Mr Joseph S. Blatter
President, FIFA
FIFA House
Hitzigweg 11
P.O. Box 85
8030 Zurich _Switzerland

23 February 2006

Dear Mr Blatter,

We are writing to express our deep regret and dismay about FIFA’s unilateral decision to withdraw from discussions on the restrictions that your organization has placed on media coverage of the 2006 World Cup.

Your ’final’ position on these restrictions, which your representatives have informed us is no longer open to any negotiation, remains completely unacceptable to the world media community.

We are greatly dissatisfied by both the substance of FIFA’s response to our case and, frankly, by the manner in which your team has presented your proposals and conclusions to us. We remark that your final document even contains new text that was not discussed or agreed at the latest meeting.

We agreed at our first, 9 January meeting that a joint working party would be set up to examine and to seek solutions to the grievances of both newspapers and news agencies on the withdrawal of their traditional and legitimate rights to give their readers and clients comprehensive and timely coverage of the Cup finals. This meeting would follow FIFA’s formal response to our strong objections to the terms and conditions of accreditation.

A month later, and less than a working day before the working party meeting on 13 February, we received a new draft of the terms which includes little more than cosmetic changes to the original and fails completely to address our major concerns. It was, in addition, clear from the tone and nature of the discussions with your representatives that FIFA considers that we should be grateful for these very minor ’concessions’.

We would like to reiterate our firm belief that your restrictions on our journalistic coverage of the 2006 World Cup not only deprive our readers and clients of access to important information on a public event, but constitute both an interference in editorial freedom and independence and a clear breach of the right to freedom of information as protected by numerous international conventions. You have made it clear that FIFA rejects both these ideas and that, to express it bluntly, considers that ’business is business’.

Beyond this, we are truly saddened and shocked that in the name of maximising the commercial exploitation of these events, FIFA should effectively turn its back on the news media which give life, on a daily basis, to football in all its different manifestations all over the world and have done so for decades.

You should know that we are now exploring our legal options and also see it as our duty to bring to the attention of your sponsors the very clear loss of exposure from which they will suffer owing to FIFA’s publishing restrictions. We shall, in addition, be informing the German government, as well as the European institutions, about the media freedom issues at stake here.

Needless to say, if you are ready to seriously revise the ’final’ FIFA position and to restore the access and information rights to which we believe we are entitled, we are ready to reopen discussions.

Yours sincerely,

Timothy Balding
Chief Executive Officer
World Association of
Newspapers

Pierre Louette
President & CEO
Agence France-Presse
(representing also AP, Reuters, Getty Images, dpa, EPA)