The World Press Freedom Committee (WPFC) is a coordination group of national and international news media organizations.

The WPFC set out global press freedom principles in the 1981 Declaration of Talloires (not to be confused with the Talloires Declaration

Talloires Declaration

The Talloires Declaration is a declaration for sustainability, created for and by presidents of institutions of higher learning. Jean Mayer, Tufts University president, convened a conference of 22 universities in 1990 in Talloires, France...

), followed in 1987 by the 10-point Charter for a Free Press. In 1985, it produced a survey of killings, arrests, and harassment of journalists.

Goals

Originally created to wage an eventually successful global struggle in and around intergovernmental organizations

International organization

An intergovernmental organization, sometimes rendered as an international governmental organization and both abbreviated as IGO, is an organization composed primarily of sovereign states , or of other intergovernmental organizations...

 to beat back authoritarian proposals for a restrictive "new world information and communication order", the WPFC has gone on to:

• Administer the only global program for systematically monitoring press freedom
  Freedom of the press
  Freedom of the press or freedom of the media is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials...
  
   issues at UNESCO
  UNESCO
  The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
  
  , the UN, and other intergovernmental organizations on behalf of press freedom groups.
• Work in intergovernmental forums to extend press freedom principles of traditional news media
  News media
  The news media are those elements of the mass media that focus on delivering news to the general public or a target public.These include print media , broadcast news , and more recently the Internet .-Etymology:A medium is a carrier of something...
  
   to the World Wide Web
  World Wide Web
  The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
  
   and Direct Satellite Broadcasting
  Satellite television
  Satellite television is television programming delivered by the means of communications satellite and received by an outdoor antenna, usually a parabolic mirror generally referred to as a satellite dish, and as far as household usage is concerned, a satellite receiver either in the form of an...
  
   (Press Freedom on the Internet and New Media Conference).
• Coordinate joint activities for a front line grouping 9 major global free press organizations, the Coordinating Committee of Press Freedom Organizations.
• Conduct international conferences in 2003 (New York) and 2007 (Paris) to combat controls on news content in the new media
  New media
  New media is a broad term in media studies that emerged in the latter part of the 20th century. For example, new media holds out a possibility of on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community...
  
  , and to expose press censorship
  Censorship
  thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
  
   and surveillance by repressive regimes (It's A Crime: How Insult Laws Stifle Press Freedom and Does China Hope to Remap the Internet in its Own Image?).
• Present an exposition of the case that press freedom is a motor for economic development.
• Set out the first analysis (New Code Words for Censorship) of post-Cold War code word
  Code word
  In communication, a code word is an element of a standardized code or protocol. Each code word is assembled in accordance with the specific rules of the code and assigned a unique meaning...
  
  s that can mask censorship practices.
• Conduct the first world study of “insult laws” that shield authorities from press scrutiny and a 2006 update of such laws. A brief overview of the earlier publication "Hiding from the People" is available in English and Spanish. WPFC also produced a unique model legal brief
  Brief (law)
  A brief is a written legal document used in various legal adversarial systems that is presented to a court arguing why the party to the case should prevail....
  
   currently being used by lawyers around the world to assist journalists and media under legal attack for doing their jobs. The amicus curiae
  Amicus curiae
  An amicus curiae is someone, not a party to a case, who volunteers to offer information to assist a court in deciding a matter before it...
  
   brief is available free of charge to demonstrate to courts that insult laws violate the human rights
  Human rights
  Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
  
   conventions to which the international community
  International community
  The international community is a term used in international relations to refer to all peoples, cultures and governments of the world or to a group of them. The term is used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between them...
  
   has subscribed. It’s available in both English and Spanish.
• Present the first world survey of journalism training opportunities for developing journalists.
• Provide essential legal arguments to win the first decision by an international human rights court saying mandatory licensing of journalists violates human rights law.
• Produce 56 publications, including the first regionally oriented general journalism training manual
  Training manual
  A training manual is a book or booklet of instructions, designed to improve the quality of a performed task. Training manuals are widely used, including in business and the military.A training manual may be particularly useful as:...
  
  s in local languages for journalists of the Caribbean and Eastern Europe
  Eastern Europe
  Eastern Europe is the eastern part of Europe. The term has widely disparate geopolitical, geographical, cultural and socioeconomic readings, which makes it highly context-dependent and even volatile, and there are "almost as many definitions of Eastern Europe as there are scholars of the region"...
  
   and similar handbooks in English and French for African journalists.
• Propose and administer the first joint program by world free press groups to provide local lawyers for journalists facing prosecution in national courts, through a Fund Against Censorship.
• Present a study showing how restrictive principles in generally beneficial human rights conventions can be used to hobble journalists and news media.
• Produce the first surveys of practical needs of emerging free press outlets in the former Soviet bloc
  Eastern bloc
  The term Eastern Bloc or Communist Bloc refers to the former communist states of Eastern and Central Europe, generally the Soviet Union and the countries of the Warsaw Pact...
  
  , and hold the first general conference
  General conference
  General Conference can refer to:*General Conference , the recurring meetings of Member States for the specialized agencies of the United Nations such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and UNESCO....
  
  of NGOs on mobilizing resources to meet these needs.