World media houses stress social responsibilities, cooperation in digital era

World media organizations stressed social responsibilities and cooperation amid challenges in the digital era in the World Media Summit (WMS) that concluded Saturday.

Under the theme "Cooperation, Action, Win-Win and Development," world media at the three-day meeting analyzed the current situation, assessed the development trends of the industry and shared their ideas.

"We hope that media organizations around the world will provide accurate, objective, impartial and fair coverage of the world's news events," said leaders and representatives of 170 media organizations worldwide in a joint statement before wrapping up the meeting.

Media representatives agreed in the statement to promote transparency and accountability of governments and public institutions, and thus facilitate the mutual understanding as well as exchange of views and ideas among peoples from different countries and regions.

Cooperation was stressed as the global media industry was experiencing "profound changes" and under mounting pressure in the current digital and network age.

The summit, itself an example of cooperation, was launched at the joint proposal of Xinhua News Agency, News Corporation, the Associated Press, Reuters, ITAR-TASS, Kyodo, BBC, Turner Broadcasting System and Google.

SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITIES

Chinese President Hu Jintao said in a keynote speech Friday China would continue to make government affairs public and enhance information distribution, and at the same time he called on news media to uphold social responsibilities.

Media organizations should promote the "true, correct, comprehensive and objective communication of information," Hu said.

With the media's growing influence, "it is more important than ever before that the media should establish and uphold social responsibilities," he said.

Hu pledged the Chinese government would safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of foreign news media and continue to facilitate foreign media coverage of China in accordance with the law.

Xinhua President Li Congjun said the world's media must always adhere to their social responsibility and the role in improving public welfare despite challenges from the financial crisis and information technologies.

Mass media needed moral guidelines to prevent from disseminating ideas of extremism, terrorism, xenophobia and racial intolerance, said Director General of Russian news agency Itar-Tass Vitaly Nikitich Ignatenko.

EXPLORING WAYS OF DEVELOPMENT

The statement said media organizations were facing challenges including the international financial crisis, fast changing audience demands and the rapid advancement of emerging technologies.

How to survive and develop in the digital era has become a common concern for media houses.

"Cooperation, collaboration and partnerships are the formula for success as we compete in this new age of media," said Stephen J. Marcopoto, president of Turner International Asia Pacific Limited, the broadcasting division of Time Warner.

During the summit, Director of the BBC's Global News Richard Jeremy Sambrook said BBC hoped to tighten its partnership with Chinese peers.

The director said BBC was looking forward to launching a TV platform with a Chinese partner and cooperating with Chinese partners in developing English language learning through Internet and mobile phone.

All forms of media shall seek common development by deepening cooperation between each other, learning from each other, drawing on each other's experiences and complementing each other with new ideas, the WMS joint statement said.

All news organizations face the same mission -- get all the way across the burning bridge from analog to digital journalism and to make the difficult choices that this crossing presents, said Associated Press (AP) President and CEO Thomas Curley.

Curley called the media industry to be "game-changers" and take innovative moves to tackle challenges.

Chairman and CEO of News Corporation Rupert Murdoch said some competitive newspapers of the corporation will begin charge fees from their online readers.

Jeffrey Gralnick, an NBC News special consultant, shared the development model of msnbc.com, a leading news website in the United States, with representatives to the summit.

The website is free for users. However, it has more than a billion page views a month now, all producing revenue, and more than 150-million video streams each month, mostly preceded by pre-rolls, Gralnick said.

NEW TECHNOLOGIES MAY BE THE KEY

The new technologies have changed the traditional ways of news gathering, sorting, editing and conveying it to the audience. They have also produced the slide for broadcast and newspaper.

According to the world's search engine giant Google, a co-sponsor of the WMS, the Internet has changed the world profoundly over the past 10 years -- 2 billion people now search information online every day and 100 billion non-spam emails and instant messages were sent every day.

The World Wide Web brought opportunities and threats to Prensa Latina, which compelled it to drastically reduce the cost of communications and increased the reach and resonance of the message, said Frank Gonzalez Garcia, president of Prensa Latina.

AP Chief Executive Thomas Curley said the AP has launched an AP3P effort, or Protect, Point and Pay, aiming to protect published news content against unauthorized exploitation and enable new content licensing models.

The challenges from the new technologies have also forced world-known news organizations such as BBC and the AP to invest more on new platforms to go fully multimedia.

Although BBC Global News could boast a record weekly audience figure of 238 million this year, the number of radio listeners dropped by 6 million over the last year, said director Sambrook.

BBC host bloggers on its sites, allowing individuals to provide insights in to their lives and even talk to other bloggers who hold different views and perspectives.

"These technologies help us gain a greater understanding of what is going on over a broader canvas and can also break news," Sambrook said.

The world was flatter than ever and media had to deliver what global audiences wanted when they wanted it in an increasingly fragmented media universe, said Stephen J. Marcopoto, president of Turner International Asia Pacific Limited, the broadcasting division of Time Warner.

"It's always been part of Turner's DNA that technology is less a challenge and more a tool for creating new opportunities and building new audiences," Marcopoto said.

Though challenges and opportunities co-exist, there were more opportunities than challenges, the WMS joint statement said.

Source:Xinhua