BAKU – Challenges facing the modern media and how to cope with them were the focus of discussion at the November 18 discussion at the 16th General Assembly of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Opening the event, OANA President Sergei Mikhailov, who is also head of the Russian news agency TASS, stressed that OANA members have work dedicatedly in modernising their shared website, updating news on social networks such as Facebook and Google+, encouraging initiatives and solutions to reform and development through OANA awards, and establishing a set of common rules on news coverage and editing. 

New agencies are now under the strong impacts of digital technologies, which have brought about changes in methods to provide information to the audience as well as in the public’s access to information, General Director of the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) Nguyễn Đức Lợi said. 

He stressed that adapting to and leading new trends in modern communications are vital to news agencies, which will require big investment in operation overhaul, human resource rearrangement and technological infrastructure. 

Measures to overcome the challenges proposed by the VNA General Director included offering around-the-clock news services based on multimedia platforms. 

Other reports discussed a number of issues such as artificial intelligence and cooperation among news agencies in covering global events. 

The General Assembly also elected the President, Vice President and a 12-member Executive Board for the 2016-2019 tenure. The Azerbaijan News Agency was elected OANA President, while the Vice President posts were held by TASS, Xinhua (China), AA (Turkey), and Yonhap (the Republic of Korea). The VNA was re-elected to the executive board. 

On the sidelines of the 16th OANA General Assembly, the OANA award for quality media products was announced, with TASS’s information quality control system winning the prize. 

VNA’s RapNewsPlus, which report news in the form of rap songs, was ranked second among all nominations. 

OANA was set up in 1961 as an initiative of the UNESCO with the goal of promoting direct and free information sharing among news agencies in the Asia-Pacific, a region with dynamic economic development and more than half of the world population. 

The organisation now has 43 news agency members from 35 countries, supplying around 70 per cent of the total amount of information circulated around the world each day. 

The fifth News Agencies World Congress took place in Baku, Azerbaijan on November 16-17. – VNS