Anam Arsalan
Doha, Qatar- AIPS President Gianni Merlo stressed that despite sociopolitical or geographical roadblocks, a
journalist can still be independent or vociferous in their writing.
"Yes, if he wants. Yes he can be independent and I am
one of them," said Merlo, speaking to Alkass Digital on the
sidelines of the 'AIPS Executive Committee / Jury Meet', here on Wednesday.
"In many countries they live in a difficult situation,
but this doesn't mean we are judging anybody. We are only judging [the entries]
from the journalistic point of view; it's not the politics that is moving us.
For example, today we saw an article that sent to jail the president of the
country's football federation. The journalist even got sued for it, but he
won."
"So, we know how to judge and everybody here is free
minded. The problem is that there are a lot of journalists who are doing a good
job [and that makes our job difficult]."
He also pointed out that regulation match reports have
become redundant today. "Match report... who cares, now you have
television , you can see the entire match there. The future of journalism are
the contents of your article... opinions or points or colour pieces that
are completely new, and you have to write them with photos and everything, so it
is a different thing."
"See, most often the reader knows the result before he
reads the newspaper. Also, in most cases the result is written right at the top
of the article, so the reader is looking for an opinion," he added.
Earlier, the AIPS President even spoke about the criteria
adopted for selecting the best entries. "Here we are choosing the
journalists that are going to the semi-finals, so nobody is a loser. So it is
only a criteria; the criteria of journalism and so on... and we are very
satisfied, as the level of the entries is very good. No one is not accepted, it
is only that if there is somebody that has more meaning, it doesn't mean that the
other journalist is less. It depends on the articles that he has decided to
submit. It may be possible that the journalist may not have submitted his best
piece."
The primary objective of the meet is to shortlist the candidates
for the 'AIPS Sport Media Awards' scheduled for Lausanne, Switzerland, in
January 2019.