Your Majesty

Excellencies

Ladies and Gentlemen

Opening this conference over the past few years, I and my predecessors have used the occasion to criticise, often severely, the leaders and governments of the host countries for their poor or tainted records with regard to a free press. In Russia, face to face with President Putin, or in South Africa, sharing the stage with President Mbeki, or with the Heads of State of South Korea or Turkey, we have expressed our serious concern or dissatisfaction with the conditions for independent media and called for reforms and change.

Nowhere, perhaps, is the press as fully free as we would like it to be, and hundreds of publishers and editors in this hall today who work in highly repressive environments are very far from this objective. But I can honestly say that here in Sweden you have approached something like ideal conditions - even though they are challenged from time to time and the temptation of lawmakers to introduce new restrictions remains latent - and that this situation did not begin yesterday but is a historic tradition.

If there is a law protecting freedom of the press earlier than that passed here in 1766, more than twenty years before the French revolution, I certainly don’t know about. And today, still, you not only defend this human right tenaciously here in Sweden but through your media development aid programmes, whether governmental or private, endeavour to extend your deep attachment to media freedom around the world as an essential foundation of human rights.

I understand that Sweden is country where editors and journalists can and do write disparagingly and critically even of their own owners - though coming from an owner’s family, I’m not sure you need to export THIS practice!

On a professional and business level, the Swedish press has long had a reputation for creativity and innovation and your publishers and editors appear on conference stages at international press events in very disproportionate numbers for the size of your markets.

You ’invented’ the modern free daily newspaper, with Metro, though again I’m not sure you should be thanked for exporting this model when I see the fortunes being lost by many of their publishers world-wide. But, then again, who knows? Perhaps the results will improve in time and the much vaunted idea that the frees are creating new newspaper readers prove truth.

The Swedish press shifted from broadsheet to compact format long before this became a major trend internationally and as you will see with a glance at any newspaper rack or kiosk, the titles here are as colourful and as well designed as any you can see elsewhere in the world.

In the exploitation of the new opportunities created by the Internet, the Swedish, like their Nordic neighbours, have also proved leaders, whether through their digital news sites, video and web TV, the exploitation of mobile devices or in the convergence of their editorial operations.

There is also a lesson to be learned here in Sweden, however, in the continuing strength of the print newspaper, to which - as most of you probably know by now - I am very attached, not by blind faith or principle, but simply because this medium continues to prove popular and effective and, not least, profitable, despite all the nonsense purveyed about its imminent demise, particularly but not only, in cyberspace.

In all league tables measuring the Internet - whether in terms of audience, advertising market share, broadband penetration - Sweden ranks among the leaders. And yet, consider this: each and every day, in the midst of this highly wired and digitally-educated environment, about 90 % of the adult population reads a newspaper in print, in 83 % of cases paid for. They don’t have to, it’s not a legal obligation, they choose to, despite the existence of so many alternative channels for getting information and entertainment.

I would urge you never to lose sight of this as, over the next few days, we examine and discuss - as indeed we should and must do - our considerable and often exciting efforts and strategies to exploit the new opportunities to extend our audience and create new revenues provided by our digital initiatives.

It is a question of measure and perspective. If WE don’t keep our heads and keep uppermost in our minds the realities and hard facts about the enduring force and impact of our core, print businesses, who will do it for us? Not those with the loudest voice or the most provocative viewpoint who, unfortunately, are those who tend to shape perceptions about our industry.

As each year, it is our duty to present to you a panoramic picture of the state of freedom of the press in the world and, unhappily, it is again one that gives enormous cause for concern. We have summarized some of the most flagrant abuses around the world in this video review:

(play flash clip)

You will all agree that this is a very sombre and sobering picture of the immense challenges facing our profession globally, merely to maintain or win the right to report and publish freely.

At our Congress and Editors Forum over the next three days you will hear many exciting stories of success both in print and on line, which I am sure will give us new confidence and inspiration to develop our core businesses on paper while simultaneously exploiting all arising opportunities in the electronic media sphere.

In wishing you all an excellent conference, I would like to thank the Swedish Newspaper Publishers Association, and all our supporters and sponsors for the remarkable efforts they have made to give us a very enthusiastic and warm welcome to this wonderful country and city.

Thank you.