42nd Executive Board Meeting of AZERTAC-chaired OANA kicks off in Beirut
Beirut, May 3, AZERTAC
The 42nd Executive Board Meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), which is now chaired by Azerbaijan State News Agency (AZERTAC), has kicked off in the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
Co-organized by Lebanon`s Ministry of Information and Lebanese National News Agency (NNA), the meeting is attended by heads and delegates of Russia's TASS, Turkey`s Anadolu, South Korea's Yonhap, China's Xinhua, Japan`s Kyodo, Iran's IRNA and Mehr, Mongolia`s Montsame, Bahrain`s BNA and Malaysia`s Bernama news agencies.
In her remarks, Director of Lebanese National News Agency Laure Sleiman described the OANA Executive Board Meeting as a good platform for discussing problems and challenges facing news agencies and exploring development prospects.
President of OANA, Director General of AZERTAC Aslan Aslanov thanked the Lebanese government and Ministry of Information for assistance in organizing the meeting. He recalled Baku`s successfully hosting the 5th News Agencies World Congress and the 16th General Assembly of OANA last November. “Co-organized by the Heydar Aliyev Foundation and AZERTAC, the event featured interesting discussions and heard a number of fruitful proposals.” “The fact that Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev attended and addressed the joint opening ceremony of the General Assembly and the 5th Congress and received a group of media representatives increased the importance of our events,” he said.
Aslan Aslanov highlighted what AZERTAC has done since assuming the presidency of OANA. “We realize great responsibility as AZERTAC took over OANA presidency and believe that we will successfully cope with this task in the next three years. We are confident that through combined efforts we will achieve a lot in improving OANA's activity and making it a more dynamic organization.” He said AZERTAC has made important work to expand the activity of OANA and increase the functionality of the organization`s website. “One of the improvements on the website is that we changed the video player. By doing so we ensured access to video content on the OANA website from mobile phones and tablets. We created a Twitter account of OANA. Given the growing role of social networks, I think it is important to our future development. It is a well-known fact that nowadays everyone, particularly young people, have access to internet resources through mobile devices. Therefore, we adapted OANA`s website to mobile devices in order to improve access to the website and increase its functionality. Apart from this, we added several new functions to the website. One of them is that we launched a service that allows a chair agency to collect the statistical data of the website. We also added “Send to a friend” function, which enables sending a selected news story to anyone through e-mail.”
Lebanese Minister of Information Melhem Riachy said it is important that news agencies attach particular importance to strengthening cultural relations and dialogue and building confidence among peoples and countries. He also urged journalists to be very attentive and careful when reporting on terrorism-related issues.
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