Director General of Russian news agency Itar-Tass Vitaly Nikitich Ignatenko said here Friday that mass media needed moral guidelines to prevent from disseminating ideas of extremism, terrorism, xenophobia and racial intolerance to counteract the modern threats and challenges.

Ignatenko made the remarks when addressing the opening ceremony of the World Media Summit (WMS), an unprecedented high-profile gathering of about 300 heads and representatives of more than 170 major media groups from around the world.

"The world of news and information industry is undergoing huge changes, so we need to realize how they influence our mass media, including news agencies, TV channels and radio broadcasting," Ignatenko said.

Ignatenko said modern technologies such as multimedia technologies, new functions of mobile communication and special Webinars had became the integral part of daily work among Internet media and news agencies.

"Under these circumstances we should not draw back from our principles, on the contrary we need to maintain and precisely preserve the tradition of moral and unbiased journalism and at the same time to meet the highest professional standards of news reporting," he said.

Ignatenko proposed that global media organizations should first form a unitary classification of events, dividing the events to local incidents and manifestations of global problems while drawing up common reasonable approach to the prompt news reporting without any one-sided version of events or ambiguous wordings.

"Mass media should not be engaged in power play or business," he said, adding that talent, conscience and responsibility for the society are three fundamental criterions of the media.

He stressed the necessity of coordination among different mass media in the world to improve the global information stream while proposing to set up regular dialogue between different kinds of mass media about the widest range of questions.

"We should demonstrate more active work on strengthening the contacts and relations in our professional field, exchange views on the problems representing professional interests," he added.

The two-day summit, launched by Xinhua and eight other world media organizations, attracted leading wire services, radio and television broadcasters, newspapers and magazines, and on-line media from around the world.

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