TEHRAN – The chief of Azerbaijani Trend news agency has said that some external forces have turned social media into a venue for media war against Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan.

Emin Aliyev told Iran’s state news agency that the current world order is changing and the world’s media is facing new challenges and problems in this transition period. 

He made the remarks on the sidelines of the 18th general assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA).

He pointed out that OANA members should prepare themselves to face these new challenges. “In the new period, news agencies in Asia and the Pacific should be able to create new financial resources for themselves. Because the media is not just a tool to spread information and messages, it is a business,” he said. 

Aliyev noted that Trend News Agency is completely digital, but since every citizen has access to a mobile phone, everyone has become a content producer, and this issue has increased the risk of increasing fake news and republishing it in cyberspace and distorting public opinion.

“Some powers, governments and organizations abuse this new space, which is based on the production and republishing of news by non-professionals, for propaganda against other countries,” the editor-in-chief of Trend said. 

Aliyev pointed to the Karabakh conflict and nearly three decades of conflict between Yerevan and Baku in this region and said, “The media war was one of the main aspects of this conflict, and although the military war has ended, the media war continues.”

He noted, “Today, professional journalists must also have a powerful presence in the virtual space so that this space is guided in the right direction.”

Aliyev said Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan are victims of propaganda and fake news. 

He added, “In order to understand the reality, people should learn to study different sources and then analyze the different aspects of the events. Dealing with fake news can also be an agenda for OANA members.”

OANA was established on December 22, 1961, in a bid to facilitate information dissemination among regional countries with the support of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) along with Fars and Mehr news agencies are the three media agencies in Iran representing the Islamic country in the OANA.

IRNA is one of the first members of the organization, and presided over it between 1997 to 2000; then, the Iranian news agency acted as the vice chairman of the regional organization in 2016, and now IRNA is a member of the executive committee of OANA.

The directors of news agencies party to the general assembly of the Organization of Asia-Pacific News Agencies held a meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian during their stint in Tehran. 

During the meeting, held with the presence of dozens of directors of news agencies participating in the general assembly of OANA, Amir Abdollahian commended the former secretary general of the general assembly of OANA and wished success for the incoming secretary general, according to the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

He described OANA as an important basis and potential to create a news balance in the world and to counter the unilateral news-making in the modern world and underlined the necessity of further media cooperation among member countries of the union.

Elsewhere in his remarks, the foreign minister talked about the significant and growing capacity of Asia in different fields and the special attention of the sitting Iranian administration to the continent, and outlined some foreign policy approaches and viewpoints of the administration of President Ebrahim Raisi.