Visit By BiH Presidency Chairman Zeljko Komsic

BIH PRESIDENCY CHAIRMAN KOMŠIC VISITS ONASA NEW AGENCY

SARAJEVO, December 10 (ONASA) – General Manager of Independent News Agency ONASA Elvira Begovic hosted BiH Presidency Chairman Željko Komšic at the Agency seat in Sarajevo on Thursday.
Over the visit, Chairman Komšic toured of offices and talked with the Agency ONASA employees.
The BiH Presidency Chairman emphasized he was rather amazed at the Agency ONASA performance.
“I’m surprised that you are a firm that has no problems with its business, which appears to be a rarity nowadays in BiH, unfortunately. It is positive that ONASA employs a lot of young educated people. The fact you do not have a journalist without a university diploma or who are multilingual, is something laudable indeed. You’ve got here experienced people that apparently lead the business and that is a perfect connection of the youth and experience,” Komšic said.
Chairman Komšic added the major virtue of the firm is the quality of its output.
“I do congratulate you on that, you are rather positive appearance in BiH as a business, and also as the medium,” the BiH Presidency Chairman said.
In his words, the BH media and journalists enjoy freedom at reporting, although there are some pressure upon them, though.
“The media and journalists must have full freedom at their work. Naturally, the practice of telling lies and offense must be legally sanctioned. I advocate a thesis that journalists and the media are always right being led by moral and democratic principles, as well as by legal system, to report everything they think they have to, from expressing their attitudes to seeing other situations and developments, regardless of it being liked or not by anyone,” Komšic said.
The BiH Presidency Chairman said he would like that the public regulates the work of the media, but not the state pointing out it is rather difficult to keep staying independent in the surrounding in which we live currently, strictly speaking.
General Manager Begovic said that ONASA was founded in Sarajevo 15 years ago, and that today it is one of the leading independent news agencies in BiH and in the region.
She stressed the mission of the Agency is continuous contribution in development of true, independent and professional informing in a progressive, European-oriented, multiethnic and multicultural BiH, aiming to expand its network outside BiH as well.
The General Manager said that ONASA has correspondent offices in Banja Luka and Mostar.
She stressed that ONASA’s news, in languages of peoples in BiH, are used by majority of BiH media, institutions, public institutions, successful companies, banks, political parties and nongovernmental organizations (NGO), while English Service is used by representatives of international organizations, embassies, representations of companies and companies, and marketing and news agencies.
The General Manager said that ONASA also provides the services of monitoring and press-clipping to clients who want that, and that it is also engaged already for eight years in a specialized service of tenders announced in official gazettes, and dailies in BiH and neighboring countries.
Since December 22 of 2006, ONASA is full-fledged member of the Association of Private News Agencies (APNA) of Southeast Europe. seated in Skopje. (the end)