If Rupert Murdoch is synonymous with the worst in global media over the past 15 years, his direct opposite is Alain Modoux.
Unlike the infamous mogul, Modoux is a little-known figure — retired in Geneva yet still serving various media causes. It’s an extension of his earlier work that single-handedly enriched the life of every journalist on the planet.
Most people wouldn’t know the name of this Swiss national. Nor would they know that it was African journalists who inspired his years of lobbying which built an unstoppable international momentum for free media. Now, here’s the story.
In summary, it is thanks to Modoux’s exertions that, today, all journalists — and their audiences — can mark May 3 as World Press Freedom Day.
”You have to know when there is a window of opportunity,” he told me recently, referring to the atmosphere of democratic dreams at the end of the Cold War.
Modoux, in his capacity as a senior Unesco official, convened a discussion between East European and Western journalists in February 1990. It was a few weeks after the fall of the Berlin Wall.
”At the end of the meeting, an African diplomat came to me and said ‘Do you think that democracy is just for the North? Why not hold a similar conference for the African media?”’
Modoux proceeded to do exactly that — by organising the historic conference in Namibia in May 2001. The outcome was the powerful Windhoek Declaration demanding an end to press suppression and urging the creation of a worldwide media freedom day.
Breaking with Unesco tradition of hanging on the coat-tails of member states, Modoux invited mainly independent African journalists to the gathering.
”For two of the journalists, the Unesco director general had to personally call the presidents concerned to ask for them to be released from prison and leave the country to take part in the Windhoek Seminar. He succeeded for one [Cameroon] and failed for the other one [Kenya].”
Assessing the hard-hitting nature of the Windhoek Declaration, Modoux recognised that the document’s impact risked being blocked by governments opposed to media freedom. So he set about a painstaking two-year process to take the African statement to Latin America, Asia and the Middle East and encourage similar declarations there. All these drew upon, and referred to, the ”mother” document.
With this build-up, conditions became ripe to put the Windhoek Declaration to the Unesco General Council, which represents the world’s governments. Working with Niger’s ambassador in July 1993, Modoux succeeded in securing a unanimous Unesco council resolution to endorse the document.
It was the first time that Unesco had adopted an external document without any amendments.
From there, Modoux set his sights on the United Nations. Transatlantic late night phone calls, and last-minute lobbying of Namibia’s ambassador, pulled it off. In December 1993, the UN General Assembly accepted the Namibian proposal to declare May 3 as World Press Freedom Day, basing its decision on the Unesco July resolution.
Earlier, the calendar date almost changed after a French NGO lobbied Unesco to align the proposed global fixture with an existing media freedom day in France.
”Fortunately, a German friend told me that the French date coincided with the anniversary of Hitler’s birthday, so I was able to persuade the Unesco director general to stick with the Windhoek date,” Modoux told me.
Today, on each May 3, Unesco issues a major prize to mark press freedom. And — continuing the independent tradition of Modoux — it has not baulked at honouring jailed journalists, such as in member-state China.
The international day is not the only significance of the Windhoek Declaration. Thanks to its influence, there is also now the Media Institute of Southern Africa, a lobby group that has successfully promoted media reform since 1992. In turn has followed the International Freedom of Expression eXchange (Ifex) — an alliance of 72 free-speech bodies across the world.
The Windhoek Declaration is also echoed and elaborated upon in the 2002 declaration of principles on freedom of expression, as adopted by the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights.
As an official structure of the African Union, the commission’s status means that the declaration will contribute to the jurisprudence of the new African court on human rights next year.
There are no medals in Switzerland for the kind of global contribution made by Modoux. Nor is there one from Unesco, even though Modoux’s actions helped rehabilitate the organisation after its previous New World Information and Communication Order had flirted with state control of the media.
Journalists worldwide, however, should celebrate the man who midwifed a major African gift to the world — the annual day dedicated to recognising their mission. That achievement is a lot more than can be said about the record of a certain mean, mega-media magnate — a man whose name, I seem to recall, also starts with an M.