Governments across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America agreed yesterday to launch their own Internet-based news network to counter what they called prejudiced reporting by the Western media.
Plans to create the Nonaligned Movement News Network were endorsed by information ministers and senior officials from more than 80 mainly developing nations such as Cuba, Iran, Syria, Myanmar, North Korea, Sudan and Zimbabwe, many of which claimed their reputations have suffered because of foreign media coverage.
Countries will start using the network early next year to supply news on domestic events to each other and to rebut "smear campaigns which developing nations have suffered from biased and distorted Western media reports," the ministers said in a joint statement after a two-day conference in Malaysia.
"The ministers opposed the use of the media as a tool for hostile propaganda against developing countries," the statement added. "They also regretted the continued tendency of the Western media in stereotyping and profiling perpetrators of terrorist acts as Muslims."
The Nonaligned Movement comprises 114 mostly developing nations that tried to stay neutral during the Cold War.
Malaysian Information Minister Abdul Kadir Sheikh Fadzir said the movement's members will share news on a central Web site.
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