Vietnam News Agency General Director Tran Mai Huong said multimedia was
becoming an inevitable trend for the survival of news agencies and
Asia-Pacific news agencies should cooperate on developing a multimedia
platform on which they can share their products.
Addressing the 14 th General Assembly of the Organisation of
Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) which was held in Istanbul, Turkey
from Nov. 24-27, Huong called on OANA to make adjustments in line with
developing technologies and the information accessing habits of media
consumers.
“We are facing greater and more
challenging competition as a number of our traditional key clients –
some print newspapers – have already disappeared,” Huong said.
“However, multimedia becomes an inevitable trend for the survival of
news agencies and our VNA, like other fellow news agencies, in on that track,” he added.
He called on OANA to cooperate on developing a
multimedia platform on which member agencies can share video clips as
they have done so far with text news and photos.
“With this, member agencies can reduce production costs and raise
prestige, as well as deliver more lively messages about our own
countries,” he said.
On the sidelines of the
assembly, a cooperation agreement between Vietnam News Agency (VNA) and
Mehr News Agency (MNA) of Iran was signed by VNA General Director Huong
and MNA Director General Reza Moqadassi.
The
cooperation agreement is aimed at diversifying news sources and
promoting professional cooperation between VNA and MNA. It lays a
foundation for information exchange and professional cooperation,
particularly for exchange of video clips and TV programmes in the
English language which are of great importance in the present digital
and mutimedia age.
The two sides also pledged to extend their cooperation to all international forums at which they are represented.
The agencies attending the assembly and its parallel meetings of the
32 nd Executive Board Meeting (EBM) and the Editorial and Technique
Committee Meeting (ETBM) were representatives from Asia-Pacific news
agencies, as well as from media organisations in the Mediterranean and
the Balkan regions.
The assembly aimed to assess
achievements and implementation of activities put forward at the 13th
OANA General Assembly held in Jakarta, Indonesia, in December 2007. The
participants discussed and adopted the Istanbul Declaration which, among
other things, spelled out the need for OANA members to increase
cooperation in light of globalisation of information and developments
taking place in cyberspace. The assembly also discussed ways of
strengthening the mechanism for exchange of news, information and visual
content between member agencies.
Participants
stressed the importance of adopting multimedia in a world of global
digital changes, the need for news agencies to stay aware of new trends
and challenges in the era of new media, and to look for innovative ways
to reach target audiences. They said these can be achieved partly
through more OANA cooperation.
During the assembly,
two seminars on the themes, “The future of news agencies in the digital
age” and “The role of news agencies in the dialogue among civilisations
and cultures” were also held with the participation of Bulent Arinc,
Turkey’s Minister of State and Deputy Prime Minister and many other
Turkish officials.
Hilmi Bengi, the Director General
of Anadolu Agency of Turkey, assumed the presidency of OANA at the
conclusion of the assembly and Anadolu will serve as its secretariat for
the next three years.
The Trend News Agency of
Azerbaijan and National Iraq News Agency were accepted as the 42nd and
43rd members of the organisation.
The 15th OANA General Assembly is scheduled to take place in Saudi Arabia in 2013./.
