In his speech Dr. Vitaly Naumkin underlined the importance of objective coverage of international events, especially when the news is about such a specific region like the Middle East. According to his words the position taken by the media can equally affect political crises in a positive or negative way. He also complimented the work of the NEO editorial board for providing the analysts from all around the globe with a platform where the most pressing concerns of our time can be freely discussed.
NEO’s Editor-in-Chief Alexander Klitsenko in his speech stressed the fact that the key issue of our time is source credibility. The media weapon of choice today are the reports of certain groups of civilians being tortured or killed. There’s no wonder that the countries that have found themselves in the middle of an armed conflict use this kind of media propaganda against each other, even when there were no real crimes against the civilians committed. The NATO forces won’t be able to attack Yugoslavia, Iraq and Libya without blaming Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein and all the Serbians in general for the nonexistent crimes against humanity. Hussein was also held responsible for the alleged storing of WMDs that he, as the Western media told the world, could have used at any given time. The news agencies must not tell lies, instead they should cover events as they were. But in practice Syrian civil war, the riots that took place in Egypt, the Iranian nuclear deadlock, the North Korean situation are more often than not are covered from from a particular angle that would be beneficial for certain political groups.
A lot of attention was paid to Syria’s ambassador to Moscow Dr. Riad Haddad who updated the media audience on the current state of affairs in Syria. He voiced the fact that Russian media has always been a truthful voice in the dark, that assisted the international community in finding ways out of the Syrian crisis. He also stressed that Russia’s consistent position on Syria has been a factor that allowed the situation around this country to change for the better.
In his turn Egypt’s ambassador to Russia Mahmoud Gamil Ahmed ElDieb confined to the guests to the had been a journalist himself. From his experience – the difficulty of journalism lies in its mportance. Each and every journalist can be rather dangerous when he’s writing to his fellow countrymen in times of disturbance in order to get paid by the rivalry forces.
Pakistani press counselor to Russia Raja Abdul Quaddum started his speech with expressing appreciation for the job New Eastern Outlook has been doing recently, along with the appreciation for the Russian media in general. He underlined that the importance NEO today is lying in the combination of Russian and Western top notch authors that are capable of covering any event from completely different angles. In his opinion the Russian media are generally wise since they now when and what is better to publish, given the current international politics state of affairs.
The guests have found that the topic that was chosen for the first NEO International Conference is in the front and center of today’s agenda. The speakers presented the public with different viewpoints without paying any heed to national or religious differences along with providing detailed analysis of the political situations in the countries in question. But at the same time all the speakers were unanimous in saying that the responsible objective coverage of the happening events is playing a major role on the international political stage today.
NEO editorial board
