World Media share and Seek Cooperation to Help Combat COVID-19

By Chhay Sophal

Kampong Chhnang province, Cambodia (September 15, 2020): Global journalists and media experts participating in the Online ‘World Journalists Conference 2020’ on Tuesday recognize the media role to help fight against the world deadly COVID-19 while seeking cooperation for the common problem.

Besides sharing many countries’ experiences on the virus at the conference on day 2 with the theme: Global Responses to COVID-19 and Disease Control Methods, speakers and participants agreed that media play the core tasks at the time of the joint crisis and need to work together.

Speaking in her session at the conference today, Chen Yingqun, a senior correspondent at China Daily, urged the world not to politicize COVD-19 but need to promote cooperation and joint effort to “fight against common enemy”.

“As the coronavirus continues to take its toll across the world, global media could play an essential role in putting the pandemic to the end, and there are certain points that I have observed and think might be important in achieving that goal,” Chen told the conference.

While global cooperation is essential in the world’s fight against the pandemic, she said “Global media outlets need actively promote international cooperation, share successful antiepidemic experiences and practices of countries like China and South Korea, and call on people of the world to join hands to fight the virus”.

Following Chen’s comment, Dr. Hayim Iserovich, Foreign Affairs Correspondent for the Maariv daily in Israel, told the conference that the bottom line, in every crisis – especially in that kind of one-in-a-hundred year crisis – the media has an important and crucial role in reporting, explaining, and demanding full accountability in the name of the public.

But, he said, it also needs to remember not to exaggerate the real picture or give space to spreaders of fake “facts”, but to present the public with the most updated, completed, and reliable information.

Nearly 100 journalists, media professors and experts from the five continents participate in 3-day conference organized by Journalists Association of Korea (JAK).

The conference conducted Online – ZOOM — for the first time since 2013 due to COVID-19 pandemic focus on three main themes – Various Countries’ Examples of and Countermeasures to Fake News and The Future of the Journalists; Global Responses to COVID-19 and Disease Control Methods; and the 70th anniversary of the Korean War and Peace Policy in the Korean Peninsula – are to be focus during the 3-day conference.

JAK President Dong Hoon Kim Monday said despite having different genders, skin colors, and ideologies, journalists still share some commonalities….and all work hard to make the truth known with a warm heart and cold rationality, ultimately for peace and freedom.

“Although we are only meeting online, I hope that you would all exchange opinions and recommendations so that we may all fulfill our calling as journalists as the conference provides us with precious opportunities to discuss major global issues,’ Hoon Kim added.