site.btaBTA Director General Kiril Valchev to 30 News Agencies: Future Lies in Cooperation

The future of news agencies lies in cooperation, said the Director General of the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) at a round table on "The Past, Present and Future of Cooperation" on the occasion of the 105th anniversary of Azerbaijan's national news agency AZERTAC.

The round table was held in the Azerbaijani town of Lachin in the southern Caucasus as part of the Third Global Media Forum in the neighbouring city of Shusha themed “Digital Pathways: Strengthening Information and Media Resilience in the Age of AI,” attended by 140 people from 52 countries representing 30 news agencies and 80 other media organizations, with whom Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met on Saturday.

Kiril Valchev noted that the first agreement between BTA and AZERTAC was signed in 2004, and two years ago the cooperation was deepened with a new agreement on news exchange, according to which every day the two agencies have the opportunity to publish at least one news item with a photo from the other agency. “Thanks to this, the result of the cooperation between AZERTAC and BTA at present is that the BTA website has a special section with AZERTAC news from Azerbaijan,” said the Director General of BTA. He emphasized that BTA has such agreements with 50 national news agencies, including those of the three Caucasian republics - Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia.

“The cooperation between AZERTAC and BTA is an example of the fulfilment of the greatest responsibility of news agencies - they enable people from all over the world to understand each other. Knowledge and comparison are not only an opportunity for profit through the use of good practices, but also a guarantee for peace. We may disagree with each other, but we must respect each other and find a way to live together in peace without starting wars. Peace should not be the result of war, but of more information about each other,” said Valchev. He added that BTA and AZERTAC also cooperate in the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA), whose Secretary General, Alexandru Ion Giboi, moderated the forum.

“For 125 years, Bulgaria’s national news agency BTA has been all about people’s right to know more about each other. BTA is currently the president of the World Congress of News Agencies, as in 2019, BTA organized the World Congress of News Agencies themed “The Future of News” in the Bulgarian capital Sofia. BTA is also the headquarters and secretary general of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA - SE). BTA is also part of MINDS International - an association of 25 leading news agencies from around the world for cooperation in the field of information services. This organization of global news agencies, comparable to the G20 - the organization of the world's most developed economies - includes leading agencies from the US and Canada, the UK, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, to India, Japan, and Australia,” the Director General of BTA told his colleagues. 

“News agencies must change with a new strategy and new tools, as the world around them is changing,” Valchev emphasized and proposed seven things that news agencies should do: 

“First, news agencies must continue to follow professional standards, because those who write and speak on social media do not adhere to any standards and no one bears editorial responsibility for what they write or say. We must continue to provide facts before opinions, because that is the standard of real news agencies, unlike social networks, where opinions often contradict the facts. We must do our work very responsibly and ethically. It is also important not to spread propaganda, especially propaganda that supports wars and human rights violations,” said the Director General of BTA. According to him, official communications should be separated from reporters’ news, which BTA has been doing for three years. “This is a response to the words of EANA Secretary General Alexandru Ion Giboi at another forum that official statements, which sometimes contain lies, are a problem for the media,” Valchev said.

“Second, news agencies need to develop new funding models. We need to find a new way to finance the battle between real news and fake news, which is free. Should we remain silent when someone lies, unless someone else pays us to tell the truth? No, we need to find a balance between information as a human right and information for sale on the market. And we must find a way to respond to lies with more truth, without relying solely on client money, but also without media bans, restrictions on social networks, and shutting down the internet and mobile applications, because that may be possible for a short or long time, but not forever,” the BTA Director General explained.

According to him, the third thing news agencies should do is make better use of social and video networks instead of fighting them for money. “News agencies need to be present everywhere on the internet and in all forms - short news, photos, video, audio, infographics. It is important to note that we must provide real news to young people using new formats and technologies. BTA is a good example with its presence not only on Facebook, X, LinkedIn, and YouTube, but also on Instagram, Tik Tok, and Threads, which are used by young people. We also plan to start using Snapchat, which is preferred by the youngest users,” Kiril Valchev said.

“Fourth, artificial intelligence should be used, not feared. Indeed, artificial intelligence can be a huge threat in the information sphere because the possible consequences are fake news factories, trolls, new forms of propaganda, disinformation, fake videos, edited photos to make them look like real footage. Artificial intelligence has great potential for fake news, but also for real news. News agencies can use it to improve their work: transcriptions, subtitles, translations, database creation. The future of news agencies lies in collaboration between journalists’ natural intelligence and artificial intelligence, which can only help. Using new technologies, we can guide people through the ocean of news so that they don't drown in it. And the best way to do that is to publish more science news,” said Valchev.

The fifth thing he recommended to the representatives of 30 news agencies was to build a network for cooperation between national news agencies and between regional associations of news agencies. “This means publishing news from our countries not only from global agencies, but also supplementing it daily with news exchanged between national agencies, as we do at AZERTAC and BTA. Artificial intelligence can help us with this, but we need to build capacity with editors as well. The future of real news versus disinformation depends on cooperation between news agencies from different regions of the world,” emphasized the Director General of BTA.

“Sixth, we must encourage the exchange of journalists between news agencies, not just the exchange of visits by their bosses, because news agencies need to invest in training people. Before we develop artificial intelligence, we must develop natural human intelligence. Artificial intelligence cannot replace a live reporter at the scene of events because artificial intelligence works with knowledge accumulated in the past but cannot reflect the news at the moment. New technologies can only complement journalists, not replace them. We need to train journalists how to use artificial intelligence, but first we need to make sure that journalists from our agencies know each other and help each other understand the situations in our countries,” Valchev said.

The seventh thing that he believes is important for the future of news agencies is investing in the agencies’ archives, especially in their digitization, which will allow them to better present the background and context of the news, and then the news agencies must ensure mutual access to the digitized archives. Valchev noted that BTA has a paper archive dating back to 1898 until the transition to electronic format and is currently digitizing it to make it easier to use. “We must ensure that our news from today does not die, but is preserved for tomorrow,” he added. 

In conclusion, the Director General of BTA noted that such forums are very valuable for the development of cooperation between news agencies. “The fact that we are having this conversation means that nothing in the world, including artificial intelligence, can replace natural human communication with emotions and the greatest emotion of all - love between people,” the BTA Director General said.