JAKARTA: Ikatan Setiakawan Wartawan Malaysia-Indonesia (ISWAMI), a Malaysia-Indonesia journalist forum, will serve as a platform to encourage the exchange of journalism values and boost potential collaboration between news agencies of both countries.
The Jakarta Post editor-in-chief Taufiq Rahman said exchange of ideas, work culture and narratives need to continue to empower the media industry.
“It can be done through journalist or editor exchanges, as well as content, especially for writing of commentaries and opinion pieces of a certain country.
“So the best we can do is to provide more exchange programme like the one conducted by ISWAMI… so that when Malaysian journalists cover news in Indonesia and vice versa, this indirectly fosters closer bonds between both countries,” he said when met at the Jejak Serumpun programme at The Jakarta Post headquarters near here today.
Such an approach can also boost accessibility to sources and the quality of news reporting with the involvement and cooperation of foreign news agencies, he added.
Meanwhile, ISWAMI Malaysia secretary-general Mohd Shukri Ishak said ISWAMI had the objective of creating a bigger forum to represent the voices of journalists in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) region.
“ISWAMI, with the cooperation of ANTARA News Agency, the Malaysian National News Agency (Bernama) and existing news agencies have established the ASEAN Newsroom, which currently involves all official news agencies of the ASEAN countries,” he said.
An ISWAMNI Malaysia delegation had visited The Jakarta Post headquarters as part of the Jejak Serumpun programme.
ISWAMI is a Malaysia-Indonesia journalist forum set up in 2003 as a bridge for media relations for both countries and aims to foster mutual prosperity. – Bernama
