Asian media seek less Western dominance

CHANGCHUN – The Fifth 10+3 Media Cooperation Forum concluded here Tuesday with the view to lessening Western dominance of media and promoting Asia’s voice and values.

Some 70 delegates from the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) region gathered in this chilly capital of northeast Jilin province in China to thresh out issues including disputes in the West Philippine Sea (South China Sea).

The conference was held at Nanhu Hotel, Changchun, just as US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing to dissuade China from using “force and coercion” in its territorial disputes with a number of countries, among them the Philippines, Japan, and Vietnam.

“The real target of the US is to harm China’s relations with its neighbors,” a Chinese academic was quoted by CNN as saying.

During the series of speeches in the morning, Wakamiya Yoshibumi of Asahi Shimbun Japan noted that China media faced restrictions, and urged against the promotion of ultranationalist sentiments.

Media’s role includes maintaining “a social order faithful to truth,” he said.

Peter Ong of Lianhe Ziaobao Singapore pointed out how economy in the region was affected by the issues in the West Philippine Sea.

“We were worried about that standoff (in Panatag or Scarborough Shoal last Aprill),” Ong earlier said, adding it would benefit no one if a shooting war ensued.

In the afternoon session where delegates spoke in a roundtable forum, Jude Defensor of Expat Communications observed the prevalence of social media enabled a tweet to elicit more feedback than a well-written and researched article.

Another delegate, however, said that the journalist must not dispose of the conventional way of news gathering, and that print media were still superior because of “finer editorial content.”

A delegate who has attended all five conferences reacted to insinuations that the gathering was a talkshop like its political counterpart.

“They say all we do is talk, but of course we have to talk because it is better than fighting,” he said.

The forum, organized by China’s People’s Daily and hosted by the Jilin provincial government, ended with a consensus that “agreeing to disagree” was a healthy sign of a free media.