Sinaia: Annual Meeting of Public Broadcasters

The City of Sinaia, Romania, hosts today the Annual Meeting of Public Broadcasters - the first organized in South East Europe.

Radio and television experts from over 40 countries are exchanging expertise and ideas about how to best meet the specific challenges these institutions are facing. New trends have appeared alonside the emergence and development of social platforms.

Power today means how fast you get the information and pass it on, Foreign Minister Teodor Meleşcanu underlined. It is crucial for the media to be aware of this role, given its double challenge: to rapidly gather information, but at the same time to be accurate, he added.

Teodor Meleşcanu: The journalist who is part of the public institutions needs to have a very direct connection with the other state institutions and, obviously, the state institutions must be able to communicate and make available the necessary information so that the news the journalist distributes to be based on truth, to be fair and impartial - that is the greatest challenge for journalists of the public organizations.

Although we live in a digital world, the challenges and goals of public service stations have remained the same", said Jean-Paul Phillipot, president of the European Broadcasting Union.

Jean-Paul Phillipot:Let's inform people in a world where every citizen can come up with any kind of fake news and where everyone can choose between propaganda messages and verified information, let’s educate to give citizens the ability to choose and to form their own opinion, to open the minds of people to stay away from populist and simplistic ideas and to entertain, to present the diversity of our cultural heritage.

The radio in a new media era, the role of the journalist in the service of the community, or the response of public posts to populism in the face of false news are other topics that will be addressed in the second part of the day.

Source:RRA.Translated by Miruna Matei