site.btaBTA, Austrian Press Agency Sign News Exchange Agreement

The Bulgarian News Agency (BTA) and the Austrian Press Agency (APA) on Thursday concluded a news exchange agreement here on Thursday.

The agreement was signed at the APA head office in Vienna by APA President and CEO Clemens Pig and BTA Director General Kiril Valchev before an Extraordinary General Meeting of the European Alliance of News Agencies (EANA).

APA and BTA will grant each other the right to use their English-language services, German-language services (of APA) and Bulgarian-language services (of BTA), and each agency will be able to publish up to ten news items daily from the other agency in its own services. The agreement enables each of the two agencies to provide the other with one significant news agency from its country, written in English and complete with a picture, which the other agency undertakes to publish.

The agreement enters into force from the date of signature and will be renewed automatically indefinitely each year.

APA and BTA last signed an agreement in 2001.

"APA and BTA are signing an agreement more than two decades after the previous one at an important point because the direct news exchange between Austria's and Bulgaria's news agencies can help us get to know each other better and this will prove useful for the two countries to find themselves soon together with unimpeded free movement in the EU Schengen area," Valchev told BTA.

He recalled that BTA has concluded a similar news exchange agreement with the national news agency of the other EU Member State which opposes Bulgaria's Schengen entry, the Netherlands. That agreement with the Algemeen Nederlands Persbureau BV (ANP) was signed in Toronto in October 2023 during the 35th Conference of the Media Innovation Network (MINDS) International.
 
Pig presented Valchev with his book Democracy Dies in Darkness, which deals with the role of fake news, new technologies and artificial intelligence in the future of real and impartial news.

Now that the agreement with APA has been signed, Bulgarian media will be able to use free of charge news from 40 national news agencies on four continents: Albania, Algeria, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, Cote d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Ghana, Greece, India, Iran, Israel, Italy, Kosovo, Latvia, Lebanon, Liberia, Moldova, Mongolia, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Nigeria, North Macedonia, the Philippines, Poland, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Slovakia, Spain, Turkey, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, Vietnam and Yemen.