Skopje, 3 September 2025 (MIA) – As part of a conference titled “Establishing Truth in Journalism”, held as part of the 33rd General Assembly of the Association of Balkan News Agencies – Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE), which takes place in Skopje being hosted by the Media Information Agency – MIA, the idea was supported that this platform of news agencies should be used to organize a training on how to use artificial intelligence, which should serve only as a tool rather than being the creator of news, it was noted. Also, sharing of experiences, sharing of news and other media contents were pinpointed as being necessary.

The director of the Turkish national news agency Anadolu, Serdar Karagoz, which presides over ABNA-SE this year as well, said journalism is a profession filled with challenges, but in order to follow standards, we need to always focus on ethics and integrity.

“Secondly, the importance of truth. Truth us not only a principle, it is the foundation of public trust. And thirdly, what is probably the most important nowadays is tackling disinformation,” said Karagoz urging that people should unite in fighting fake news and narratives.

Anadolu news agency, he said, has a fact-checking service and I think every news agency should have one. As regards technological transformation and the use of artificial intelligence as well as automatization, he said news outlets should use these tools respecting ethical standards. Amid the current momentum of wars, natural disasters and accidents, solidarity among news agencies, cooperation and regional cooperation, as well as promotion of medial literacy is imperative, said Karagoz.

ABNA-SE Secretary General Kiril Valchev, who is also the director general of the Bulgarian news agency BTA, said news agencies have to respect standards because “those posting on social media don’t respect any standards and have no responsibility to the public.”

“We have to present facts before opinion because these are the standards of the real news agencies,” Valchev stated. 

Valchev said that news agencies should promote more their archives adding that BTA has an archive that is 127 years old. There are four ways how we promote thousands of texts and photos, he said. The archive is used to add news background, about past events featuring photos as well as for social media and to post in the specialized magazine for culture and literature. According to him, BTA has 6 million pages of texts, two million photos, over 5,000 boxes of newspapers and a project to preserve and digitize them is under way and should end next year. News agencies should establish cooperation to share archival materials.

Journalism and reporting start in news agencies, which play a key role in the media system, it was noted.

Media literacy is of crucial importance today, conference participants concluded. Real information should be recognized and a distinction should be made. That is why the role of news agencies is very important especially since everything is changing at great speed due to technology and artificial intelligence. We cannot ignore artificial intelligence, but we need to talk about making journalism professional, it was concluded.

Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski and MIA Director General Darko Janevski delivered opening speeches. MIA’s deputy director Osama Muadini was also in attendance. 

Photo: MIA