OANA established to counter West’s one-way flow of information

Mikhail Gusman, Russia’s TASS first deputy director general, said that OANA had been established to improve its member agencies’ activities and still strives hard to counter the one-way flow of information across the world by Western media.

He said, “We should never forget that OANA is a social organization and never considers any political goal, so we intend to boost cooperation among its members through applying media capabilities and potentialities.

“Since Western media enjoys more capabilities than Eastern or Asian ones and has stronger background, financial support and better organization, we set up OANA to help its member states have better understanding and show a more real image of themselves worldwide.”

Gusman added, “OANA allowed member agencies to help each another improve within the OANA core framework, counter one-way flow of information by Western media and create an opportunity for non-western news agencies to play a role in international information dissemination.”

The TASS official said, “We have recently made an important concession among five Caspian Sea littoral nations and believe that the nations should create an independent media organization to support the summit’s decision after they reached the historical agreement”.

Answering a question about finding a way for a media outlet such as OANA to further increase the capabilities of other news agencies and support them financially, he said, “OANA is unable to support such agencies as it still lacks financial and economic capabilities.”