13 November 2006
Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel announced today their team of news presenters based at their Doha headquarters ahead of their worldwide launch on 15th November 2006.
Al Jazeera Englishs Director of News and Programmes, Steve Clark has assembled a team of experienced presenters from diverse backgrounds: Mariam Nemazee formerly of Russia Today, So Rahman from Granada TV, Kamahl Santamaria formerly of Sky News Australia and Sami Zeidan previously of CNBC.*
They join the following presenters who were previously announced to the press: Jane Dutton who most recently worked as presenter/reporter on The Business of Development for CNBC Europe/US, David Foster who joined from Sky News, Shiulie Ghosh formerly of ITV News, Darren Jordon who was one of the main presenters at the BBC and Lauren Taylor former Economics Correspondent of ITV News.
13 November 2006
For the first time in the three-year history of Deutsche Welle’s Best of the Blogs awards, an American blog, the Sunlight Foundation, received the competition’s Best Weblog honours. ‘The Sunlight Foundation blog is a group of people who are not only writing about transparency in American politics,’ said US jury member Mark Glaser. Recently the group’s ‘Is Congress a Family Business?’ project uncovered 19 members of the US Congress who paid their spouses a total of USD 636,000 (EUR 495,250) in 2006.
The Reporters Without Borders Award, which has become an integral part of the BOBS, was shared by two Persian-language bloggers. The first blog, ‘Kosoof,’ is a photoblog that proves that pictures sometimes do more for freedom of expression than words by publishing photos of Iranian dissidents with their families after release from prison. The second, ‘Tanine Sokut’ by Hamed Mottaghi, denounces human rights violations in Iran and reports on issues that aren’t covered by the national media.
The Jury Award for the best English-language Weblog in 2006 was given to paidContent.org. The jury said it respected the blog’s ability to move quickly in breaking news stories and commenting on developments in the digital media industry.
9 November 2006
The Asia-Pacific Broadcasting Union (ABU) General Assembly which took place in Beijing has adopted a declaration to implement an Emergency Warning Broadcast System (EWBS) in ABU member countries.
The declaration called for the development of an EWBS to minimise the damage and impact of disasters in the region, and for ABU members to urge their national regulators to enact provisions to implement such a system.
The declaration, which also called for ABU members to encourage manufacturers to produce receivers with the EWBS feature, was based on a recommendation by the ABU Technical Committee which has studied the feasibility of implementing such a system.
The ABU Technical Committee recommended that the EWBS control signals to be used for analogue broadcasting in the ABU countries should be those developed by ITU-R (International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector, an agency of the United Nations).
In order to minimise the damage and impact of disasters, ABU members would support the development of EWBS systems for the Asia-Pacific region in close coordination with national or international organisations identified for issuing disaster forecasts. ABU members would also urge their national regulators to enact provisions to implement EWBS systems in the Asia-Pacific region and encourage manufacturers to produce receivers with the EWBS feature.
“Conveying timely warning to the public before the occurrence of disasters must be a high priority. ABU members will coordinate closely with international organisations to enable the flow of time-critical information through the most appropriate and effective channels,” said David Astley, ABU Secretary-General.
Even though it is nearly two years after the disasters of the Asian tsunami, we still have a situation where most countries in the region do not have a system whereby they can receive early warnings of potential tsunamis and other natural occurrences which may cause disasters.
“It is therefore timely that we take some action to try and rectify this situation and will actively help countries that do not have these alert systems set up yet, said Mr Astley.
9 November 2006
Radio Netherlands Worldwide (RNW) has decided to distribute 100 shortwave radios to inhabitants in the interior of Surinam. Last May, these inhabitants were hit by floods, and since then deprived of communication with the capital, Paramaribo, and the rest of the world. In addition, Radio Netherlands Worldwide is making a powerful shortwave frequency available for the radio initiative of the Surinamese aid organisations.
During the flooding, a lot of villages in the interior of Surinam fell under water. Inhabitants can still receive no FM radio or television signals, so shortwave is their only means of getting information, explains RNW Director-General Jan Hoek. RNW will distribute at least one shortwave receiver per village.
RNW can be heard in Surinam via shortwave, Internet and local partner stations. In the near future, listeners in Surinam will be able to hear special programmes produced by various aid organisations, to better inform them over measures they can take to prevent a repeat of the flooding.
Radio Netherlands Worldwide often provides transmission facilities for radio initatives that promote pluriformity and press freedom. In this instance, we can improve the supply of information, says Jan Hoek.
31 October 2006
Al Jazeera Network has announced that it will launch Al Jazeera International, the new English-language news and current affairs channel on Wednesday 15th November 2006, with the inaugural broadcast starting from its Doha headquarters at 12 GMT.
As the world’s first international English-language news and current affairs channel headquartered in the Middle East, Al Jazeera International is uniquely positioned to reverse the information flow from South to North and to provide a voice to under-reported regions around the world. With broadcast centres strategically placed in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC, and supporting bureaux worldwide, Al Jazeera International is a new force in the global English speaking media with the ability to seek out and cover different perspectives of news through on-the-ground reporting wherever news is made.
On 15th November Al Jazeera International will provide a fresh approach to news and current affairs to a worldwide audience with a combination of 12 hours of live news plus interview programmes and in-depth features and analysis from the worlds hot spots over a 24 hour day. Click on the link at the bottom of this story for a behind-the-scenes look at Al Jazeera International.
Wadah Khanfar, Director General of the Al Jazeera Network said: “We are extremely proud of what Al Jazeera has achieved over the past ten years. Al Jazeera today is an international media organisation. Al Jazeera International will build on the pioneering spirit of Al Jazeera and will carry our media model, based in the South, to the entire world. The launching of the English channel offers the chance to reach out to a new audience that is used to hearing the name of ‘Al Jazeera’ without being able to watch it or to understand its language. The new channel will provide the same ground-breaking news and impartial and balanced journalism to the English speaking world.”
“It has been a fantastic endeavour to build this TV channel over the last two years with the support of the Al Jazeera Network. Everyone involved in the project deserves credit,” said Nigel Parsons, Managing Director, Al Jazeera International. “We will extend the Al Jazeera spirit into the English-speaking world.”
Al Jazeera International is part of the Al Jazeera Network (which includes Al Jazeera Sports and Al Jazeera Children’s Channel) and the sister channel to Al Jazeera. The announcement of the channel’s forthcoming launch on November 15th coincides with the 10-year anniversary of Al Jazeera Arabic language channel.
Al Jazeeras English language website, aljazeera.net/english, is being re-launched with the launch of the English language channel to reflect the channel’s look and feel and editorial content. It will showcase Al Jazeera International’s agenda setting editorial mission and will provide constantly updated coverage of news events from around the world, along with in-depth analysis and background. It will provide RSS feeds, live streams and downloadable clips from the channel, as well as interactive discussions and polling. Programme and presenter information as well as weather reports, live business data and sport will also be available via the website.
