Viet Nam's only national English language daily, the Viet Nam News, was awarded the Independence Order, third class, yesterday for its contributions to the country's information service for foreigners.

The noble award granted by the President of Viet Nam is a huge source of pride for more than 150 staff at the newspaper on the occasion of its 20th birthday today.

Addressing a ceremony organised in Ha Noi to mark the newspaper's anniversary, Politburo member and Minister-Chairman of the Government Office Nguyen Xuan Phuc said the Viet Nam News had been "one of the nation's effective channels of information for foreign readers" since its launch on June 17, 1991.

"During the past 20 years, the Viet Nam News has performed its function of disseminating the Party and State's policies well. It has provided timely and comprehensive information on the political, economic and social situation of Viet Nam and its people," said the Government official.

With the newspaper's incredible efforts in lifting its efficiency and expertise, the Viet Nam News daily, Sunday and its monthly magazine Outlook, in both forms of print and electronic media, have won the confidence of expat readers and the overseas Vietnamese community.

About 70 million copies of the print version have reached readers during the past 20 years and millions of visits to its website every week have been recorded.

Viet Nam News readership is now among the largest of those publications targeted at the international community.

As a regular reader of the Viet Nam News, Australian Ambassador to Viet Nam Allaster Cox takes the newspaper as a very important reference point.

"It is an important source of basic reference for me, in English, on the events in Viet Nam each day…. The breadth of coverage is very good," he said.

"Authoritativeness, comprehensiveness and consistency have been the important factors for the Viet Nam News in sustaining its place as the paper of record over the last 20 years."

The newspaper's role has even gone over the border. Viet Nam News is a founding and active member of the Asia News Network (ANN), an alliance of 20 leading newspapers in 18 Asian countries.

"It is a media institution that plays a pivotal role in ASEAN and Asia regional co-operation, and a window for events that happen in Viet Nam to the world," said ANN executive director Pana Janviroj.

"It has held the ANN chair once and on a daily basis, news and photos from Viet Nam News are transmitted to a pool of Asian stories from ANN which are further used by members and distributed throughout the world."

The Viet Nam News has also made direct contributions to the country's global integration by hosting some ANN meetings both in Ha Noi and HCM City and organising international economic conferences in association with the Ministry of Planning and Investment and the ANN to promote investment opportunities in 2007 and 2008.

After two decades of operation, the Viet Nam News has drawn lessons to better fulfill its tasks and go even further in the time to come.

General Director of the Vietnam News Agency and the newspaper's Editor-in-Chief Tran Mai Huong said: "The combination of the print and the electronic versions, the expansion of communications services activities with the coming-into-being of the VNS Communications Service Centre in 2010, the improvement of the management mechanism, the active bringing into full play of the newspaper's potential, and the care for our human resources will be the factors of prime importance that help Viet Nam News reach the position of a prestigious newspaper in the region and win the hearts of more and more readers, both inside and outside the country."

Meanwhile, Ambassador Cox suggested the newspaper complement news increasingly with a larger amount of reputable domestic and international analysis and opinion to "mark it out in a crowded media scene".

"These days there seems to be no shortage of news reports but there is a shortage of real understanding of what that news actually means and how it fits into emerging patterns of domestic and international developments," he said.

Founded by the Vietnam News Agency, the 32-page Viet Nam News is today the only print newspaper published in English on a daily basis in Viet Nam. 

(Source: VNS)