A seminar for editors sponsored by The Crimes of War Project and The Freedom Forum

Day Two, Closing Remarks: John Owen

JOHN OWEN: Well, again, I think we ought to just acknowledge what Roy Gutman has accomplished in taking a great idea and making it happen with terrific support from the people around him. I mean, although he now has been completely seduced by so many compliments that he can never cover the State Department again, Madeline Albright. He can never cover the U.N. again because of what he heard from me and Otunnu. So he may have to do a new full-time job in making the Crimes of War Project a permanent part of everybody's life. So I think that might be next on his agenda. But I think, really, congratulations, Roy, on making this happen. And I just want to say to all of you who took time to take part in this, a large thank you from the Freedom Forum for giving up a weekend and really making a tremendous contribution to what I think is going to be a yearly happening or at least a bi-annual happening. And I think we've planted some very good seeds here. I also would like to thank my own colleagues who aren't here today because a lot of my colleagues, Phyllis Lyons and others, were part of the early discussions about this. And without a kind of internal push, the Forum facilities might not have been made available as well.

And what has already come up is the idea of some kind of support from a foundation for freelance training. I think someone should make a proposal to the Freedom Forum to get involved in this and I think if someone of Gene Robert's stature stepped up to the plate and I think that might, given serious consideration -- I can't speak for everybody in the Freedom Forum about where it's going to put its money. But I know for one, Forum, because every year when they go to put those names on the Journalism Memorial of people who have died covering conflict, I think the Forum in its wisdom has chosen to identify itself with efforts to keep as few people as possible from going up on that beautiful glass and steel memorial. And I think if this training course saves one life, I think that's worthy of any kind of contribution the Forum makes.

So I think it would look very hospitably upon a proposal to expand this in the United States. It's something that's happened in Europe. It's something we want to try to happen in Latin America. Maria Christina Cabiero, who won the CPJ annual journalism award, is asking for our help. Chris Cramer and I both made a kind of tentative verbal commitments to try to make this happen in Latin America, and, perhaps -- not in Colombia, as we found it's difficult to do, of course, in the country itself -- perhaps in Buenos Aires. But I think we have a moral responsibility to help those local journalists. Tony Borden's IWPR has local journalists filing under great dangers in the Balkans. I think we have to make sure that the richness does not only go to the big news organizations and the privileged groups. We have to make sure we share the wealth with the local drivers and stringers who make stories happen for all of us. We all know that. And I know in our center in London, we have Volker Cramer's picture and we have Gabrielle Grunner from Distern Magazine and we have the exhibit. We also have Senora Alite, the Macedonian intellectual who served as their interpreter and driver, as a reminder that there's a real price for that as well.

Anyway, thank you so much for being part of this and we would love feedback. We'd love names that we can add to Anthony Feinstein's survey to make sure we have a broad base of freelance photographers. Please, in your newspapers, if you have them, contact Anthony Feinstein or us and we will shovel those names. The larger the sample, the better study we will have. Thank you, again, for attending this incredibly good session.

Thank you.