ID :
265277
Thu, 11/29/2012 - 12:34
Auther :

OANA Executive Board Holds Its 34th Meeting In Tokyo

TOKYO (AA) - November 29, 2012 - The 34th edition of the executive board meeting of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA) hosted by Japan's Kyodo News Agency began in Tokyo on Thursday. Anadolu Agency Board Chairman and Director General Kemal Ozturk made the opening remarks of the meeting. The meeting agreed to hold a technical committee meeting in Istanbul in April as well as discussed several issues such as the future of the news agencies, news sharing and cooperation. The ethical guidelines proposed by Ozturk will be put to discussion in a General Assembly meeting of the OANA at the end of next year in Moscow. The proposed Ethical Guidelines for OANA include the following principles: 1. To act responsibly in covering terrorism, acts of violence and natural disasters bearing in mind the public interest in full and accurate reporting, universal human rights, national security and public order; 2. to take great care about the quality and style of its stories that they do not encourage violence, spread fear, traumatise, damage the principles of equality and justice, degrade human dignity and foster discrimination; 3. To avoid publishing stories or visual material that will be deemed discriminatory on the basis of class, race, language, religion, gender, and region that will generate feelings of hostility among people and further incite them to violence and terror. 4. To accept the sanctity of human life and to avoid running pictures or video footage that will hurt the dignity of victims and cause further suffering to their families; 5. To respect - in covering wars, conflicts, terrorism and disasters - the privacy and dignity of the dead regardless of who they are; 6. To avoid publishing graphic pictures and video of executions, killing of people and transmitting close-up shots of dead or wounded and mutilated bodies, limbs degrading human dignity and causing psychological distress in public. The executive board meeting in Tokyo also agreed to add an extra principle to make sure journalists who had not undergone war-journalism training will not be assigned to duties in war zones.


X