Forum 2000 response

What is a journalist?

Someone who absorbs information then spits it out so everyone can understand in an organized voice. Someone who is always moving, always asking questions about what is going on to grasp the situation at hand. A journalist spits out the information in news articles, editorials, essays, photography, and twists the information around a little and introduces plays and even songs. They see what is there then make it all clear.

Why?

Because not everyone can be everywhere or people need a clear voice. Or is it because not everyone can make things so understandable. Journalist must be important or they would not be so attacked by certain organizations for trying to get the word out; silenced for being able to say what is there, then praised for that same feat. Then there is the notion that they are given or not given special passes into events and restricted areas to inform on what is there, what is going on. All of those concepts must mean something. The latest Forum2000, Bridging the Gaps was documented by so many types of journalism – from video broadcast to print and photo, because someone felt what was going on is important and people need to know about - what is going on.

And then?

And then they will be able to add a different perspective to this world they are living in. See that something else is happening besides another stagnant development in another war, another attack on the human identity. Something else is going on that holds possibilities for a balanced future. Here, journalist of a different nature have come together in the hopes of not only spitting out documentation of world injustices but with ideas of bringing those injustices to a close in this new world, our world. It has to be called our world now, if we ever want to move to new ground.

To see what?

To see that hope is no longer a reasonable reason to have this sort of meetings and as one delegate noted: so detached from the people that this event is suppose to benefit the most. To see that as we cross our makeshift thresholds of time we are not becoming any more united on the grounds of our humanity than we were hundreds of years of ago. To see that, for a nation, it is not a benefit to strive to be so far removed from the rest of the world since their infrastructure can come back to harm them when the people cannot even afford to maintain such standards. To see that there is no reason for people to rape their own lands to send goods to other places where they are not even allowed entering. And as yet another delegate noted, there is an exchange of goods, even certain ideas but not an exchange of people.

And the gap?

And the gaps, yes, are in the money, the trade, the technology and global business environment, but also in the idea of us all as people in a small world that everyday appears to become smaller. If we cannot see that we certainly will be crushed by each other with issues that look difficult though with the right eye, the will to look at each perspective, then we will be able to see what is there, we will all be able to organize the information and see the answers through the lines instead of seeing more questions on top of what we already question.

So what is the big question?

The big question for today is what does the world as a whole value. The basic question is that people each day place a higher value on material goods rather than people while humanity remains a commodity, pawns to be toyed with to save the king. A new paradigm on how we view each other is urgently needed for the establishment of the future framework of what will be united societies. Without it the ‘solving’ of each gap problem will be mathematical. Steps will be implemented but without the full support by the people. The solving of each gap problem will be symbolic like religions and constitutions and accords and national mottos that are ready to be broken at every turn to suit an individual need. Without the understanding between people as the main subjects of a global theme the understanding of what they do and desire to do is lost.