By IRNA
Tehran : At the 13th General Assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies, which is currently underway in Jakarta, Indonesia, Turkey’s Anatolia news agency was selected as the host of the next general assembly in 2010.
The 13th General Assembly of OANA, which opened on Tuesday, is being held on the theme “News Agencies in the Media Convergence Era:
“Strengthening and Promoting Asia Pacific Voices.”
At the meeting, representatives of the member news agencies elected Ahmad Mukhlis Yusuf, the president director of Indonesia’s ANTARA news agency, as the new chairman of the OANA union.
The news agencies ANTARA of Indonesia, BERNAMA of Malaysia, IRNA of Iran, ITAR-TASS of Russia, and Xinhua of China were also elected as the new members of the OANA Presiding Board.
The Mehr News Agency was accepted on Monday as the 40th member of the organization.
OANA, which was established by UNESCO in December 1961, currently has 41 members from 33 countries in the Asia-Pacific region. The organization was established in order to promote cooperation between news agencies within the region and all over the world.
In a speech on Tuesday, IRNA Deputy Director Ahmad Jafari called on OANA to expand its news coverage throughout Asia. “We all know that more than half of the world population is still following a unilateral way of receiving information which has been flowing from North to South and from West to East over the past 60 years,” Jafari told the OANA meeting. However, through regional unity, South-South cooperation, and development of information and communication technology this trend should be stopped and replaced with a bilateral and balanced method, he added.
He also said news agencies play a key role in disseminating information and therefore OANA members, which represent two thirds of the world, can surely be very influential on the challenges facing the media. “This requires expansion of practical cooperation between the members.”