BTA Head Re-Elected As Secretary General Of Association Of Balkan News Agencies Southeast Europe

(MENAFN- AzerNews) Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) Director General Kiril Valchev was unanimously re-elected for a second three-year term as Secretary General of the Association of Balkan News Agencies - Southeast Europe (ABNA-SE) at the regular annual General Assembly of ABNA-SE held in Skopje on Wednesday. The event was hosted by the state news agency of the Republic of North Macedonia, MIA. ABNA-SE is headquartered in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, at BTA's address.

Ilija Musa, representing Bosnia and Herzegovina's Federal News Agency (FENA) was elected President of ABNA-SE. MIA Director General Darko Janevski was elected to the Management Board. Over the next two years, Janevski will continue the term of the previous MIA Director General, Dragan Antonovski. The third member of the Management Board remains the Chair of the Board of Greece's Athens News Agency-Macedonian Press Agency (ANA-MPA), Emilios Perdikaris.

ABNA-SE is comprised of 12 agencies: Albania's ATA, Bosnia and Herzegovina's FENA, Bulgaria's BTA, Greece's 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.

Prior to Wednesday's General Assembly of ABNA-SE, a conference was held on the topic of truth in the media, at the beginning of which the Prime Minister of the Republic of North Macedonia, Hristijan Mickoski, addressed the participants. 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.

The BTA Director General said that the archives of the 127-year-old BTA include over 6 million pages of paper bulletins, nearly 2 million photographs, and an archive with more than 500,000 thematic files, all of which are currently being digitized. He added:“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 listed four ways that BTA implements to promote its archives:“First, we use the archives to provide background and context for news stories. Second, every day we publish at least one story with news from that date, along with photos from archival news on social media. Third, we have resumed publication of LIK, the magazine for culture, art, and literature, where we publish materials from the BTA archives on a specific topic. Fourth, BTA has also published a book with news from its archives. It contains one news item from Bulgaria and the world for each of the 125 years since the agency was founded until 2023."

At the 30th General Assembly in Burgas, Bulgaria, September 19-22, 2022, BTA Director General Kiril Valchev was elected ABNA Secretary General for a three-year term. On October 6, 2022, ABNA-SE was registered in Bulgaria as a non-profit association for the pursuit of private-benefit activities.

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