Press Corps - World Model United Nations

Introduction
This year marks the first that the Press Corps
has been split into its own committee, complete
with its own dedicated staff and resources. This
new configuration deliberately places an increased
emphasis on the Press Corps as the medium by which
the conference is strung together; the product we
produce in committee will be consumed by the rest of
the conference. It is in the simple fact of that product’s
dissemination that our work’s importance becomes
clear: it will influence the conference not only in the
sense that it will contribute to the experience of other
delegates, but it will provide the unique opportunity
to experiment with a microcosm of the press, and
explore its ability to have a meaningful impact on the
substantive element of the conference as well.
The Press Corps newsroom likely won’t be quite this busy, but it will have a
dozen times more energy!
The Press Corps will be composed of five umbrella
news agencies, each composed of five delegates.
the agencies, Agence-France Presse, Al Jazeera,
the New York Times, the Times of India, and The
Australian, some of the world’s premier journalistic
organizations. At WorldMUN 2013, you will be
responsible for assuming the role of these groups
and doing the kind of investigative, expository, and
cultural work they routinely cover.
in addition, this year, we are introducing The
WorldMUN Gazette, a beautiful multipage wrapup
document that will provide closure both to the
conference’s substantive and social elements. In
other words, the Press Corps will be responsible for
producing a real newspaper (though admittedly of
magazine-like quality) that will serve as a timeless
keepsake for every delegate.
The Press Corps will prove a whirlwind of creative
energy, press conferences, humor, learning,
collaboration, productive disagreement, and so much
more—the committee offers the chance to explore
the weighty mandates of journalism and its effects on
world policy…and, of course, to have fun doing it.
Why News Matters
Patchwork Public Discourse: Gatekeepers
and the Changing of the Guard
An academic look at the nature of the press reveals
a greater role than just providing factual retelling of
local, national, and world events. Indeed, the closer
one examines the press, the clearer it becomes
that by its very nature the objectivity it aspires
to is impossible, but that that aspiration is only
a means to an even loftier ambition. The role
of news in society is to provide space for—and
often shape—the public discourse.
In an encyclopedia article based on his larger
1962 book Strukturwandel der Oeffentlichkeit,
Jürgen Habermas argued as governments
shift to become more democratic, the way the
public sphere is constructed changes, too. As
government switched from a model of power
before the people, as with feudal lords wielding
power over their serfs, to a model of power for
the people, the accompanying societal changes
both spurred the creation and transformation of
the public sphere.
As styles of government shifted, popular
involvement increasingly became a feature of
successful states. Frequently, that process of
governmental shift—that is, of policy-making—
was fueled by the discussion and theory-building of
individuals in the society. It is useful here to define the
public sphere. According to Habermas, “by ‘the public
sphere,’ we mean first of all a realm of our social life
in which something approaching public opinion can
be formed. Access is guaranteed to all citizens.” 1 the
world’s citizens have today realized this principle in
greater numbers than at any other point in human
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