Media as platform for friendship, understanding

FILE: MEDIA AS TOOL FOR AMITY. Philippine News Agency-Cebu Bureau Chief John Rey Saavedra delivers the opening remarks during the Seminar on Information Officers and Journalists for Europe and Asia held in Yulong Hotel in Beijing, China on Tuesday, June 19, 2019. The seminar is sponsored by the China International Publishing Group. (Contributed photo via PNA)

BEIJING – Despite the pressing challenges due to the emergence of digital and social media, a pressman from the Philippine News Agency (PNA) on Wednesday urged Asian and European journalists to use the journalism profession as a platform for friendship and understanding.

Speaking before participants of the Seminar on Information Officers and Journalists for European and Asian Countries held at the Yulong Hotel here, PNA-Cebu Bureau chief John Rey Saavedra said each “country’s vast culture can be best shared through our daily task as purveyors of news and information and espouse a platform of vibrant relationship, cooperation, and open communication across borders.”

The challenges in the profession can be met head-on while it demands a never-ending learning curve for new skills and strategies in news production, he said.

“The advent of new technology used in gathering the news, producing the news, filing the news, and propagating the news demands that we, the purveyors of news and information, should never stop learning,” Saavedra said in his opening remarks representing the 21 participants from seven different countries.

He underscored the need for the journalists to “nourish his or her skills from time to time.”

Saavedra shared the challenges that the Philippine media is currently going through “to cope with the pressing need to migrate” to the digital media.

“This is now the kind of media where the news can be read in 60 seconds,” he said.

Saavedra told the participants of the 20-day seminar that understanding among countries is best operationalized through exchanges of information through the digital and social media.

He shared to the seminar organizers and participants PNA’s remarkable achievement last May when visitors to the state-run news site reached about 2.2 million views, as compared to only 276,644 in January 2018.

With that achievement, the Philippine government’s positions are read across different sectors of the society.

In his welcome message, Lu Cairong, director of the China International Publishing Group (CIPG), inspired the participants — who are reporters, television presenters, and government information officers — about China’s effort to interpret its culture to the world through publication.

“I think taking this seminar, it will be an opportunity and as a platform where we can imbue our friendship and carry out more cooperation,” Cairong said.

The sponsor of the seminar, CIPG, was founded in 1949 with a mission to introduce China to foreign countries through books and magazines, and websites, publishing with an average of 3,000 titles in various categories every year, including 50 periodicals and e-journals in more than 10 languages distributed in more than 180 countries and regions.

The group operates over 30 websites including www.china.org.cn, one of the main state-run news sites with more than 20 branches worldwide, and creating conglomerates of foreign language publishing and marketing.

Aside from translation, publishing, printing, and distribution, the group is also involved in internet and multimedia services, as well as theoretical research, is in charge of translating government documents and white papers, and administers tests, such as that of the Center of China Aptitude Test for Translators and Interpreters.

In 1964, the Training Center for CIPG was organized as a professional training institute for staff and other organizations across the country in the fields as high-end foreign languages, translation, international communications, international journalism, as well as publication quality control and management for the publishing activities of the CIPG.

Cairong said after the four-day classroom-type lecture on China government and economy, public diplomacy and press release, the country’s poverty alleviation measures, innovation on international communication, international news reporting, as well as the Belt and Road Initiative, the participants of the seminar will be exposed to CIPG’s digital media center.

The CIPG will also bring the European and Asian journalists and information officers to Shandong province, the home province of Chinese philosopher, Confucius.