Self-imposed press watchdog marks a decade with int’l presence

More than a thousand reader complaints settled

The tenth anniversary celebrations of the Press Complaints Commission of Sri Lanka (PCCSL) will be marked with an International Conference on ‘Ethical Reporting and Self-Regulation’ beginning tomorrow with the participation of delegates from the South and South East Asian regions and elsewhere.

The conference is being held in partnership with UNESCO.

Representatives from statutory Press Councils of India and Pakistan and regulatory bodies from Bangladesh, Nepal, the Maldives, Bhutan, Myanmar, Hong Kong, Norway and Malaysia will also make presentations at the conference which will be opened at the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute of Foreign Relations and Strategic Studies with keynote speeches by Prof. Savitri Goonesekere and Mr. Ian Beales.

Professor Goonesekere is Emeritus Professor of Law of the University of Colombo and former Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo and served Fellowships in several universities in the US and UK. She was a member of the UN Trust Fund for Victims of Torture and served on the Expert Committee monitoring the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Discrimination against Women. Professor Goonesekere was a member of the Editorial Advisory Committee, UN Secretary General's Study on Violence against Children. Mr. Ian Beales was the Secretary of the Editors’ Code of the United Kingdom and is an international consultant on Media Codes of Ethics.

There will be a recorded video presentation by Judge C.G. Weeramantry, retired Judge of the International Court of Justice in The Hague. A prolific writer on media freedom and media responsibilities, Judge Weeramantry is currently in Australia. Other speakers include Mr. Toby Mendel, Executive Director of the Centre for Law and Democracy, Canada, Prof. Shakuntala Rao, Chairperson, Communication Studies of Plattsburgh University, New York, Ms. Nandini