An Abiding Priority for the Board
As veteran board members know, after 15 years, I have stepped down as co-chair of the Club’s Freedom of the Press Committee (FOP Committee). It is a great regret to me that I am unable to be present in person this evening to make a last report to the board. Yet, the necessity of speaking virtually has the effect of making what I have to say feel less like a valedictory and more like a chance to focus the board’s attention on the rich to-do list the Committee has developed and its explicit connection to what the Club wishes to become.
The FOP Committee’s concern has always been to make the Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) an essential participant in the advocacy of professional and human rights for journalists around the world. Notwithstanding the small numbers of its all-volunteer effort, OPC, as the largest organization of journalists with a professional interest in international affairs, is unique in that when it speaks for press freedom, it speaks for colleagues.
In August, for example, news came that the alleged leader of the gang the murdered Russian journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, had been arrested. Before her assassination in 2006, Politkovskaya was an acquaintance of several members of this organization. When the FoP wrote to Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pressing hard for the apprehension – finally — of the ringleader in Politkovskaya’s killing, it felt natural to speak of winning justice not just for Politkovskaya, but for her family and for her colleagues — our colleagues — at Novaya Gazeta.
The members of the Committee have always talked about their work in terms of building the Club’s brand among members and potential members. When we’ve done so, it’s been with a wish to make that ambition an abiding priority of the board. If it wants to amplify the Club’s voice with respect to press freedom, the board needs to make active choices before the end of this year about how it will commit the energy of the Freedom of the Press Committee members.
There is no need to rehearse here the excellent summary that Larry Martz presented to the board at the annual meeting on August 24, 2011. If you need a refresher, Larry’s report is up on the OPC Web site. The essential point to make is that OPC has a strategic choice to make…about what it wishes the press freedom Committee to be, and how it will consciously embed that goal in everything it does.
This is an ideal time to be having this conversation, given the infusion of new energy that new board members always bring. The FOP Committee has always believed that a high profile in the advocacy for press freedom can rejuvenate, even re-animate, the OPC’s sense of mission. Only the sustained activity — the genuine commitment — of every individual board member will make this conversation more than mere aspiration.
Respectfully submitted by: Kevin McDermott