WASHINGTON, November 21. /ITAR-TASS/. A second round of the program to exchange young media professionals under the aegis of the U.S-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission ended on Wednesday with a traditional telebridge between Moscow and Washington.
The participants in the exchange — 24 young reporters from both countries — shared their impressions as to their personal “discovery of Russia and America”.
The main conclusion was unanimous - three-week trainings were extremely useful for them both professionally and personally, offering an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the life and work of overseas colleagues, helping to get rid of certain errors, generating a wish to have a deeper insight into the real life of both peoples.
All marked with one voice a hearty reception offered at editorial offices. In Russia those were mainly central editions in Moscow and St. Petersburg, while in the US - regional editions from New York to Los Angeles, from Florida to Colorado. Although some Americans have already visited Kazan and Sochi, for example, their main wish was to have the geography of trips in Russia expanded.
All agreed that although foreign languages and culture were valuable, the main interest was in having purposeful work, for which both the participants in the exchange program and their hosts must prepare in advance. An American reporter who had been in St. Petersburg said she had received the task to dispel stereotypes her fellow countrymen had about Russia, but she did not find any, and simply wrote about the life of US students in the city. A Russian reporter returning from Texas said she sometimes had to invent what to occupy herself with, and once delivered a lecture on modern Russian journalism to editorial staffers.
There were practically no complaints about living conditions, with the exception of some trifles. For example one of the Americans was asked what he had not liked in Moscow, and said after thinking for a while that he had found it inconvenient not to see Laundromats so customary in the US.
Professionally, Americans were surprised to learn how difficult was in Russia to access even basic socially important information. For example, one of them regretted that he had waited in vain for a week for information about the ‘bike share’ program in Moscow from a relevant agency. He said in the US he was used to getting a reply to such inquiries within no more than three days.
On Wednesday, the young Russian reporters met with US president’s spokesman Jay Carney and coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs at the US Department of State Macon Philips.