NAM countries to start news agency
NAM countries to start news agency
Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur
Ministers from the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) of developing nations will meet on Monday to discuss a proposed news agency to counter what officials called "discriminatory and distorted" Western reporting.
The possibility of setting up a Kuala Lumpur-based NAM News Network (NNN) to be run by Malaysia's national Bernama news agency will top the agenda for the two-day ministerial meeting of NAM information ministers.
The NNN, to be operational by 2007, would be an Internet-based news outlet, using contributions from agencies and selected newspapers of member countries, according to a draft document discussed by senior officials at the weekend.
"While developing countries have been complaining in the past of Western media domination, the NNN is a platform for us to muster our strength and present our perspective to the world," the draft said.
"There is no way that news agencies in the developing world can ever compete with their Western counterparts, let alone to effectively counter negative reports about their countries on their own."
The NNN would help counter "the dissemination of discriminatory and distorted information of events taking place in developing countries" by the Western media, said the document, which was distributed to the press.
Information ministry secretary general Siti Balkish Mohamed Shariff pledged Malaysia's commitment to the future agency, saying: "We are willing to steer it, pay for it and make sure that it lasts."
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi will open the conference on Monday, which will bring together delegates from over 80 member states including Afghanistan, Indonesia, Myanmar, North Korea and Zimbabwe.
Security will be tight with more than 250 police deployed for the event.
Malaysia is the current chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement, a grouping of more than 100 mainly developing nations formed during the Cold War as an alternative to the Western and Eastern power blocs.
In recent years the grouping has turned its attention to social issues as it struggles to maintain its relevance in the modern world.