Director of the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) referred to media communications as a powerful tool for establishing interaction among nations.
“Sisterhood between cities is in fact an opportunity to promote bilateral, regional and international interactions, so the media play undeniable role as the path of communication between nations and governments because according to human sciences thinkers, cultural and media communications have turned into a powerful tool for interactions between the nations and countries,” Director of IRNA provincial affairs Fatemeh Nouri Jahangard said addressing the ‘Media Cooperation and International Communication Against the Backdrop of Globalization’ in Beijing.
The full text of IRNA director is as follows:
Dear hosts,
Ladies and gentlemen
I’m very pleased to be with you. I express gratitude to All-China Journalists Association, Beijing’s media network and the city’s municipality for the initiative to host this event and invite Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) to attend this gathering. I wish the friendly country and the big nation of China, the event organizers and all guests health and success.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Sisterhood agreements between world cities dates back to a century ago, a move that happened following the first World War in a bid to forge better friendship between the nations, establish peace and remember cultural and historical similarities.
These days, many cities around the world have signed sisterhood agreements thanks to these similarities to create unity between the citizens of these cities.
Five years have past since Tehran, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s capital, and Beijing, the People’s Republic of China’s capital, signed sisterhood agreement so that both countries’ citizens, especially those who reside in these two cultural and populated cities, to become familiar with different angles of life, historical and cultural backgrounds of each other.
Sisterhood between cities is in fact an opportunity to promote bilateral, regional and international interactions, so the media play undeniable role as the path of communication between nations and governments because according to human sciences thinkers, cultural and media communications have turned into a powerful tool for interactions between the nations and countries.
One of the media functions is to help nations and governments to use the sisterhood agreements to introduce cultural and touristic attractions that can develop the tourism industry and fortunately Iran and China have vast potentials in this regard, only part of which is reflected in Tehran and Beijing.
The media have this capacity to reflect touristic attractions in different countries through content production in print and audiovisual and show them to their audience around the world through websites and social media.
This can be a subject in a joint agenda of the media in cities that have signed sisterhood agreements. Iranian media, especially IRNA are ready to closely cooperate with Chinese and especially Beijing media and familiarize their citizens with cultural attractions of the other country and city and encourage them to travel to such places.
As Iran’s main media that has been actively covering internal, regional and international issues, the Islamic Republic News Agency now publishes its contents in Persian, Arabic, English, Russian, Urdu, French, Spanish, German, Turkish and Chinese languages.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Another potential that sisterhood agreements between cities create and the media contribute to its consolidation, is development of cultural interactions. In fact, within the platform of sisterhood agreements and media, cultural commonalities can be spread and as experience shows peace, justice and development is not possible without using cultural, scientific and educational development.
It should be emphasized that these days cultural relations is an important link in the global community and nations can’t be connected only through political means. Therefore, the more the cultural and media cooperation, the better the results in other areas helping countries to confront warmongering policies and unilateral approaches, including terrorism, especially economic terrorism, so that nations live in calm and peace.
Sisterhood agreements between the cities is an opportunity to unite nations culturally, and the media play an important role in creating and strengthening this unity by showing a correct image of countries and nations.
Dear guests,
Ladies and gentlemen,
At the end, I’d like to once again express the gratitude of myself and that of Mr Hashemi, Islamic Republic News Agency Managing Director, for holding this conference. I wish you success.
IRNA