HANGZHOU, (PNA/Xinhua) — The Second Presidium Meeting of the World Media Summit will be held in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou on Thursday.
Media leaders from Xinhua News Agency, News Corporation, The Associated Press, Reuters, ITAR-TASS News Agency, Kyodo News, British Broadcasting Corporation, Turner Broadcasting System Inc., Google, AL Jazeera Media Network, The New York Times Company, NBC News, MIH Group, Kasturi&Sons Limited will attend the meeting.
The world has stepped into the era of digital multimedia, the media pattern and communication environment are undergoing profound changes, and audience demands are increasingly diversified. Traditional media faces major challenges as well as unprecedented opportunities. “Dealing with Severe Challenges and Winning Development Opportunities” is the common concern of the global media.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Li Congjun, President of Xinhua News Agency, held talks with the leaders of major global media such as News Corporation, The Associated Press, Reuters, Kyodo News, and BBC, exchanging views on the challenges of the digital multimedia era, enhancement of exchange and win-win cooperation. All the parties agreed to hold the World Media Summit, which builds an efficient platform for the global media to communicate with each other and pool collective wisdom, sparking their thoughts, discussing survival and development, and talking about cooperation and future.
From Oct. 8 to 10 in 2009, the World Media Summit was held in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. This summit was initiated by nine leading global media organizations – Xinhua News Agency, News Corporation, The Associated Press, Reuters, ITAR-TASS, Kyodo News, BBC, Turner Broadcasting System and Google. Organized by Xinhua, more than 170 media leaders from across the world attended the event. This was the world’s largest scale “Olympic Games” of global media, covering the widest area and all media types such as news agency, newspaper, broadcasting, television, and internet, among others.
Former Chinese President Hu Jintao addressed the opening ceremony of the summit, which caused strong resounding from the international public opinions, and greatly highlighted the significance of the summit. This summit resulted in the issuance of the significant World Media Summit Joint Declaration.
On July 5, 2012, the Second World Media Summit was held in Moscow. This summit drew more than 300 representatives of 213 media outlets from 102 countries. Representatives exchanged views on electronic media development around the theme of “Global Media: Meeting Challenges of the 21st Century”, the role of social networks in contemporary media space, the relationship between media and business sector and press ethics.
The WMS presidium is the supreme decision-making body of the World Media Summit, and is responsible for decisions on important WMS matters. The presidium is composed of international media organizations. Each organization appoints a senior director as co-chairperson of the presidium.
The first World Media Summit Presidium Meeting was held in Beijing, China on Sept. 27, 2011. Members of the Presidium reached multiple agreements on a set of specified topics including media’s intellectual property rights protection, cooperation in the era of new media, reporters’ safety and media’s role in natural disasters.
So far, a multilateral coordination mechanism of the global media circles under the mechanism of the summit has been formed initially, and increasingly plays an important role.