Winners of the World Media Summit (WMS) Global Awards for Excellence 2014 were announced on Monday in Beijing, and the awards attracted great attention from the world.
Experts said that the WMS itself is innovation as it seeks to build a new world media order in the spirit of innovation, focusing on developing countries, promoting exchanges between different cultures and pursuing sustainable development of global communication.
Compared with the progress of world political and economic orders, the global news communication order seemed to fall behind the times and their structure appeared unbalanced.
The creation of the WMS awards was at exactly the right time as more and more people called for creating a more fair, win-win, inclusive and more responsible media communication system.
The WMS Global Awards for Excellence are the first comprehensive news awards, which include specially-established Award for Exemplary News Teams in Developing Countries and Award for Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries.
Jack Gao, former senior vice president of News Corporation, said that the attention paid by journalism to developing countries has long been insufficient, and this event may help to prompt the media industry, organizations and professionals to pay more heed to these countries.
The creation of the awards has epoch-making significance, as it encourages all people working in the media to keep developing their professional skills and pursue excellence, while inspiring media setups to work with the times in the spirit of innovation, and to be active in their social responsibilities and for the public good.
The awards will promote changes and reforms in journalism and communication, Velia Hernandez Rojas, professor of journalism at the National Autonomous University of Mexico said, referring to one of the three categories, New Media Reporting Award.
As the award paid great attention to people working in the media in developing countries, Rojas said, it could encourage them to further take advantage of new technology to improve reporting quality and quantity.
The setup of the awards also created an opportunity for communication between different cultures, which allowed media from developing countries to speak out, and let the world listen.
Actually, the event tasked with establishing regular media exchange system, dealing with challenges in new media and new technology, strengthening soft power and increasing speaking and communication rights will help emerging countries increase their influence on global communication and international media market.