MOSCOW, July 6 (Itar-Tass) — The World Media Summit that ended in Moscow on Friday will gather again in 2014. Its participants, the leaders of the world’s leading media outlets, unanimously agreed that they should continue discussing urgent problems of the global media market. Moreover, Vitaly Ignatenko, the director-general of the Itar-Tass news agency, said in his speech at the forum’s closing session that work to form the agenda for the next summit would start as early as November.
It’s clear that the new themes will include media activities in conditions of local wars and revolutions. Alexei Venediktov, the editor-in-chief of the Ekho Moskvy radio, formulated another important theme: how to protect copyright rights in the Internet.
It’s highly probable that Bahrain will offer a floor for discussing these and other issues. The proposal came from Bahrain’s Information Minister Samira Rajab. The final decision on the summit’s venue is expected to come at the year’s end.
For the time being, the summit has “registered itself” in many countries without even leaving Moscow. Publications on discussions at the media forum have appeared in almost a hundred countries in recent days.
The summit’s closing ceremony was emotional. There was an impression that two days hadn’t been enough for world media representatives to communicate and discuss all thorny issues concerning, say, media survival in conditions of an economic crisis, transformation of traditional media in the Internet age and competition against social networks. However, some expert proposals made at the summit could lay down the foundation for future decisions. The more so that the roundtable in Moscow had brought together media bosses of various “weight categories”: delegates from major powers started polemics with representatives of unrecognized countries. The summit gave the latter an opportunity to personally reproach the world media giants in biased coverage of events taking place in their home countries. However, that didn’t prevent the discussion from demonstrating the unity of action and the delegates’ desire to preserve the purity of their profession.
Russian Minister for Relations with “Open government” Mikhail Abyzov, UNESCO Assistant Director General Janis Karklins as well as many others joined the conference on its second day.
The organizers received many thanks and gratitude for hospitality and a constructive program. The Sudanese representative described the summit as “fantastic” without being ironic. The journalists who had come from all over the world wouldn’t have been professionals if they hadn’t used opportunities given by the summit to the maximum. They posed a number of questions about Russian politics to Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin; they had informal discussions with colleagues in the summit’s corridors and enjoyed views of the Russian capital from a river cruiser.