Members of the local media yesterday raised several questions about the pooling system being used for this week’s Fifth Summit of the Americas.
During a briefing and tour of the summit Media Centre at the International Financial Centre in Port of Spain yesterday, media personnel were told by Globecast representative, Melanie Gibb, that they would have to fill out application forms prior to every pooling event for the summit.
Globecast South Africa has been contracted by Government as the Host Broadcaster, and will manage the media centre, which will be located at Levels 2-6, Tower C, of the International Financial Centre.
Gibb said the forms would only be provided prior to every pooling event. She could not give the timeframe as to when the media-both international and local-would be alerted about a pooling event. However, she advised that members of the media should be at the Media Centre at all times, in order to keep abreast of new developments.
When asked about the selection process, she could not reveal details. However, she indicated that because of the number of countries covering the mega-meeting, only one member of the local media may be chosen for a pool.
This caused an uproar amongst the gathering of media practitioners.
She revealed that those selected will be required to share their information with other members of the media. For example, if a camera crew from CCN TV6 was chosen to go on the spouses retreat, the crew would be required to disseminate its recording to all other television houses that were not present in the pool.
When asked about the size of the media pools, Gibb could not give an answer.
However, Information Bulletin Number 3, posted on the National Secretariat website on March 24, states: ’Media pools will consist of 25 media personnel and will have access to photograph the Heads of Delegation at the Opening Ceremony and Plenary Session. The media pools will be allowed to cover Parallel Events i.e. Private Sector, Youth and Civil Society Fora, and have photo opportunities at the meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Social Actors, Plenary and the Spouses Programme’.
