Never underestimate the power of the internet, even in countries on the wrong side of the digital divide.

Only 16 percent of the world’s population has internet access, says Rosental Alves, Director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas. But that small percentage represents tens of millions of people, and the numbers are growing, offering opportunities for news dissemination, civic participation and democracy.

While many people lament the digital divide -- the gap between countries like the United States and Canada, with 70 percent internet penetration, and Brazil and Mexico, with 13 and 19 percent respectively -- Mr Alves prefers to focus on the positive.

"We should celebrate that we have 16 percent of the glass full, " he said. "We should use the power of the new medium as best we can. These are decision makers, opinion makers, and that’s valuable. Yes, we should be indignant, we should work to fill the gap, but we should not be paralyzed by the gap."

Mr Alves was speaking at "New Media: the Press Freedom Dimension," a conference organised by the World Association of Newspapers, the World Press Freedom Committee and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). The two-day event in Paris, which ends Friday, examined the challenges and opportunities of new media for press freedom.

Conference presentations, the programme, a list of participants and background papers can be found at http://www.wan-press.org/article128...

Mr Alves said the growth of digital media in Latin America has coincided with an unprecedented growth of democracy in the region.

"Despite the limitations, Latin America has a powerful online presence that extends the reach of newspapers that have entered the digital world," he said. "In fact, some have more unique users per day than they have circulation."

In addition, an individual journalist or a citizen can use the medium to launch a website or blog and find an audience. "Journalism is no longer a one-way street. People today want to read, but they also want to be read. "

Mr Alves spoke on a panel on "News Online" that also included Monique Villa, Managing Director of Reuters, Neil Budde, General Manager of Yahoo!, Sankarshan Thakur, Executive Editor of India’s Tehelka online newspaper, Nora Paul, Director of the Institute for New Media Studies at the University of Minnesota in the United States, and Mogens Schmidt, Director of the Freedom of Expression Unit at UNESCO.

A full report on the conference will be available soon. To receive the report, please write to Kajsa Törnroth, Co-Director of Press Freedom Programmes at WAN, at ktornroth@wan.asso.fr.

Here’s what some of the other conference participants were saying:

"The great Chinese firewall was largely built with brick laid by corporate America." Richard Winfield, Chairman, World Press Freedom Committee, on how American companies are proving the technology that Chinese authorities are using the censor the internet.

"The internet has opened up extraordinary new possibilities for the widespread, damaging and sometimes dangerous manipulation of information which is difficult if not impossible to stem. In my view, this phenomenon will increasingly place a heavy responsibility on professional journalists to maintain high standards of fact-checking, honesty and objectivity. The very fundamentals of our societies and democracies will be lost if we are unable any longer to distinguish between true and false in terms of information." Timothy Balding, CEO, World Association of Newspapers.

"Authoritarian regimes around the world are making the internet into a tool of information control and censorship." Leslie Harris, Executive Director, Center for Democracy and Technology.

"I continued to be surprised that many journalists don’t know that the ’deep web’ that isn’t indexed by the Googles and the Yahoos is 500 times vaster than the surface web. Journalists should be the information vanguard and they should have advance skills for searching for information online." Nora Paul, Director, Institute of New Media Studies, University of Minnesota.

"Journalists must take advantage of the opportunities offered by new media but it is important that they keep the traditional values of journalism in democratic society." Rosental Alves, Director of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas.

"Young people are getting more educated all the time, yet they’re voting less and less. They’re participating less and less in the democratic process." Robert Barnard, President,D-Code, Toronto.

"If the news industry has one precious commodity they can sell to the new generation, it is trust, and were losing it." Aralynn McMane, Director of Young Readership Development, World Association of Newspapers.

"Our journalism is centered on civic life. When civic life declines, so does newspaper readership. And the interest in civic life, which is declining in the United States, is necessary for healthy democracy." Steve Yelvington, Vice President, Morris Digital Works, United States.

The conference is supported by the World Editors Forum and the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations, which includes, in addition to WAN and the WPFC, the Committee to Protect Journalists; Commonwealth Press Union; Inter American Press Association; International Association of Broadcasting; International Association of the Periodical Press (FIPP); International Press Institute; North American Broadcasters Association; and the World Press Freedom Committee.

The conference was made possible by a grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

The Paris-based WAN, the global organisation for the newspaper industry, defends and promotes press freedom world-wide. It represents 18,000 newspapers; its membership includes 76 national newspaper associations, newspaper companies and individual newspaper executives in 102 countries, 12 news agencies and 10 regional and world-wide press groups.

Inquiries to: Larry Kilman, Director of Communications, WAN, 7 rue Geoffroy St Hilaire, 75005 Paris France. Tel: +33 1 47 42 85 00. Fax: +33 1 47 42 49 48. Mobile: +33 6 10 28 97 36. E-mail: lkilman@wan.asso.fr