O’Reilly also called on President Thabo Mbeki to tackle press violations on the continent, particularly Gambia and Zimbabwe. He asked the president to ensure that a free press was a condition for good governance in the African Union's African Peer Review Mechanism.

O’Reilly said he was pleased by the attendance of a 365-strong African delegation. However, he highlighted violations of press freedom across the continent, saying that African states must recognise the “indivisibility of press freedom.”

With the adoption of the Declaration of Table Mountain, which calls for African states to commit to protocols upholding press freedom, O’Reilly said that WAN/WEF had shown its commitment to press freedom on the continent.

O’Reilly said newspapers worldwide were up to the task of dealing with issues of media rights violations. He also said that newspapers were strong enough to deal with the pressures of commercialisation and digitization.

He said that these were “exciting and interesting times for our industry”, and that most people were aware of “the extent of my confidence for newspapers in the digital age.”

Citing the growth of the newspaper industry and newspaper audiences globally, O’Reilly argued that this was relevant defense against “negative and largely groundless commentary that we are a dying industry.”

By Jackie Bischof, Wits University Journalism