By NNN-Bernama,
Tehran : Iranian Minister of Culture Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini has opened a meeting of Asia-Pacific news agencies here with a call for greater interaction in order to achieve a more balanced media world.
“The mass media should be impartial, honest, and oriented toward a fair process, and should not just record events,” he added when opening the meeting of the executive Board of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) Sunday.
He said efforts by the 41-member OANA to promote regional convergence and South-South co-operation and to make use of new technology could balance the one-sided flow of news and information and turn it into a two-sided current.
More than 40 representatives of 18 member agencies from a number of countries, including Malaysia, Russia, Japan, China, South Korea, Indonesia and India, are attending the meeting being held under the theme “A quest for global media balancing”.
Malaysia national news agency Bernama, which is represented at the meeting by General Manager Hasnul Hassan, is one of the four vice-chairmen of OANA, whose presidency is currently held by ANTARA of Indonesia.
Formed in 1961 at the initiative of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and cultural Organization (UNESCO), OANA aims to secure direct and free exchange of news between the news agencies of a region inhabited by more than one-half of the world’s population.
Saying the growing advancement of modern technologies had transformed the shape and structure of the mass media, Hosseini added that it had given rise to major developments.
However, “the hegemonic powers” had retained their monopoly over the international order of communication and assumed an influential role in the competitive international arena, he added.
“The efforts to make the flow of news two-sided, which is essential for the free flow of information, have been disrupted due to the Westerners’ access to advanced technology and their endeavours to create one-sided trends that are only meant to further their own interests and divide other nations and harm their interests,” he said.
Noting that the theme of the meeting was a good opportunity to discuss the global communication hierarchy, he said nowhere could be found in the world a nation which was deprived of access to information technology.
“Naturally, people will not remain uninformed about the various local and international events in different parts of the world. The truth about distorted news is quickly revealed, and the various media outlets do not allow the facts to be concealed,” he said.
He suggested that the OANA member agencies stationed their representatives in each other’s country to have direct access to information.
“In this regard, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance of Iran is ready to provide the necessary facilities to those member countries that have not yet established offices in Iran or have not dispatched foreign correspondents to Iran,” he said.
The meeting was hosted Iran’s Mehr News Agency which joined OANA two years ago.