Mehr, Sputnik hold 1st webinar on journalism

Mehr News Agency (MNA) International Desk and the English Desk, Tehran Times and Russian Sputnik News Agency held a joint session to discuss modern journalism and the western mainstream media on Tuesday.

Vasily Pushkov, Director of International Cooperation and Tatiana Kukhareva, Head of Sputnik International hosted the event Zoom sofware.

The Iranian side was represented by MNA English Service's Editor-in-Chief Payaman Yazdani, who presented a brief summary of the efforts to coordinate the joint meeting and later talked about the necessity of cooperation between Iranian and Russian news agencies to counter western's media hegemony.

At the beginning of the virtual meeting, Pushkov presented a short history of journalism in Russia and the relations between different news outlets in the country.

He later asked Kukhareva to present a summary of the Sputnik News Agency where she talked about the difficulties and hurdles faced while they had been working in Western countries.

During the session, the Sputnik staff took turns to address different issues such as the wrong and distorted image the western mainstream media give of the eastern countries in answer to questions put forward by the Iranian audience.

Pushkov also recalled some experiences he had had in western countries as a journalist and the restrictions the western governments have created in the way of eastern journalists in order to prevent them from showing the reality of the western countries. Pushkov said that western mainstream media are acting like companies that promote the western agenda.

He added that western media represent the interests of corporations and wealthy, influential people while eastern media give voice to the voiceless as the main difference between the two.

Kukhareva, in turn, said that she was happy with the launch of English TV channels by countries such as Iran, Russia as well as China, saying that those new channels give voice to the voiceless and correct the wrong image western media give of their countries. She elaborated more that eastern journalists have broken the monopoly of western mainstream media.

The Sutnik staff further responded to their Iranian side's questions and elaborated on the activities of their news agency as well as its relationship to other news outlets in the Russian Federation.

At the end of the webinar, both sides welcomed the exchange of visits to each other's news agencies and meeting face to face both in Tehran and Moscow.

Yazdani in the closing remarks said Mehr News agency would plan and coordinate more sessions of this kind with Sputnik in the future, which was welcomed by the Russian side.

Reporting by Kamal Iranidoost