site.btaRegional News Agencies Gather in Skopje for ABNA-SE Annual Assembly

The annual General Assembly of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) took place in Skopje on Thursday, hosted by the Republic of North Macedonia’s state news agency MIA and attended by news agencies from across the region and beyond.

At the ABNA-SE General Assembly, which was preceded by a conference on “Truth in the Media,” Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev was unanimously re-elected for a second three-year term as Secretary General of the Association. Ilija Musa, representing Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federal News Agency (FENA), was elected President of the Association, while MIA Director General Darko Janevski was elected as a member of the Management Board. Over the next two years, Janevski will continue the mandate of former MIA Director General Dragan Antonovski. The third member of the Management Board remains the Chair of the Board of the Greek Athens News Agency-Macedonian Press Agency (ANA-MPA), Emilios Perdikaris.

ABNA-SE brings together 12 agencies: the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA), Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federal News Agency (FENA), Bulgarian News Agency (BTA), Athens News Agency-Macedonian Press Agency (ANA-MPA), Italy’s ANSA, Kosovo’s KOSOVAPRESS, Cyprus’s CNA, Romania’s AGERPRES, North Macedonia’s MIA, Turkiye’s Anadolu Agency, Croatia’s HINA and Montenegro’s MINA. The Association’s headquarters are in the Bulgarian capital Sofia at the BTA’s address.

MIA delivered comprehensive coverage of the assembly and Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski’s address to participants. He remarked that today, more than ever, media function as a cornerstone of democratic societies.

“Journalists often say that news is the first draft of history. I would add that real news is also the foundation of trust in the future. Let this conference be another sign that our societies are choosing the path of dialogue, cooperation, and truth. The media are those who can transform an environment of distrust into one of hope and respect,” Mickoski said in his address.

Speaking at the conference, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev took up Mickoski's statement that news is the first version of history and noted that it is precisely the cooperation between news agencies and the presentation of their news archives that can contribute to the establishment of truth in the media.

Valchev pointed out that the archives of Bulgaria's 127-year-old national news agency include over six million pages of paper bulletins, nearly two million original photographs and a thematic archive containing more than 500,000 thematic dossiers, all of which are currently being digitised.

“Today, they are a memory of yesterday and an invaluable source of history. What's more, they are also a lesson for us today,” Valchev said.

In its report from Skopje, Turkiye’s Anadolu Agency singled out the remarks of its Director General, Serdar Karagöz, at the “Truth in the Media” conference. Karagöz underscored the need for constant action by all news agencies against disinformation and fake news. In his remarks, the Anadolu Agency Director General also stressed the need to apply mechanisms to verify the reliability of news, saying, “everyone who has a phone in their hand can create content, and that content is most often misleading.”

Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federal News Agency (FENA) also covered the event, focusing on the election of the agency’s deputy director, Ilija Musa, as President of ABNA.

The headquarters of ABNA-SE is in the Bulgarian capital Sofia at the BTA address. This decision, along with the election of BTA Director General Kiril Valchev to his first three-year term as Secretary General of the Association, was approved by unanimous vote at the ABNA-SE General Assembly in Burgas on September 19, 2022. On October 6, 2022, ABNA-SE was registered as a non-profit legal entity in Bulgaria’s Registry Agency.

The thirty-third ABNA-SE General Assembly, its decisions, and the preceding conference were reported by the Albanian Telegraphic Agency (ATA), Azerbaijan’s AZERTAC, Trend News Agency, Saudi Press Agency (SPA), Philippine News Agency (PNA), Nigeria’s News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), and Egypt’s Middle East News Agency (MENA), all of which have cooperation agreements with BTA.