom index devised by us to help create a more conducive environment for maintaining our professionalism.
Financials: By March 31, 2009, FMP collected annual fee from 31 members to the tune of Rs. 1,86,000, out of which Rs. 1,63,833/- (i.e. 88%), was spent on seminars, workshops and website development. The one time admission fee of Rs. 1,00,000/- per founder member or patron member has been treated as corpus of the society under which Rs. 11,27,500/- was collected. Income and expenditure account and balance sheet for the year 2008-09 along with Auditor’s Report is attached herewith.
Acknowledgements: Now I come to what is to me the most important part of the report. I am referring to the opportunity to place on record our deep appreciation for the special role played by special individuals in bringing FMP to where it is. I would first like to thank Aniruddha Bahal for not only mooting the idea of forming such an organization but also displaying the tenacity to make it happen in the face of skepticism and indifference. Besides lending us the secretarial support of Rakesh Joshi, Bahal been instrumental in forging a fruitful association with FES, which generously funded four out of the five media dialogues and the workshop for Thai journalists. The next person I would therefore like to thank is Rajeshwar Dayal of FES for being so supportive and encouraging. We are similarly indebted to our auditor Sudhir Varma, who did a lot of hand-holding with us from the time FMP was no more than the germ of an idea. Besides number-crunching, he has spared us the ordeal of drafting the memorandum of association and rules of FMP and dealing with various regulatory authorities. We could frankly do with more supporters like Varma and Dayal. I would also like to thank Deepak Sharma for designing our logo and an excellent poster for each of our events. Lending a touch of class to the proceedings, his posters have played a major role in pulling crowds. I would be failing in my duty if I did not acknowledge with gratitude the silent services rendered by Amitabh Thakur and Harpal Singh in putting up posters and sending out invitations. Among the office bearers, I must single out Treasurer Vivian Fernandes as he often went beyond the call of duty in bringing to bear his organizational skills. He was also of immense help in crafting the text of the website. S Srinivasan and Vipul Mudgal bore the burden of putting together the panel discussions on Indo-Pak crisis and conflict reporting, respectively. Our heartfelt thanks to them too. Last but not the least, I must thank Madhu Trehan for agreeing to be our President and raising the profile of FMP. There are more persons I would like to thank but I won’t tax your patience any further.
We might have made no dramatic gains in the first year, but FMP’s slow and steady growth bears testimony to our mission of not letting media professionals lose sight of the first principles of journalism. FMP is indeed poised for bigger things in the year ahead.
Thank you.
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