FRANCAISReporters sans frontières - Comments
2) The way it works
-The way RSF works changed with its mission. When it started, the organisation used to collect funds before it would choose a cause, find a media to be published and look for a journalist to investigate the issue. With this method, RSF was criticized for acting like a “sermonizer”, so it tried to become more rational. According to Robert Ménard, RSF now analyses press articles and human rights reports on a daily basis. The collected information is then translated and cross-checked with the help of local correspondents and humanitarian organizations. Eventually, it is used by RSF to organise symposiums and publish reports.
-Meanwhile, the association became professional. In 1989, it hired its first full-time journalist to run a monthly newsletter for the media. With a budget of 8 millions of francs, it then re-organized its team and moved its headquarter from Montpellier to Paris in 1994. If RSF still works with volunteers and conscientious objectors, it now has several permanent employees for the secretariat and accounting. Researches are led by experts who generally speak several languages of the area they have in charge. On the field, local correspondents also send regular reports. Some of them were arbitrarily arrested and detained, like Ali Lmrabet in Morocco or Ricardo Gonzalez Alfonso in Cuba in 2003.
-The centralizing approach of Robert Ménard has been a source of conflict and provoked some resignations in the board of directors. Robert Ménard assumes this position in his book: “I have no difficulty in admitting that I am authoritarian and that my personality does not facilitate democracy within an association.” Since 1994, the board of directors of RSF has nevertheless participated in the discussions over the primary goals of the organization, but Robert Ménard still has a predominant role in the decision-making and the running of the programs.
