Opening Remarks by Mr.Thepchai Yong, president of the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists at the Opening Ceremony of the CAJ BOD Meeting

OPENING REMARKS
Thepchai Yong
CAJ Board of Directors Meeting
March 28, 2019
Vientiane LAO PDR

H.E. Mr. Savankhone Razmountry
Deputy Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism of the Lao PDR,
Laos Journalists Association

Mr. Atal Depari
Vice President of CAJ

Mr. Damrit Viriyakul
Secretary General of CAJ

Board members
Advisors
Ladies and gentlemen

On behalf of the Confederation of ASEAN Journalists, I would like to welcome all of you to the Board of Directors meeting being held in this beautiful city of Vientiane. I truly appreciate the presence of all of you here, knowing how busy all of you must have been. I hope you all had a pleasant journeys and had a good night sleep.

Colleagues and friends,
First of all, I would like to thank the Laos Journalists Association and particularly Your Excellency Mr. Savankhone Razmountry, Deputy Minister of Information, Culture and Tourism of the Lao PDR, and President of LJA, for hosting this important event.
On behalf of CAJ, I would like to offer my sincere appreciation for your warm welcome and your hospitality. And of course, special thanks for our friends at Vientiane Times for providing us with the venue for the meeting.

As you can see from the itinerary, besides the serious work we have to do in this meeting room, our Laotian hosts have also prepared for us special excursions that will provide us with a great opportunity to observe interesting aspects of the country.

Colleagues and friends,
We are meeting today in Vientiane amid a fast-changing media landscape. We, in the traditional media, are continuously facing new and unprecedented challenges.
Almost on a daily basis, we read about how newspapers are closing down, news organizations are being downsized, and journalists being laid off or sent into early retirement. At the same time, credibility of the mainstream media is being increasingly challenged while fake news and disinformation has become a new scourge.
These challenges have been recognized by CAJ. They were highlighted in both the Hanoi Declaration in 2015 and Bangkok Declaration in 2018 which reaffirmed CAJ’s commitment to work together to face this most challenging time.

Therefore, the meeting of the CAJ Board of Directors today should provide us with a good opportunity to discuss how we can enhance our cooperation to face the changes and challenges facing the media profession.
Besides reviewing achievements and progress made under the Action Plan for 2018-2020 which was adopted during the CAJ General Assembly in Bangkok in January last year, we hope that we will look ahead together and come up with new and fresh ideas to strengthen our commitment to closer cooperation and to cope with changes and challenges in this new media landscape.

I certainly look forward to an active exchange among us this today.
Last but not least, on behalf of CAJ I would like to thank all the state agencies and private enterprises of both Lao PDR and Thailand for their support that makes the Board of Directors meeting of CAJ a successful event.
With this, I declare the meeting open and wish us all a successful meeting.

Thank you.