Med: 21st AMAN assembly concluded, Anselmi president

Focusing on Italy, Mediterranean and information

28 June, 16:30

(ANSAmed) - ROME, JUNE 28 - Two days of discussion on key issues such as the challenges for the news media facing political, social and economic changes in the Mediterranean area: today the 21st general assembly of AMAN, the alliance of Mediterranean press agencies, came to a conclusion in Rome. The current chairman of the organisation is Giulio Anselmi, president of ANSA, who succeeded the general director of the Moroccan MAP agency Khalil Hachimi Idrissi. The next meeting should take place in 2013 in Ramallah, in the Palestinian Territories. ''We have discussed collaboration between our agencies and how to deal with the information challenges posed by the phenomena linked to the euro crisis and the consequences of the Arab Spring in the Mediterranean,'' Anselmi said in today's session.

''The situation has not calmed down yet in Libya, Egypt and most of all Syria. We have committed to develop a form of collaboration that should become a real alliance." ANSA, which hosted the event, has proposed to organise a training course for multimedia journalists in the area, in March 2013 in Rome. Other proposals include the idea presented by APS regarding training in economic and investigative journalism, Content Management Systems (CMS, for websites) and audiovisual systems. Today's meeting of the alliance - 19 agencies plus four observers - was preceded, yesterday, by a workshop with the title "Italy for the Mediterranean region - information and development", organised by ANSA at the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Gregorian University. The central theme: the role played by Italy and its regions that are closest linked to the Mediterranean and its southern shore, in the context of the substantial political-social turmoil, and the role played by an also rapidly changing world of information on this stage. Apart from representatives of the AMAN agencies (including Libya's LANA agency, absent since 2003), the governors of Lazio, Renata Polverini; Campania, Stefano Caldoro; Calabria, Giuseppe Scopelliti also played an important role in the discussion. All these regions are strongly committed to improve the exchange with the Med's south shore. In the afternoon, it was the turn of Italian economic players in the Mediterranean - coordinated by ANSA managing director Giuseppe Cerbone - and of Italian journalists active in the area, a debate led by the agency's editor in chief, Luigi Contu.

All speakers underlined the importance of widely available and reliable information as requisite for mutual knowledge and, as a result, more exchange in every field, from culture to the economy. (ANSAmed).

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