Page 7 - The Channel Issue 2 2010

IN BRIEF

UAE BANS BLACKBERRYS

The UAE regulator said it will ban RIM BlackBerry devices on security grounds and other major markets in the region could follow suit. The ban, from 1 October, relates to BlackBerry email, instant messaging and web browsing services. The suspension of data services is due to RIM’s use of centralised, encrypted networks, which means that – unlike other smartphones – BlackBerry data cannot be easily monitored by governments. Kuwait, India and China have also asked RIM for easier data access as a condition for operating within their borders.

LIVE NEWS FOOTAGE

ProSkope, the live news-gathering company, has announced a partnership with Bambuser, the innovative live mobile streaming service, to enable news broadcasters to stream live news footage from anywhere in the world directly to their master control rooms. Both professional reporters and network audiences can use the powerful BMT news gathering tool to help news organisations be the first with airing breaking news, as integrating live viewer contributions to any news TV format is easy.

YOUTUBE LOCAL

YouTube has teamed up with San Francisco TV station ABC7 News to publish video news reports produced by citizens. This is the first time the world's largest video-sharing website has struck a partnership deal with a local news provider. Users can email in their photo or video reports, or upload them direct to a Google map: "Submit video of what's broken in your community and we'll try to get it fixed." Videos are categorised into breaking news, events, weather and bay area scenes.

Breaking the hidden stories

When Al Jazeera Network launched its Investigative Unit in June, Director General Wadah Khanfar (pictured, right) called it "a ground-breaking initiative, at a time when major news networks are retreating from investigative journalism.” Headed by Ahmad Ibrahim, the Doha based unit's investigative teams are dedicated to breaking significant hidden stories from around the world for output across all the Network’s channels, languages and platforms. The Unit produces its own investigations, but also commissions stories from external sources. With more than 65 bureaux across the world, Al Jazeera Network is the Arab world’s most influential news corporation.

Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour news and current affairs channel which is available in over 200m households in more than 100 countries around the world, began broadcasting free-to-air on Freeview on 1st July, reaching more than 80% of homes in the UK. AJE airs live from 6 to 11pm local time every

day with live news and programmes from AJE’s studios in London, Washington DC, and Doha.

Since its launch in 2006, Al Jazeera English has won a number of awards for its reporting and programming, including “Best 24 Hour News Programme” at the 48th and 50th Annual Monte-Carlo Television Festival. AJE has also received awards from RTS, Amnesty International and YouTube and has received nominations for international Emmy awards in both the News and Current Affairs categories and the UK Royal Television Society awards as the 2009 “News Channel of the Year”. At the end of June Al Anstey, Director Media Development for the Al Jazeera Network, accepted the Freesat Award for “Best News Channel” in London. The Freesat Awards recognize the best channels and services available on the Freesat digital satellite TV service in the UK owned by the BBC and ITV. Salah Nagm, Director of News for Al Jazeera English, said it was an

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honour to receive this award for the second year in a row. The judging panel commended Al Jazeera for the following reasons: “Al Jazeera was the standout channel for the panel, telling stories no-one else does and helping viewers discover things about other countries that just aren’t reported elsewhere. We like its journalism and impartiality and the way it shows a completely different window on the world.”

CPJ secures website against surveillance

The Committee to Protect Journalists is now offering https://cpj.org/ as an alternative web address to protect users of their site who are at risk of surveillance and censorship, and are encouraging other social networking andmedia sites to do the same.

Without https, it is possible for regimes to target and block individual web addresses rather than whole sites. They can also block pages on an ad hoc basis, filtering on the basis of certain phrases on the page, such as the name of an opposition leader. Sending web pages securely

stops both of these techniques. After the attack on its servers by China, Google began to switch to serving secure web pages and now offers an encrypted version of its search engine, at https://encrypted.google.com/.

And while journalists are in the frontline for surveillance and censorship, the amount of private or valuable content revealed by everyone through unsecured web traffic is growing.

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