Antara President Director: VNA at forefront of providing correct information

Jakarta (VNA) – President Director of Indonesia’s Antara News Agency Meidyatama Suryodiningrat has said he is very confident that the Vietnam News Agency (VNA) will continue to be at the forefront of providing correct information not only for the Vietnamese, but for the people of ASEAN as a whole.

In an interview granted to VNA’s reporters in Jakarta on the occasion of its 75th founding anniversary (September 15), Meidyatama said VNA and Antara have so many similarities.

The two agencies were established at about the same time and have a role in helping their people and promoting the struggle of their people and nations, he explained.

Not only that, they are both playing a vital role in information in the Southeast Asian region, he added.

Therefore, the agencies have so many foundations in which they can work together and they have worked together in terms of exchanges of news and information, and facilitating their correspondents.

“Without Antara and without Vietnam News Agency, the only news coming out of our two countries would be very much dominated by Western news agencies. And that is the vital role that both Vietnam News Agency and Antara play together and must never cease or end,” he stressed.

According to Meidyatama, the agencies over the past few years have undergone a significant revolution that has been pushed by the new way in which people consume information.

So the idea of convergence and multimedia and the idea that a new agency does not only produce texts and photos, but a combination of those two and various other multimedia such as video, infographics and so on are things that both are doing, he said.

He pointed out that there has been so much tremendous cooperation within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in all fields. However, there is such a lack of cooperation between the ASEAN news agencies themselves. There is practically no centralised news agency working together within ASEAN and this is despite the fact that within ASEAN there are very few good, competent, credible news agencies like Antara, VNA and Bernama.

Meidyatama suggested that ASEAN news agencies should band together to form some sorts of linkage which can combine all the 10 ASEAN countries and their news agencies and all their main media to form a pool of information, which educates and gives enlightenment to the people of ASEAN.

Burden should start with Antara and VNA, maybe Bernama, he said. However, given the current pandemic, it is something which has to be shelved at the present time.

This idea then should be realised as soon as possible to combat misinformation and misinformation about countries and ASEAN.  

Meidyatama expressed his belief that VNA will continue to be one of the leading news agencies in the world and extended his utmost and deepest congratulations on behalf of the Indonesian News Agency to VNA on its 75th founding anniversary./.