Lloyd's gives thumbs-up...

Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) assessor Mohamed Ramli Daud is a familiar face to Bernama management.

For a number of years, he has been coming to Bernama to conduct surveillance audit to ensure that our management and editorial systems are intact.

Bernama was  awarded the ISO 9002 certification by the international body -- Lloyd's Register in August 2000.

Although his long engagement  with Bernama has enabled him to understand how Bernama news operation is run, Ramli had a better insight today when he decided to ‘turun padang’.

 He chose to follow a Bernama court reporter to see how information are gathered and the news reported on the BEST system.

“It was not easy… they have to get their facts right,” he said when presenting his findings to the management  this evening. The surveillance audit is held twice a year.

Saying he had only “positive findings” to report, Ramli was happy to note of the value-added steps being taken by Bernama to enhance its news operations.

This includes the move to assign reporters to specialized ‘beats’ so they could produce quality stories.

Specialization would enable reporters to generate networking and confidence-building with stake holders and those linked to their beats.

Eventually, with quality and in-depth stories written by the specialized reporters, they could hopefully win awards  and bring glory to Bernama.   

When Bernama was awarded the ISO 9002 certification by Lloyd's Register,  it was probably  the first news agency in the world to win the honour.

After almost 15 years of getting the certification, Bernama’s systems and operations continue to have the capability to deliver on the promises we make to our subscribers..