Oriented on making people closer

Media representatives from more than a hundred countries gathered in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou on Sunday to reach consensus on solving common problems and boosting global trust. On Monday, the V World Media Summit continued its work in various sessions and parallel sub- forums, in which more than 450 delegates, including from Turkmenistan, participated in total.

Fu Hua, president of Xinhua News Agency, said in the keynote speech at the opening ceremony that confidence is more valuable than gold when faced with difficulties. He encouraged participants to use the media to convey positive energy, amplify voices that promote human development and enhance global confidence.

What is global confidence? This is a worthy global self-esteem, that is, our ideas about ourselves as a civilization. What are we, what are we capable of? Time calls us today to answer these questions. If we are capable of consolidation, then we have a future. And the future in our modern world is technology and communications, where the media must take its prominent place as the main conductor of advanced ideas and concepts.

When used correctly, artificial intelligence tools can help media organizations improve productivity, freeing up resources for more on-the- ground reporting, Michael Mainville, AFP executive committee member and AFP regional director for APAC said.

Disinformation was the subject of heated discussions at the summit. In the Internet era, people receive information from unprecedentedly convenient and diverse channels, but they also face an onslaught of different types of false information. And as many media executives said today, fake news is creating problems for the media industry.

But it is important that we understand where journalism intersects with culture, emotion, interpretation, visuality and imagination. It is at this junction that fakes are born and spread, the fight against which has become not just a task, but a responsibility of journalism, its moral duty to society. After all, the mission of the press is to shape public understanding of current events.

Therefore, the position of the authors is important. Journalists, covering the agenda, are in the same circle with politicians and diplomats. And here you need to choose the right point of view, on which the presentation of information will depend, and hence the position of the readers.

The Cold War in international journalism has been waged for decades, and in the current period of particular aggravation of conflicts, the “language of confrontation” has become its weapon. But the paradigm of the world is changing, and it’s time to counter it with the “language of friendship.”

Turkmenistan has never deviated from the language of friendship and cooperation, based on its neutral status, which is an effective mechanism of foreign policy interaction. Time has convincingly proven this - this month our country will celebrate the 28th anniversary of neutrality.

Neutrality is the ability to conduct dialogue without bias. It is not for nothing that the headquarters of the Regional Center for Preventive Diplomacy is located by the United Nations in Ashgabat, which has become a platform for such dialogue.

Journalism has enormous potential to bring stabilization to society, to global processes, to strengthen consensus and restore trust.

As for new opportunities and challenges in the field of media, these are two sides of the same coin, shadow and light, Yin and Yang. Well, for example, one of the

challenges is generational change. The “old school” of journalism with its laws, rules and printed media is leaving, and the “new wave” is growing rapidly, even chaotically, where the main thing is efficiency, mobility, and hype. Sometimes even literacy is relegated to the background, because anyone with a smartphone in hand and an account on social networks can consider themselves a “journalist.” Something is lost - depth, comprehension, intelligence, but something is found - lightning speed, coverage, multimedia. And this, of course, gives a chance for the formation of a new quality of journalism, which will “catch on” all the best from past experience and will have unprecedented opportunities.

In this regard, platforms such as the World Media Summit play a critical role in facilitating exchanges between media from different countries. First of all, this is a platform for Dialogue, and today it is more important than ever. The media have always been of great importance in building interstate relations, and even more important for the perception of the peoples of these countries about each other.

But relations between states are based on the interests of each people. Turkmenistan today is interested in expanding and intensifying international information contacts, in studying the best foreign experience, so our delegation is these days in Guangdong, in southern China.

The pandemic has taught us all to work and communicate remotely, but, as it turns out, nothing can replace live human communication. It’s not for nothing that high- ranking politicians visit each other, not limiting themselves to phone calls, but want to talk “face to face.”

For all of us, the press summit is also an opportunity to open new horizons, find new partners, and get acquainted with the most current trends in the media industry through its leaders and experts.

Bekdurdy AMANSARYEV

Photo: autor's