Media collaboration will make South Asia better

Change of mindset of media leaders of the South Asian nations is a must to create media collaboration in the region, speakers observed yesterday at a programme in the capital.

Saying that cooperation among the countries will make the South Asian region better, speakers, mostly media personalities of this region, said, governments may fail for their own reasons but why should intellectuals, academics, researchers, professionals, singers and journalists of South Asia fail to come closer to one another?

The Centre for Policy Dialogue, country's leading think tank, organised the discussion titled, “Promoting South Asian identity: Role of media” at a hotel on the last day of the two-day ninth South Asia Economic Summit.

The speakers said media of South Asian countries are yet to come closer to one another and urged the media leaders to change their mindset.

In his concluding remarks, the session chair Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, said media has grown in the region and they on their own initiative should find out how to collaborate with each other.

He also said India and Pakistan have their own problems, which will take time to solve. But in the meantime media of the other countries should find a way to solve the problem. Also collaboration with India and Pakistan may be attempted but other collaborations should also be there.

Shafaqat Munir, founding editor of Pakistan based Infochange News and Features Network, said, “Cooperation among the countries has been outweighed by the deep-rooted tensions among member states.”

Monjurul Ahsan Bulbul, editor in charge and CEO of Ekushey TV, said due to conflict between India and Pakistan, journalists often face problems in getting visas which is not desired at all.

Prothom Alo Editor Matiur Rahman stressed the importance of media freedom and spirit of objective and independent journalism which is vital for media outlets.

Pointing to media freedom of South Asian countries, he said journalists of two leading newspapers of the country did not get permission to cover the recent visit of the Chinese president although the Chinese authority made arrangements to publish a writing of the Chinese president in the two media before his visit considering the newspapers' acceptability and credibility.

Rinzin Wangchuk, editor of Kuensel, Bhutan's national language daily, said more than three decades ago, leaders of seven South Asian countries formed the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) with a grand vision.

There were several sessions on different issues during the two-day programme.