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.

Welcome to IRINN

All during the second week of February 2009, the television broadcast by IRINN (Islamic Republic of Iran News Network) was focused on the 3oth Anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. The programs included footage of the Revolution (such as Khomeini arriving in Iran) and interviews with Iranians about the Revolution and what they experienced. One particular interviewee was a lady who recalled her 3 1/2 year imprisonment before the Revolution, during the time of the Shah. What became clear was that the angle of this interview, and all the others, was in clear support for the Revolution. Although an interesting note is that this particular lady said she was not fully aware that the Revolution was actually taking place and did not know the full scale of the events.  

Another topic during last weeks broadcast was on Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the launch of the first Iranian satellite. First, Ahmadinejad was shown giving a talk given to diplomats in Tehran. Ahmadinejad said that "the time for force is over", referring to Israel and the conflict in Gaza. Right after that, the program diverted to the launch of the first Iranian satellite, Omid ("hope"). An Iranian state web address all about the satellite was then given and can be found here: www.omid-sat.ir/. This launch has been argued by some as a way for Ahmadinejad to sway voters in his favor in the upcoming presidential elections that will be held on June 12, 2009. There is probably a substantial amount of validity to this argument, given that Ahmadinejad has not lived up to the reason he was elected - his promise to improve the economy. Adding further pressure to Ahmadinejad's re-election bid is the fact that Khatami, a reformist and former Iranian President, has announced he will be running for President as well. 

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.

BBC & Gaza: Win-Win?

Keach Hagey at The National (Abu Dhabi) is reporting that BBC Arabic's handling of the Gaza-charity drama "was a testament to BBC Arabic’s methodical multimedia strategy that, when its listeners, viewers and readers did choose to voice their opinions about the broadcaster’s decision not to air a charity appeal for Gaza, it was able to use every form of mobile, online and traditional media at its disposal to make its audiences feel heard." (For some background on the story line, see previous post here).

So let me get this straight: (1) the BBC decides to not air the appeal for aid to Gaza, (2) a decision that sparks widespread protests, both physical (5000 outside the Bush House in London) and virtual (check out the online discussion here). As a result of the protests, (3) the appeal for aid actually gets more media attention than it would of had it simply been aired on the BBC, and (4) because "BBC Arabic used its newly expanded television schedule and multimedia channels to host a live debate about the decision," the BBC's image is actually strengthened as well. These times, they are a changin'