Cooperation among media outlets from the BRICS countries -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa -- is crucial to the five states and the whole world, Dmitry Kiselev, director general of the Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency, has said.

Kiselev made the remarks in an interview with Xinhua ahead of the fifth BRICS Media Forum, which he believes has become "a good tradition" for representatives of leading media outlets and experts from the BRICS countries to share ideas.

"The pandemic can become a growth point contributing to the strengthening of BRICS media relations on many fronts, first of all, integration process," he said.

"It is hard to imagine what would have happened if our countries and peoples only used Western sources of information," he said, stressing the importance of media cooperation among the BRICS members.

Kiselev was impressed by the "valuable and educational" Russia-China joint reporting project "Wuhan On the Line," where Wuhan residents, scientists, doctors and representatives from public organizations spoke in detail about the latest development regarding the COVID-19 epidemic in China as well as measures taken by the country's leadership to curb its spread.

According to him, it has been discussed for several years that media outlets from the BRICS countries could create a joint news stream.

Kiselev praised the pilot project with Xinhua of integrating the news streams of the two agencies into each other's editorial terminals.

"We highly appreciate this initiative as it significantly reduces the time required to access materials from Russia and China for correspondents. We hope that media outlets from other BRICS countries will also join this project," he said.

Kiselev said that he sees great value in expanding exchanges of views among young journalists and media students from the BRICS countries.

He supports building up dialogue in the media sector at all levels as it will create opportunities to better understand each other.