Frost, Al Jazeera, ITV & BBC

Guardian 'Media Monkey' reported:

Frost scotches ITV/al-Jazeera rumours - with an even better rumour
'It's not easy being Sir David Frost, winner of the Harvey Lee award for outstanding
contribution to broadcasting. It's not that you haven't got any stories to tell – he's got a
million of 'em, from Nixon, to Denis Thatcher to Loyd Grossman – although he doesn't tell
many about the latter. It's just that he's probably told quite a few of them before. But he
had a brand new one today, putting to bed those rumours linking one of his current
employers, al-Jazeera, with a bid for ITV. "There have been a lot of reports that al-Jazeera
is planning a bid for ITV," said Frost, juggling his audience in the palm of his hand. "I can
assure you that there are no truth in those rumours. It's the BBC they are bidding for."'

Al Jazeera Global Distribution

Today several sites have reported Al Jazeera's global distribution of programming, which includes over 50 hours from Al Jazeera English's documentary strand Witness, the Arabic-language content includes Al Jazeera Documentary Channel's four-part documentary "Arab Christians" and, from the Al Jazeera Satellite Channel, "The PLO" - a 13-part documentary looking at the creation, establishment and existence of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

As the push of Al Jazeera, particularly the English station, for a more global audience continues, specifically in North America, there are several interesting aspects surrounding their initiatives, like the global distribution one above:

1.) The availability of high quality content is always an issue in broadcasting, whether it be news, in-depth investigating, entertainment, etc. In content distribution networks and companies, there is always a HUGE competition for dynamic content because it is often so scarce. In the wake of newspapers crashing, foreign news bureaus, both print and broadcast, being closed left and right, the footage made available by Al Jazeera should logically be in very high demand.

2.) As a "conciliatory media" (el-Nawawy & Powers, 2008), AJ pro-actively promotes a free-flow of ideas, as seen through their Creative Commons Repository. This is where Al Jazeera video footage is free and open for the public to use under special licensing. The concept of a creative commons promotes the theory of an open use of content in order to spur a dynamic flow and layering of new creativity. This approach steps away from the stringent, stifling and prevalent copyright paradigm running rampant in every creative industry today.

Founder of the creative commons, Lawrence Lessig sees Al Jazeera's efforts as, "teaching an important lesson about how free speech gets built and supported. By providing a free resource for the world, the network is encouraging wider debate, and a richer understanding." This seems to align with el-Nawawy and Power's exploration of how Al Jazeera "[opens] new venues for freedom of expression and [provides] a platform for dialogue", making it a broadcaster that is interactive with audiences rather than a one-way stream of information.

So why won't North American cable companies engage in this creative commons?

In a news environment that screams for more and more content, a connection with AJA & AJE seems like a sound business move. Al Jazeera was the only broadcaster in Gaza when it was under siege. And the audience not wanting Al Jazeera English is a fallacy in many respects. From November to January, during the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the Web audience for Al Jazeera English shot up 22 per cent, 600 per cent when it came to video reports. (Vue Weekly)

So, using this blog to rant a little, my question to the North American broadcasters reading this is:

Why? Why not? Why not open up the airwaves to Al Jazeera?

Al-Jazeera's Gaza Bureau Under Attack

From the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, via Ma'an News:

"At approximately 8pm Saturday a news producer at Al-Jazeera in Gaza City, received a phone call from an unidentified person who informed him that an explosive device had been planted near the door of the office and was going to be detonated. De facto government police were successfully able to diffuse the explosives, which were attached to a note demanding the news agency quit its operations in the Gaza Strip. The Al-Jazeera office is on the eleventh floor of the al-Jalaa' Building in the center of Gaza City and was full of employees at the time the threat."

Who is responsible? The note attached to the package read: "To those with unfair media consciences, if you think of a solution it will be well-known. Leave immediately. The statement was signed by persons identifying themselves as 'Ghosts of Samih Al-Madhoun.'"

Who exactly are the Ghosts of Samih Al-Madhoun? Well, in June 2007 Fatah Leader Samih al-Madhoun, who had previously pledged to kill all members of the Islamist movement Hamas was allegedly captured in Gaza, dragged into the streets by Hamas, shot six times in the chest, and then dragged through a refugee camp, all while be filmed by Al-Aqsa. I'm guessing that the "Ghosts" are what's left of Samih's entourage. And they, apparently, are not happy with the way Al-Jazeera is covering events in Gaza.

Happy that no one was hurt.

What will Broadcasting 2.0 look like?

The Al-Jazeera Network is certainly trying to find out. Judith Townend reviewed AJ's ambitious efforts--known as Al-Jazeera Labs--to succeed in a world of Web 2.0.

AJ Labs started out a bit slow, but has recently picked up pace. One pillar of the Labs project is focused on making AJ's content available through as many mediums as possible. Along these lines, the webpage now features an application for the iPhone, a link to the newly revamped mobile webpage (designed for non-iPhone Smart phones), information on how to receive AJ's news via twitter, how to text or tweet in a question for Riz Khan to ask a guest on his show, a link to AJ's YouTube page, information on how to receive a RSS feed of AJ's news on your Sony Ericsson phone, a link to all of AJ's podcasts (available through iTunes), information on how to receive AJ's headlines through your Instant Message client, and, of course, AJ's Facebook application.

The second pillar of the Labs project is a bit more innovative. While AJ's coverage of the recent conflict in Gaza drew attention worldwide for its relative depth (AJE was the only international broadcaster that had English speaking journalists on the ground in Gaza), it also coincided with several innovative Labs initiatives that show much promise. Last November, AJE launched its citizen-journalism upload portal, a webpage devoted to "seeking eyewitness news reports from its vast international audience." During the conflict on Gaza, the Your Media webpage was flooded with photos and video from Palestinians in Gaza, much of which made its way to AJ's webpage and some of which was rebroadcast on the network's programming. In addition, the Mapping the War in Gaza feature was a big hit. Using software developed by Ushahidi, AJ created a map (based on Microsoft's virtual earth program) that integrated information submitted from its citizen journalists into a zoomable map of Gaza. Each nugget of submitted "news" from citizen journalists--be it a tweet, a video or a cell phone picture--was turned into a dot, categorized via color in order to differentiate the different events (dark blue dots noted a death of some sort, while yellow dots were references to news about international aid), and placed on the map. Citizen reports were vetted to ensure that they were indeed factual, and then integrated into reports from the mainstream media to ensure that the map was providing a comprehensive look at the events taking place.

Perhaps most interesting was AJ's decision to release its raw Gaza footage under the Creative Commons 3.0 Attribution license, functionally making the footage available for all commercial and non-commercial use, free-of-charge. This means that news outlets, filmmakers and bloggers will be able to easily share, remix, subtitle or reuse the footage (see previous post on this here). While I don't think that this move was publicized enough, and probably came too late in the conflict (over two weeks in), I do think that it shows promise. By giving up the rights to control and profit from the footage (and keep in mind that footage was not easy to come by during the conflict since journalists weren't allowed to enter into Gaza), AJ said to the world that they thought that news and journalism should not be dictated by the market, and that political efforts to suppress AJ's broadcasts in the West and elsewhere would not stop the images from Gaza from getting out.

Governments around the world continue to suppress the free media. Burma, Iran and China offer just a few examples of how effective governments have been at controlling their information environments, despite revolutions in communications technologies. If this model of releasing footage of events under a creative commons license becomes routine during conflicts (or other, hard-to-cover events), it may be a defining moment for the age of information. Governments will struggle to be able to suppress all of the different ways in which creative commons videos can be distributed. And while today videos are spread daily around the Internet, Al-Jazeera's viral footage would offer a marked difference given that it comes with a certain level of respect and authenticity (AJ was ranked as the 5th most influential brand in the world in 2005, prior to the launch of AJE).

Hopefully, other international news outlets will follow suit. The combined potential of BBC World Service and the Al-Jazeera Networks raw footage, and the possibilities of mashing the two together, would be a bold step in the direction of fostering a truly global and democratic communications ecology.

Finally, Qtel, Qatar's cell phone provider, announced today a their Mozaic Mobile TV service, offering programming from up to 23 channels available to be streamed to any of its mobile phones.

"The full range of International and Arabic channels includes news (Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English, CNN International, CNBC Europe and CNBC Arabiya and BBC World), Islamic (Iqra), sports (ESPN Europe, ART Sports Channels, and AlKaas), entertainment (AsianNet, B4U Music, Al Safwa, Arabic Series Channel and Rotana Moussica) and children’s television (Cartoon Networks, Boomerang, Al Jazeera Children’s Channel)."

Now, that's broadcasting 2.0.

"Online and in Jail"

The Committee to Protect Journalists is reporting that 45 percent of journalists that were put in jail in 2008 were web-based reporters or bloggers. Let's put this another way: you are more likely to be jailed for being a journalist if you publish your reporting via the World Wide Web than any other medium. Wow. So much for hoping that the Internet could provide a cover for those trying to report the news in countries that, well, don't exactly welcome a free and independent press.

The VOA's reporting of the findings highlights the most egregious violators: "Among the countries singled out for their hostile press environments were Russia, China, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Burma, Zimbabwe and Cuba." This is especially interesting given the recent cuts in funding for American broadcasting to Russia, China's pledge to sink billions in creating English and Arabic-language international broadcasters to compete with CNN, the BBC and Al-Jazeera, Iran's recent crackdown on BBC Persian and most recently the GAO's report that found that, despite the $500 million that the US government has devoted to broadcasting radio and TV to Cuba, "Radio and TV Martí’s audience size is small, with less than 2 percent of respondents to telephone surveys since 2003 reporting that they had tuned in to Radio or TV Martí during the past week."

Thus, I'll ask again, is the Internet and its associated revolution in communication technologies actually opening up previously close societies, or is this further evidence of governments demonstrating their ability to control the flow of information despite it? 2008's crackdown on online journalism is further evidence of concern that governments are indeed winning the war over who is in control of the World Wide Web. On that note, I'm signing off!

Israel acting to restrict Al-Jazeera. UPDATED: "Israel's frosty relationship with AJ is headed for a deep freeze"

Update (2/4): Dion Nissenbaum is reporting that Israel is considering declaring AJ a "hostile enemy." If effective, the result would be the removal of all AJ reporters from Israel. Question: would this also mean that AJ reporters would be out of Gaza, or would they be able to remain? If AJ's reporters remain in Gaza, won't this encourage one-sided coverage, given the difficulty that contacting Israeli officials will be? Seems like this move could only hurt Israel's image in the media.

The BBC is reporting that:

Israeli officials say they are taking measures to restrict the work of the Arabic television network, al-Jazeera, inside Israel. It follows a decision last month by al-Jazeera's owners, the state of Qatar, to cut trade ties with Israel. The work visas of some al-Jazeera employees based in Israel will not be renewed, according to reports. Al-Jazeera's journalists will have limited access to Israeli news conferences and briefings.

Yet another example of the line between politics and journalism being blurred. It is unclear of the restrictions will be applied only to the Arabic side of AJ, or the English branch as well.