East-West Center Media Conference

To stimulate more discussion, we’ve posted the complete audio of several of the major presentations at the Bangkok conference.
To hear what speakers had to say, click on the links below. You can listen to the files or download them to your own Mp3 player. Here they are right after this jump:

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Asia is experiencing a media boom, from an explosion of somewhat more independent newspapers and broadcast outlets to the emergence of completely different forms of information sharing - the “new media.”
But with that boom comes creeping homogenization of content, the “dumbing down” of programming and an emphasis on entertainment over public affairs.
That was one message [...]

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This may sound like anathema to some, but one of the best things a serious journalist in Asia might consider doing is take a page from the workbook of fiction novelists.
This was the friendly advice given to journalists and others on the closing night of the Bangkok Media Conference. It came from Christopher Moore, [...]

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For a look at the PowerPoint presentation that accompanied this talk, go here.
To hear an audio version of the presentation, go HERE
Forget the old media.
The way the world will communicate and get its news can be found deep in the interconnected and viral blogosphere, according to China’s Isaac Mao, co-founder of Beijing’s Social Brain [...]

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The news media, both in the United States and around the world, are “asleep at the switch” when it comes to stories involving some of the biggest threats to human existence ever known, according to
a leading American specialist on infectious diseases.
Dr. Michael T. Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at [...]

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If reporters - or anyone for that matter - wish to see a positive vision of the future China, they should visit Taiwan today, one of Hong Kong’s leading media figures told the Center’s Bangkok media conference yesterday.
Jimmy Lai, founder of Next Media Ltd., which publishes the popular newspaper Apple along with a number of [...]

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They may be mostly tiny, underpopulated and remote, but the Islands of the Pacific are right in the middle of some of today’s biggest international issues, journalists at the Center’s Bangkok media conference learned Wednesday.
Among the issues sweeping across the high islands and atolls of the Pacific: Competition between Mainland China and Taiwan and, of [...]

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Journalists, particularly American ones, got a hard dose of earthy, pragmatic and perhaps even visionary thinking today (Wednesday, Bangkok time) from one of Asia’s most successful media barons.
Jimmy Lai, the blunt and engaging founder of Hong Kong’s Next Media Ltd. and publisher of the popular Apple Daily newspaper, told the group that it is change-or-die [...]

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The summer Olympics in Beijing this summer will be spectacular for athletes and spectators, but perhaps a bit less so for journalists covering the games.
That was one message from a panel on covering the Olympics this week at the Center’s Bangkok Media Conference.
Despite promises of new press freedoms, both for international reporters and the local [...]

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For a look at the Power Point presentation that accompanied this talk, go here.
Reporters covering or attempting to understand China must understand that this huge nation is following its own path — a path that combines capitalism, socialism, Communism and its own Chinese identity, a top East West Center China expert told the Bankgok Media [...]

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