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

In an interview granted to VNA’s reporters in Jakarta on theoccasion 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 havea role in helping their people and promoting the struggle of their people andnations, he explained.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meidyatama suggested that ASEAN newsagencies should band together to form some sorts of linkage which can combineall the 10 ASEAN countries and their news agencies and all their main media toform a pool of information, which educates and gives enlightenment to thepeople 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 atthe present time.

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

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