Silk Road opens new development doors

The subject of the conference was: "Xinhua News Agency and the future of the Silk Road".

According to ISNA, Dong Mu started his lecture by saying that Xinhua was established in 1931. While being the most influential and biggest news agency,   it is also the only official news agency of the People's Republic of China. He went on to say that, at present, Xinhua has some 170 offices in foreign countries and functions as the only media for broadcasting the important news of the central government in eight live languages of the world.

Mr.Mu added that more than 2100 years ago, the representative of Hun dynasty visited central Asia and Iran twice and opened the old Silk Road which continued from the West to the East and ended up in Europe. Due to its pivotal role for trade, cultural exchange and friendly cooperation important missions were implemented by diplomats, businessmen, and scientists to meet the needs of the road in its entirety. He added: four years ago, the president of the people Republic of China raised a new initiative for the Silk Road and it's economic belt which includes Iran.

Regarding the Silk Road issue he said Xinhua news agency as the official news agency of the people Republic of China has hired numerous reporters in order to cover the news related to the Silk Road and is committed to reflect the news related to social progress as well as economic development and growth. At the end of his speech he pointed out that the efforts being undertaken these days will sure benefit future Iranian and Chinese and other countries for generations to come.

Meanwhile the news conference of the senior editor of Utusan newspaper Mahmut Mowardi was held in special desk of Foreign Media in Tehran Press Festival at Tehran's Mosalla building.

The subject of the conference was: "challenges facing the newspapers, (with emphasis on the state-owned Utusan newspaper) in the era of social media".

He started his lecture by expressing his pleasure at his first presence in Iran. He continued by pointing to the concerns of his friends who reminded him of being a Sunni Muslim and going to a Shia country of Iran, may not be easy and free from tension.

Of course he clarified that he did not blame them, neither was his feeling hurt as he knew that those comments stemmed from being misinformed.

He went on to say that, " despite all these, I look at this travel as an opportunity to see my religious brothers and sisters and hope to improve the relations between Iran and Malaysia"

He briefly introduced Malaysia by saying that his country is a nation of twenty million people and is known for its twin towers.

On Utusan newspaper he said that Utusan was established in 1939. It reflected the concerns of the lower layers of the society and in 1997 it went on the internet and all its issues, ever since then became available online. But due to the lack of enthusiasm of its audience, it was not very successful as most people still preferred to read the paper version of the newspaper. 

He also pointed out that due to advent of online newspapers, the advertising and readership of print newspapers had fallen dramatically and it is getting worse as the university research indicates that Whatsapp, Facebook and Instagram have the highest number of users.

At the end of his speech he expressed hope that by producing better quality of products, paying closer attention to the method of presenting the facts, staying away from biased opinion the traditional media, while trying to concentrate on the youth as audience, can cope with the online journalism.