September 26, 2002

For Immediate Release:

Contact: Ben Lilliston, 612-870-3416, or Mark Ritchie, 612-385-7921 (cell)

Minneapolis – The President of the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP), Mark Ritchie, will be honored by Project Censored on Saturday September 28^th for his analysis of the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting in Doha, Qatar last year. Ritchie’s article was selected as one of the 25 news stories that were under-covered by the mainstream media in 2001, according to Project Censored.

Ritchie’s article, "Dueling in Doha" for Mother Jones, detailed an increasingly powerful coalition of non-governmental advocacy organizations and developing countries at the WTO meeting in September 2001. Ritchie wrote, "the most important development of the Doha meeting was the emergence of this new public interest coalition as a significant negotiating bloc within the WTO. Drawing on the successes of similar collaborative efforts on land mines, global warming, and biological diversity protection, this new trade coalition is in a position to play an increasingly influential role during the coming decade."

Project Censored will honor Ritchie and other recipients during a ceremony this Saturday in San Francisco. Political analyst/author Michael Parenti and cartoonist Dan Perkins, aka Tom Tomorrow, creator of This Modern World, will keynote the annual award ceremony. Davey D of KPFA Hardknock Radio will MC, and a host of media activist luminaries such as Norman Solomon, Greg Palast, Jeremy Rifkin, and Jim Hightower will also be honored.

To read Ritchie’s story, Dueling in Doha, go to: http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/commentary/opinion/wto_ritchie.html

For a full list of stories selected by Project Censored, go to: http://www.projectcensored.org/

The Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy promotes resilient family farms, rural communities and ecosystems around the world through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy.

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