The 34th meeting of the Executive Board of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) was organized here on Thursday. The meeting was attended by heads of national news agencies from 12 members of the OANA executive board including ITAR-TASS (Russia), Anatolian Agency (Turkey), AzerTAc (AzerTAc), Xinhua (Chinese), Kyodo (Japan), Yonhap (Republic of Korea), Bernama (Malaysia), ANTARA (Indonesia).
President of OANA, Director General of the Anatolian agency Kemal Ozturk and President of the Kyodo news agency Satoshi Ishikawa greeted the participants and told about outstanding tasks to refine the organization's operations, strengthen the activity of the structure. Major topics of discussions dealt with role of the OANA in news exchange, the organization`s place in the world media industry, global challenges and other issues.
OANA Secretary General Ercan Gecar noted the increasing interest in the organization`s website following the 33rd meeting. He underlined that AzerTAc is one of the most active members of the organization. The new design and dynamism drove the number of consumers up in not only the region and the world.
The meeting was addressed by Director General of AzerTAc Aslan Aslanov. He noted that the Azerbaijan`s national agency is committed to OANA major goals. Admitted in 2004, AzerTAc has been a member of the executive committee since 2008.
The agency is attentively following OANA updates and actively leverages the organization`s internet platform for informing the world community about Azerbaijan`s successes.
The Director General noted that AzerTAc pays a special attention to application of innovative technologies and expansion of news exchange among partners.
The Director General made some proposals to expand the OANA`s global footprint and refine the organization`s internet resource. According to him, news agencies need to be in close interaction with internet and social networks and retain the role of the news supplier.
Multimedia technologies have become one of the watchwords for news agencies, said Aslanov. He noted member agencies can enrich OANA internet resources using multimedia content.
He said that the Asia-Pacific region is today developing at a rapid pace, with the world keeping a close eye on this process. At the same time, the countries of this region have more and more influence on world politics, which boosts the region`s informational potential among other things. And this, in turn, adds to the importance of a platform such as OANA.
Of course we should search for ways of improving the activities of OANA. AzerTAc has several proposals. OANA`s website can play the role of a bridge for equal dissemination of multimedia news on web pages of the member agencies
"AzerTAc is well experienced in this. We have maintained good traditions of exchanging experience with Malaysia`s Bernama, Indonesia`s Antara and Russia`s ITAR-TASS news agencies, for example. And we are ready to continue these traditions with all member agencies," he said.
"We can create a corporate news blog on OANA`s webpage, which will highlight the member agencies` latest news and technological innovations. I believe the creation of such a blog will contribute to deepening the cooperation between the member agencies and keeping us regularly updated on our corporate news," he said.
Discussions were followed by announcement of the declaration of principles of news dissemination of OANA member state. The draft declaration prepared by the Anatolian news agency reflects principles, which must be observed by the agencies in coverage of facts of aggression, violence and brutal killing of people. The declaration will be adopted in the meeting of the OANA General Assembly to be held in September next year in Moscow.

AzerTAc