Senior official urges industry to stick to correct direction, provide quality content

A senior official called on Tuesday for accelerating integrated media development to pool more strength in achieving unity and progress.

Huang Kunming, a member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee, made the remarks while addressing via video link the opening ceremony of the 2022 China New Media Conference.

Significant progress and achievements have been made in China's media integration since the 18th National Congress of the CPC in 2012, with the all-media system improving and the voice of the Party being disseminated to a broader audience, he said.

More forceful measures need to be taken to promote integrated media development, he said. Centrally and provincially administered media outlets should make new progress in the sector, city-level media need to make strides in further integration, and county-level media need to improve their effectiveness and efficiency, he stressed.

Media outlets should stick to the correct direction, focus on quality content, and promote and explain the strength and practice of the Party's innovative theories, Huang said.

He also called for spurring the vitality of integrated development and building a clean and well-governed cyberspace featuring collaboration, participation and benefit-sharing.

The 2022 China New Media Conference, organized by the All-China Journalists Association and the Publicity Department of the CPC Hunan Provincial Committee, opened on Tuesday in Changsha, Hunan province.

He Ping, chairman of the All-China Journalists Association, said the organization will guide journalists to stick to the right political direction and use all-media platforms to show the historic achievements made since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, in order to spur strong energy among the Party and the whole of society in making contributions in the new era.

Mainstream media should play the major role in guiding public opinion and serving the people, he said.

Sun Shangwu, deputy editor-in-chief of China Daily, said that based on the mobile, social and visual nature of new media, more efforts are needed to tell China's story and the spirit and strength behind it to a global audience.

As China's national English language newspaper and main force in global communication, China Daily has focused on building a credible China with facts and objective storytelling, a lovable China featuring cultural communication and building influential cultural intellectual properties, and a respectable China with in-depth analysis of the significance of the country's solutions and plans to the world, Sun said.

Zeng Xiangmin, a professor of television and journalism at Communication University of China, said almost 95 percent of the university's surveyed media outlets have set up integrated media centers and an all-media evaluation system has been built based on the number of the new media channels opened and the number of followers.

Mainstream media have actively used new technologies, such as 5G, artificial intelligence and holographic images to produce and disseminate new media content, he said.

They have focused on cultivating young talent in new media, featuring multitasking capabilities of individuals and teamwork, Zeng said.