ASEAN Secretary-General Dr Kao Kim Hourn (Photo: VNA) In his remarks at the forum, ASEAN Secretary-General Dr Kao Kim Hourn affirmed that the ASEAN Secretariat always considers the AMF as one of the leading events that gathering famous media leaders and editors-in-chief of major English newspapers in ASEAN, policymakers, officials, key members of ASEAN, and academics and business leaders.
The AMF provides a platform for ASEAN to convey key messages on the region's goals, achievements and challenges to media leaders, while promoting discussion of pertinent regional and global issues.
He stressed that this forum helps enhance media editors' understanding of how ASEAN works and how the media can play a key role to better convey the ASEAN story to the people.
In the process of building a community, ASEAN continues to make multi-dimensional efforts to promote connections among ethnic groups in the bloc, he said, noting that this is a crucial factor for the success of the regional integration process.
He underlined the need for media to effectively and accurately convey what regional integration entails to all stakeholders, saying that this is why the ASEAN Secretariat must engage the media to raise awareness, promote understanding and correct misinformation about the ASEAN agenda during the bloc’s integration process.
Addressing the event, Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi stated that her country encourages the group to continue these meaningful activities to provide accurate information to the people, while creating a communication network with government officials, policymakers, and scholars in the region and around the world to promote discussion of global and regional issues.
The AMF helps all participants gain deeper insight into the future of ASEAN community building, she stressed.
Scholars and officials from ASEAN countries and regional media focused their discussion on a number of topics, including Timor Leste’s accession to ASEAN.
AMF has been implemented with the support of the German government through the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) since 2017./.
VNA
