23 November 2016
20 years after the tragic and untimely death of Mohamed Amin, founder of Nairobi-based Camerapix, the Association for International Broadcasting pays tribute to the renowned cameraman.
Mohamed Amin was born on 29 August 1943 in Nairobi where he developed an interest in photography at school. He founded Camerapix company in 1963 in Dar es Salaam and moved the company to Nairobi three years later. During the 1970s, he became one of the most relied-upon African news photographers, reporting on wars and coups all through the continent. His pictures were often used by Western news media.
Amin’s most influential moment came when his photos, along with the reporting of the BBC’s Michael Buerk of the 1984 Ethiopian famine brought international attention to the crisis and eventually helped start the charity wave that resulted in Live Aid concerts.
Amin contributed exclusive photos of the fall of Idi Amin and of Mengistu Haile Mariam and was author of numerous books, including Journey Through Pakistan, Pilgrimage to Mecca and covered various themes such as East African wildlife and the Uganda railway.
A short film looking back on Amin’s life has been produced by A24 Media – run by Amin’s son, Salim – and Reuters. It will be screened at Newsxchange taking place in Copenhagen at the start of December.
10 November 2016
The Association for International Broadcasting has presented its Founders Award to Abdul Rahman Ramadhan
Abdul Rahman Ramadhan (centre) receives the AIB Founders Award from Alexey Nikolov, Chairman of the AIB Executive Committee and Managing Director, RT (left) and Simon Spanswick, Chief Executive, AIB (right)
Abdul Rahman Ramadhan started work in 1980. It wasn’t a typical career for someone living in Nairobi’s Kibera slum. He graduated from the local madrasa and chose the profession of sound, landing a job at the Camerapix news agency run by Mohamed Amin in the Kenyan capital.
He honed his skills on the job, working with the standard location sound kit of the time – a Nagra reel-to-reel tape recorder. Those skills, which would be developed over the following three and a half decades, have brought the world sound from across Africa.
For Abdul has recorded the sound that has accompanied TV news reports from many of Africa’s most troubled places and challenging events. His first truly dangerous assignment was the civil war in Sudan in 1992. This was the first war zone that the young sound man had experienced. Along with the other Camerapix team members, Abdul dodged bullets from soldiers and bombs dropped from Antonov planes. He slept among the dead to avoid detection – a certain route to death.
Soon after, he accompanied Mo Amin to Ethiopia which was in the grip of the worst famine to hit the country in a century. It was the pictures and sound captured by Mo Amin and Abdul for the BBC and other organisations of the plight of tens of thousands of starving people led to the establishment of Live Aid. Bob Geldof saw the report that Michael Buerk filed for the BBC and was so moved that he organised Band Aid that recorded the global hit “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”, followed in 1985 by Live Aid.
In 1994, with his wife pregnant with their second child, Abdul was sent by Mo Amin to Rwanda where the genocide had started. There Abdul and the Camerapix team witnessed many of the atrocities that occurred during the 100 days of the genocide. It was the first time that Abdul had seen tens of people being killed at the same time. In Somalia, it was just one killing a day, he recounts. In Rwanda, Abdul saw gangs killing ten people or more at a time, all in the most horrific ways.
He’s covered stories in his native Kenya, too, including the election violence in 2008. The two main tribes in the country fought running battles and up to 1,500 people died in the violence, with half a million or more displaced. Abdul was on hand, recording the sounds of battle on his own home turf.
Abdul is sanguine about the risks to his own life, saying that when his time is up, that’s just the way it is, however his life should end.
His wife supports him, despite not knowing if Abdul will come back from his latest assignment. She knows that capturing the sound that tells the most important stories is in Abdul’s blood, and that it is far more than just a job.
Sound is Abdul’s passion. Over the past 35 years, he has brought us some of the most momentous moments from Africa’s recent history.
Abdul shows no sign of hanging up his microphone. The Association for International Broadcasting is proud to recognise the work that Abdul has undertaken to help bring us the stories from Africa that need to be told. The AIB Founders Award pays tribute to a remarkable man – the Sound Man Abdul Rahman Ramadhan.
3 November 2016
12th annual AIBs reward factual programme makers from across the world
The 12th annual awards for factual television, radio and online productions – known as the AIBs – were awarded at a glittering gala dinner in London on Wednesday 2 November hosted by Mark Barton, anchor on Bloomberg Television. Sponsors of the AIBs 2016 include global satellite communications company Eutelsat and broadcast consultants MediaGuru.
As well as rewarding programme makers, the Association for International Broadcasting presented its Founders Award to Abdul Rahman Ramadhan (right) who for more than 35 years has been an unsung hero of news and documentary-making in Africa. He is “The Sound Man” who, working for Camerapix alongside the late legendary photojournalist Mohamed Amin, captured the sounds of war, famine and genocide across Africa. Abdul was the sound recordist who worked with the BBC’s Michael Buerk, who brought news of the Ethiopian famine into homes around the world. This led to the creation of Band Aid and the global Live Aid pop concert. “We are delighted to have the opportunity to recognise the work of Abdul Rahman Ramadhan,” said Alexey Nikolov, Managing Director of RT and Chairman of the AIB’s Executive Committee. “He has worked tirelessly in the most challenging of situations to bring the sounds that illustrate the news to viewers across the world. He has put his life in danger on many occasions and yet shows no sign of hanging up his headphones. Abdul is a worthy recipient of the important AIB Founders Award.”
Alongside the presentation of the Founders Award, the global panel of judges of this year’s AIBs rewarded programme makers in 14 countries, ranging in size from an Argentinian radio station to major TV networks such as the BBC.
Key themes among the entries were the migrant crisis in Europe and in particular the effects on children. There were also a range of productions covering issues around so-called ISIS, including the radicalisation of youth in western European countries. The judges praised the work of nominees, describing productions variously as “bold”, “engaging”, “compelling” and “comprehensive”.
The Association’s Innovation award was presented to the Private Engineering Office of Qatar for its ground-breaking TV and film archiving project that is preserving Qatar’s audio-visual archives on a scale unmatched anywhere in the world.
“We had the largest crop of entries in the 12-year history of the AIBs,” commented Simon Spanswick, chief executive of the Association for International Broadcasting. “Work from broadcasters and production companies on every continent was considered by our shortlisting team. Then our experts in the international jury evaluated which work was the best of the best. Some of the decisions were immensely close as the programmes we saw and heard in the shortlist were all of the very highest standard.”
With results in 17 categories ranging from news journalism to children’s factual, sport to investigate documentary, the AIBs cover the entire range of factual TV, radio and online production genres. There is an overall winner in each category and there are also special commendations that the judges said represented excellent work.
The list of winners appears below.
The AIBs open for entry again in April 2017.
Winners list
TELEVISION JOURNALISM – sponsored by MediaGuru
Winner – The Children of War – BBC News
Highly commended – Desperate Journey – PBS NewsHour
Highly commended – Paris Terror Attacks – CNN
RADIO JOURNALISM
Winner – Burmese Election Special – BBC Burmese
DOMESTIC CURRENT AFFAIRS
Winner – My Son the Jihadi – True Vision Productions for Channel 4
Highly commended – My Jihad – VRT
Highly commended – Chemsex – Vice
RADIO CURRENT AFFAIRS
Winner – ISIS: Young, British and Radicalised – Snappin’ Turtle Productions for BBC Radio 1
Highly commended – Corruption K: Cristina in the Dock – Radio Mitre
Highly commended – Alvin Hall Goes Back to School – WNYC & Public Radio International
SHORT FEATURE
Winner – On Assignment – Vicky’s Story – ITV News and MediaZones
Highly commended – Right to Fight – The Guardian
Highly commended – Winners – BBC World Service
SPECIALIST
Winner – It Ends with Murder – The Body in the Freezer – Danish Broadcasting
Highly commended – The Sound Man – Africa24 and Camerapix
Highly commended – The Special Needs Hotel – Lambent Productions
RADIO INVESTIGATIVE
Winner – Documentary on One: The Case That Never Was – RTÉ Radio 1
Highly commended – The Unfinished Story of Fighting FGM in Egypt – BBC Arabic
Highly commended File on 4 – Tennis – Game Set and Fix? – BBC/Buzzfeed
ONLINE
Winner – 6×9: A virtual experience of solitary confinement – The Guardian
Highly commended – Back in Touch – On Our Radar in partnership with New Internationalist
Highly commended – China’s Science Revolution – BBC News
SCIENCE
Winner – Iceman Reborn – Nova – WGBH
Highly commended – Secrets of the Brain – TERN International
INNOVATION
Qatar Private Engineering Office for the Old Films Archive Project
FOUNDERS
Abdul Rahman Ramadhan
CHILDREN’S
Winner – Checker Tobi – Bayerischer Rundfunk
Highly commended – Know Zone – The Mediae Company
SPORT
Winner – Formula 1 – Whisper Films and Channel 4
Highly commended – Rugby World Cup Final – ITV Sport
RADIO CREATIVE FEATURE
Winner – The Battle of Britain at 75 – TBI Media with Snappin’ Turtle Productions for BBC Radio 2
Highly commended – Growing Up Without a Dad – BlokMedia
SHORT FORM JOURNALISM
Winner – Brussels Divided: Molenbeek after the Terrorist Attacks – The Guardian
Highly commended – Syria: Witness to an Airstrike – CNN Worldwide
Highly commended – VTM News – Train of Hope – Medialaan
TV INVESTIGATIVE
Winner – ISIS: The British Women Supporters Unveiled – Channel 4
Highly commended – 101 East: Murder in Malaysia – Al Jazeera English
Highly commended – Spotlight – Selling Northern Ireland – BBC Northern Ireland
INTERNATIONAL CURRENT AFFAIRS
Winner – Children on the Frontline: The Escape – Channel 4
Highly commended – Kaos Hatti – Kos Island – TRT
Highly commended – We Love Gaza – RT
RADIO PERSONALITY
Viny Agrawal – MyFM 94.3, Indore, India
TELEVISION PERSONALITY
Hala Gorani – CNN International
18 August 2016
International broadcast and media supplier and end-user associations get together to drive common interests worldwide
London, 18 August 2016
The Association for International Broadcasting today announced that it has entered a strategic partnership with IABM. AIB represents 70 major international broadcasters and has an active community of 27,000 senior executives in media companies in over 160 territories; IABM membership comprises 450+ broadcast and media technology suppliers worldwide. The partnership brings together both ends of the industry to create opportunities for conversations that will dramatically increase understanding and cooperation across the entire media ecosystem.
“We are delighted about this new collaboration,” said Simon Spanswick, chief executive of the AIB (pictured left). “It is important that there is understanding of broadcasters’ needs and requirements in the rapidly changing and constantly evolving media marketplace. IABM’s members are crucial to the production and delivery of programmes so it makes sense for there to be conversations between the production and vendor communities. As the AIB’s members face ever more challenges from changing audience consumption patterns, cyber threats and the need to operate more sustainably, the dialogue between the two ends of the industry are ever more crucial.”
“IABM members have been keen for us to help promote dialogue, cooperation and understanding between them and end-users and so this partnership will be warmly welcomed both by our members and the wider industry,” said Peter White, IABM CEO (pictured right). “AIB is the perfect partner for IABM and working together will naturally further both organizations’ aims; at a stroke, we have created an open forum that will foster stronger and deeper relationships between all the industry’s stakeholders across both supplier and end-user organisations.
“AIB has the international reach and knowledge to help IABM members better understand the challenges and opportunities the rapidly changing media landscape is creating. This strategic partnership will benefit IABM members by enabling them to develop new and relevant products and services to meet end-users’ actual rather than perceived requirements. As the relationship between the two associations develops, more and more areas for cooperation will open up for the benefit of everyone,” White concluded.
29 June 2016
The Association for International Broadcasting has announced that it is starting a series of work on the issue of sustainability in the broadcasting sector.
Speaking at the Business & Climate Summit in London, AIB chief executive Simon Spanswick said that there is a need for media companies around the world to develop strategies that will increase the sustainability of their businesses. Some countries have already developed systems and plans that, for example, allow broadcasters and production companies to calculate the carbon emissions produced during programme making.
The AIB has released a briefing note that provides simple steps that broadcasters can take to help them become more sustainable.
In addition, the AIB is launching a new Sustainability Working Group to provide a platform to share information, experience and expertise among the AIB’s worldwide Membership.
The AIB is also working to ensure that its broadcaster Members collaborate on ways to promote the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals to audiences around the world. More details of initiatives in this area will be announced in coming weeks.
