East Asia's dramatic development has transformed Asia's status in the international community. Nevertheless, Western media organizations continue to dominate transmission of news and views concerning Asia. This has led to rising awareness among Asians of the urgent need to establish Asian news media that reports news from Asian viewpoints.
Since 1998 the Fund has implemented a few projects to help develop networks of journalists in the member states of ASEAN. The current project, building on the achievements of the earlier projects, sought to expand networks of Asian journalists to encompass the entire Asian region and consolidate a foundation for disseminating news to the world from Asia. The main activities were operation of the online magazine AsiaViews (www.asiaviews.org) and organization of the Asia Journalists Forum. AsiaViews was inaugurated in March 2004 as a collaborative venture of five leading Southeast Asian news publications: Tempo (Indonesia), Malaysian Business (Malaysia), Newsbreak (the Philippines), Today (Singapore), and the Bangkok Post (Thailand). This weekly online magazine reports news from Asian journalists' viewpoints. The latest major development is that the International Herald Tribune/Asahi Shimbun has published selected articles from AsiaViews weekly since December 2005, which has been helping AsiaViews to win a much wider audience. Another major development
is the publication of a monthly print edition of AsiaViews, which commenced on a trial basis in October 2005. About 6,000 copies are distributed monthly free of charge in the five participating publications' home countries.
The number of countries and young journalists participating in the Asia Journalists Forum, which was organized annually with the cooperation of the MCOT Public Limited Company, increased yearly. Journalists from 20 countries, including not only Southeast Asian nations but also Bhutan, Central Asian countries, China, India, Iran, and South Korea, attended the January 2006 forum, which featured lively exchanges of views on a wide range of issues, including "Interpretation of History: The Role of Media in Reconciliation," "Bird Flu and Its Containment: The Role of Media," and "Observations on the East Asian Summit." Thanks to the Asia Journalists Forum, networks of journalists have expanded to include Northeast Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and the Caucasus, and the Middle East, and direct and regular communication among past participants in the forum has also begun. Such interaction was all but unimaginable until the organization of the forum. SPF is committed to continuing support for the forum as well as AsiaViews over the next three fiscal years.