Right.
It takes about 35 seconds to explain this. We have it down pat.
We were founded in 1981 by American journalists who were coming out of South America and who saw they were getting all the glory and all the bylines and all the money, and that the South American journalists who were helping them cover the stories were being killed, threatened, and harassed. So there was a response from the industry to that.
We take no government money, either our government or the government in Canada. For us it's the same as an American journalist paying for his own ticket while covering the presidential election, or something like that. We try to keep ourselves above government money. We do take money from donors, the OSI, or Open Society Institute, and some others. So we operate as an NGO, but we very much keep ourselves clear of government money.
We have about 25 to 30 staff members. We have representatives overseas. We are stretched too thin in terms of our budget. We cooperate and try to leverage resources in working with other media rights groups. We try to stay focused on these issues.
Before the CPJ made this trip to Colombo in January, there was a budget discussion first as to whether or not this was going to be cost-effective. We did make the trip, and now we're trying to use the information, the contacts, gathered to keep this story alive. We can do the presentations. We can certainly do the reporting trips.
I've been a journalist since the 1970s, and to me this is just a way of extending my career. I'm not particularly hireable any more in a newsroom, but I now get to do the same things I did for a long time in reporting. We do advocacy; we do pursue it.
I have to say that I'm totally blindsided by the idea of the Commonwealth. It just strikes me as something really....