AKP Highlights Active Role of Media in COVID-19 Response

Cambodia’s state-owned news agency, Agence Kampuchea Presse (AKP), has emphasised the key and active role of media in this unprecedented health crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.
“At this time of coronavirus widespread, the media, both traditional and new media, has been playing a positive and powerful role which has contributed to affecting and controlling the pandemic spread,” said Mr. Thach Phanarong, Deputy Director General of AKP, in his remarks at the 4th World Media Summit which kicked off this morning via videoconference under the theme “Media Growth Strategy under the Impact of COVID-19”.
He mentioned a wide range of roles the media played from giving updates on the pandemic and providing health education to being a resourceful and to-and-fro mean of communication between the government and people, and keeping people’s emotions stable.
The AKP deputy director general also laid stress on the “infodemic” which spreads as rapidly as the pandemic. Accurate and inaccurate information about the disease are mixed and disseminated widely in many forms throughout the media platforms, especially in social media networking. Therefore, people have been urged to refer to the Ministry of Health’s media platforms such as website and Facebook page and those of the state media, including the AKP for information related to COVID-19 updates in Cambodia as well as the government’s measures, actions, directives and so on, he said.
Moreover, he added, rapid reactions from concerned institutions by delivering accurate information to the public through mass media as well as media literacy and government’s actions to control fake news are very necessary.
As an important high-end platform for media exchanges, the World Media Summit (WMS) was jointly launched by a group of globally renowned media organisations in 2009, including Xinhua News Agency, the Associated Press, Reuters, TASS, Kyodo News and others.
The first WMS was held in Beijing from Oct. 8 to 10, 2009, while the second in Moscow from July 5 to 7, 2012, and the third in Doha on Mar. 20-21, 2016.
The fourth WMS, organised virtually in Beijing on Nov. 22, drew some 200 representatives from more than 110 media outlets from across the world.

Source: Agency Kampuchea Press