As part of the up-coming World Social Forum there will be an 'international media exchange', Ciranda. This is what they say about themselves

 http://www.ciranda.net/publique/cgi/public/cgilua.exe/web/templates/htm/0ingles/view.htm?infoid=17&user=reader&editionsectionid=2

"There has probably never been such a dramatic need to build alternatives to market-oriented journalism as now, on the eve of the II World Social Forum....recent years have been marked by the multiplication of independent information systems and by the use they make of the Internet. At two very special moments - the I FSM, in January 2001, and the Genoa Social Forum, in August - this ebullience took new shape. Major networks of independent publications emerged which were able to circulate ...the reliable information that the commercial media insisted on ignoring or denying. From January 31 to February 5, 2002, that flame is going to ignite again. The 2nd International Independent Information Exchange is coming."

That certainly sounds radical and alternative, doesn't it? But look who is paying for this initiative, through its sponsor the Inter Press Agency...


- Canadian International Development Agency -
- Carl-Duisberg-Gesellschaft (Germany)
- Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (USA)
- Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- European Commission
- Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
- Ford Foundation (USA)
- Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (Germany)
- German Ministry for Economic Development and Cooperation
- Group of 77, G77
- International Labour Organisation
- Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation
- Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Netherlands Organization for International Development Cooperation
- North-South Centre, Council of Europe
- Norwegian Agency for Development, NORAD
- Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs
- Student Union, Helsinki University
- Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
- UNICEF
- U.N. Development Fund for Women, UNIFEM
- U.N. Development Programme, UNDP
- UNESCO
- U.N. Environment Programme, UNEP
- U.N. Population Fund,UNFPA
- W. Alton Jones Foundation (USA)

from:
 http://www.ips.org/IPS/partners.htm

Note that the Italian Foreign Ministry is now in the hands of premier Berlusconi himself, and he is one of the world's richest media magnates. So far from being the radical oalternative to the mainstream media, the Ciranda initiative is its indirect instrument. And the instrument of mainstrem politicians: the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung is the think-tank of Chancellor Schroeder's SPD.

Expect censorship: it's policy at the World Social Forum anyway.