For immediate release:     Contact:
April 7, 2000              Lisa Sousa, Media Alliance,
                           (415) 546-6334 x315

INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND DENIES COMMUNITY JOURNALISTS ACCESS TO ITS
SPRING MEETINGS

No press credentials for weekly newspapers, community radio stations, and
other small media outlets that want to cover the IMF and World Bank spring
2000 meetings and the large demonstrations planned by social justice and
environmental activists

Washington, DC?Just a week before the spring meeting of the International
Monetary Fund, the IMF has issued letters denying access to its meetings to
many journalists who work for independent media outlets. In what appears to
be an attempt to prevent media coverage that is unfavorable to its policies,
the IMF has denied press passes to journalists who work at the Boulder
Weekly, KAOS radio of Olympia, Washington, CorporateWatch website, and other
independent media outlets.

"To prevent independent journalists from covering IMF meetings is tantamount
to an attack on freedom of the press. Journalists who work for larger,
mainstream media outlets should not be given preferential treatment over the
independent, community media journalists who tend to delve into issues that
the IMF might prefer to keep under wraps?like environmental destruction and
economic inequality," said Andrea Buffa, executive director of Media
Alliance, a San Francisco-based media advocacy organization.

Media Alliance was joined by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting and Project
Censored in calling on the IMF to immediately clarify its policy on press
credentialing and begin credentialing journalists from independent media
outlets. Although the IMF has yet to explain its policy, a staff person at
the IMF press office told Craig Hymson of the Independent Media Center that
the organization "does not provide press accreditation to public access TV,
community radio, student or academic publications."

April 16 is the first day of the spring meetings of the IMF and World Bank.
Thousands of people will come together in Washington, DC that day to
participate in demonstrations against those institutions as a follow up to
the demonstrations against the World Trade Organization last November in
Seattle.

Independent journalists from all over the world, many of them working with
the Independent Media Center, will be on hand next week to ensure that
activist and community-based perspectives are represented in the news.  It
is crucial that these journalists have full access to the IMF/World Bank. To
learn more about the Independent Media Center and to download their
coverage, visit www.indymedia.org.