Asian press urged to compete

Asian press urged to compete

SEOUL (Reuter): Asia's rapid economic development requires the
region's news agencies to hone standards of journalism to improve
the reporting of its own affairs, South Korea's information
minister said yesterday.

Oh In-Whan criticized what he called the Western media's news
monopoly which he said had grown even greater with the rapid
economic development of the Asia-Pacific and increased Western
pressure on Asia to open its markets.

He told a meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News
Agencies (OANA), representing 30 agencies in 23 countries, that
the creation of the World Trade Organization (WTO) this year
signaled the start of "a new form of trade war".

Guo Chaoren, president of Chinese agency Xinhua, said the
focus of the Seoul meeting was to improve the training of
personnel to produce better and faster news stories over more
advanced communications systems.