The 6^th News Agencies World Congress begins on June 13 in Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. In the course of three days between June 13 and 15 representatives of over 100 countries and over 120 media will discuss at the National Palace of Culture the future of news in the contemporary media space environment. The News Agencies World Congress is organized by the News Agencies World Council represented by the biggest information leaders such as Reuters, Associated Press, The Times, TASS Agency, France Presse, Xinhua News Agency, etc, with the support of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency. The participants will meet Bulgarian media and representatives of Bulgarian political parties within the frameworks of the forum. They will also make contacts with the Bulgarian society and get acquainted with the Bulgarian folklore, culture and traditions. On the last day of the forum the participants will visit the European Capital of Culture-Plovdiv.

This event will be very useful to our country, if we take maximum advantage of it, Director General of BTA Maxim Minchev said in an interview for Radio Bulgaria and added: On one hand, huge media attention is focused on this event. On the other hand, Bulgaria will be on the news in many countries. The palette of the participants is colorful. In my view, one of our guests-the world famous writer, journalist and philosopher Eric Weiner is a very interesting personality. More than one hundred thousand of his books were sold in Bulgaria. He will deliver a speech to the congress on the geography of wisdom.

The participants will discuss the development of the information flow at the forum. Its future is connected with the huge structural and technological changes in the media- the Internet, the social networks, the artificial intelligence, etc. These changes endanger the existence of the journalistic profession itself, Maxim Minchev pointed out. In his view, the lack of rules in media space and the free interpretation of the information provided by the media lead to the appearance of fake news:

More or less, these topics have been and continue to be subject to many discussions and conferences in Bulgaria and still we cannot find the right answer to these questions. Apparently, the artificial intelligence is going to enter the media and I categorically believe that we are not ready for this, because artificial intelligence is still something unknown. In the recent years not only news agency journalism with its specificity, but the whole journalistic profession has been going through changes. The whole media infrastructure has changed. Things are very dynamic and sometimes the changes are made within a month only, unlike in the past when some changes were made in the course of decades.

According to theDirector General of the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency Maxim Minchev, a mass denationalization of media began all across Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Western European countries were the first which alarmed that this was a wrong approach.

The public media has its place and it became clear in the countries of the Eastern Bloc that public media is extremely necessary to society. If we are guided only by the commercial interest, the advertising side and the laws of profit it may suddenly turn out that we are deprived of the opportunity to receive real information due to the subjective nature of the private policy, Maxim Minchev said in conclusion.

Edited by: Darina Grigorova

English version: Kostadin Atanasov