00:00And all of our members, you may just place your hand, hand in hand together, let's celebrate.
00:06So, on my count of three, two, one.
00:14Ladies and gentlemen, this is the 25th year anniversary of Asia News Network.
00:21Not including India, China and the rest, Southeast Asia alone is 660 million people.
00:29Indonesia alone is three quarters of Europe.
00:35As such, our voices cannot be not heard, unheard, suppressed.
00:44And for Asia to prosper, we must learn more about each other, we must hear from each other directly.
00:52Ideally, without intermediaries, and only in discovering each other, appreciating each other's not only cultures, values, histories, we can hope to prosper together.
01:03I do believe that there must be a place for media for the kind of necessary work that needs to take place.
01:12By sending journalists down to the ground to investigate.
01:17Journalists who are not fly-by-night, but have accumulated years and years, if not decades of experience.
01:24Who've seen struggle, who've seen the kind of atrocities, who've seen the kind of difficulties, who are not AI.
01:34As such, I hope that Asia News Network can be somewhat of a bridge, can be somewhat of a catalyst for some of the conversations that governments in Asia need to have.
01:47At the start, our participation in EANN is significant.
01:51It has allowed us to contribute to a stronger and more connected media landscape across Asia.
01:57We have seen how EANN's regional integration resources, expertise and stories have unified and amplified the voice of Asia in a global media landscape.
02:08As you already know, today's media landscape is very different from when we started.
02:13It has become increasingly challenging to uphold credibility, particularly in the emergence of digitalization and AI.
02:21Which is both good and bad, but surely complicated the fact for mainstream media in maintaining their role as a reliable and trusted source of news.
02:31To my fellow delegates, I think we have done a great job in combating this effectively while upholding journalistic integrity.
02:40With digitalization and AI taking the center stage, there is no exception in the media industry too.
02:48I say we embrace it, we ride the waves, but keep our eyes fixedly on the horizon and our feet firmly on the surfboard we are perched on.
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