Friends from the Pacific ...

Joseph Ealedona is Managing Director of the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) of Papua New Guinea and one of PNG’s most prominent journalists. He is currently the President of the Pacific Island News Association (PINA) -- the premier regional organisation representing the interests of media professionals in the Pacific region. It links radio, television, newspapers, magazines, online services, national associations and journalism schools in 23 Pacific Island.
PINA runs an online regional news service -- Pacnews which is headquartered in Suva, Fiji.

During our discussion this afternoon, Ealedona expressed interest to link Pacnews with Bernama so as to bring news about the Pacific to Asia and vice-versa.
That would be a win-win situation as the media could encourage people-to-people contact by highlighting news that could interest them such as in trade, tourism, culture and sports.

With internet connectivity, the proposed link-up would not be a problem.
Alternatively, NBC could readily utilized the NAM News Network – NNN either to upload their stories or extract items. PNG is a member of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) and had attended the grouping’s ministers of Information conference in Kuala Lumpur in 2005 which gave the go-ahead for the
setting-up of the Malaysia-initiated news exchange entity. NNN is based in Bernama.