In July 2012 Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, General Manager of Al Arabiya
News Channel, the 24/7 FTA news and current affairs satcaster, hired
Faisal J. Abbas as the new Editor-in-Chief for its English online
portal. Abbas is a young but already distinguished journalist who has
made his name as blogger, author and commentator. One year on, we
spoke to Abbas to see how he is turning a website into a fully-integrated
news service
he English website
has always been
there. It started as a
page where we
translated some of
the stories from Al
Arabiya. But it has
always been thought of as just a
website, separate from the main
channel. I saw a massive opportunity.
My vision is that itʹs a complete
service and my boss (Abdul
Rahman) who is a newspaper man
turned broadcaster, quite platform‐
agnostic, shares this vision of
integrating everything. This
dynamic also means that we can
easily have an English service
online which compensates for not
having an English language
channel.
We have invested a lot in the
new service ‐ we are not a state‐
funded channel, everything we do
is commercially driven. It is a
service targeted towards
researchers, towards people
working in think‐tanks, towards
people in governments, towards
people interested in the Middle
East. If you want to know exactly
what the people in the Middle East
are watching, then go to
english.alarabiya.net, click on our
video section and youʹll see the
latest news broadcasts from the day
subtitled in English, you can click
and get a transcript – original and
translation – you can see our
current affairs programmes exactly
as the Middle Eastern audiences are
seeing them. Itʹs the same agenda,
same content, same presenters, not
tweaked for a Western audience or
an Australian audience. Itʹs
authentic. Our mandate is to reflect
relevant content from Al Arabiya to
our English readers and provide
background and context. We say
that if content is king, context is
queen. The analysis we publish
gives us a certain edge.
How many of the Arabic stories
make it onto the English site?
There was a misconception at first
that the required integration was
with the Arabic website. Thatʹs not
the case. Both the Arabic and the
English website have to integrate
with the news channel. We are all
part of Al Arabiya – which this year
celebrates 10 years on air. What we
are aiming for, once we complete
our recruitment and finish the
restructuring, is to have a 70/30
proportion. So 70% of our content
needs to come from Al Arabiya
reporters from our TV output.
We often break stories 30
minutes before the wires, we have
people on the ground all over the
world, we are experts in Egypt, in
Syria, Iraq. And similarly a lot of
people want to talk to us first. So
we need to make sure that once we
reach that 70% point, 30% will be
original stories. By that I mean the
Arabiya team members who are
working on the English desk
produce their own stories that are
good enough to be shared with
other Al Arabiya platforms. For
example, we did a series of
exclusives on the leaked emails of
the daughter of Syriaʹs envoy to the
UN who served as a PR advisor to
Bashar Assad – they were used on
the Arabic website and on TV.
So it's a joined-up operation?
I have to say it gives us a lot of value.
We are launching a new product for
an already established brand which
gives us a competitive advantage.
People look at us and say you are
only a team of a dozen or so. But
we are tapping into the massive
resources of a big group with
correspondents all over the world.
For my team, we have also
recruited top journalists from other
platforms, people that speak good
Arabic and good English – it can be
a challenge finding that person.
MBC are very passionate about
people, give incentives and have a
fixed performance scheme in place.
How do you coordinate effort?
Every day we have an editorial
meeting with all departments of Al
Arabiya. We see what stories
everyone is working on and keep a
T
AUTHENTIC
40
|
ISSUE 2 2013
|
THE CHANNEL
THE CHANNEL
|
MIDDLE EAST
There
always
needs to
be a filter.
But isn't
that the
case with
any news
story you
have?
“
”
NEWSNOW
