25 July 2019
Ruptly, the award-winning global multimedia agency, has announced the launch of a dedicated Spanish version of its content platform.
Speaking about the launch, Dinara Toktosunova, CEO of Ruptly, said: “Ruptly’s new Spanish-language platform is another step forward as we strive to best meet the needs of our clients. This is the latest in our long list of product and service innovations, including the introduction of live streams accessible in just three clicks, and transformative pricing plans that are democratising content for media and individuals. We will continue to evolve our offering to reflect our growing international client base.”
This announcement follows another in March, made during a panel session at Cabsat Content Congress, that Ruptly will also be launching an Arabic version of its platform later this summer.
Carolina Velasco, Ruptly’s Iberia and LATAM Territory Manager, said:
“This is a fully-localised, Spanish website and live platform that will enable us to be more accessible to our Spanish language client base, as well as enabling us to provide more stories that are specific to the Iberian and LATAM regions.”
Amongst the clients to benefit from Ruptly’s Spanish platform are Jorge del Villar, Chief Content Officer at Cultura Colectiva, who looks to the agency for: “stories with value to stand out in a saturated media landscape”, and Sebastián Morales, Director of Digital at Publimetro, who said: “Ruptly has become an important partner within our ecosystem, providing ready-to-use material and increasing our video production.”
Mauro Torres, Ruptly’s Deputy Head of Planning and Head of Sports, discussed the new Spanish-language service, as part of a panel exploring how to engage users and audiences in a saturated media landscape at SIPConnect, an annual digital media and services conference in Miami, Florida. The panel was moderated by multimedia journalist, TV personality and author, Cathy Areu.
17 July 2019
Two years since Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine confirmed they were holding Ukrainian blogger and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) contributor Stanislav Aseyev prisoner, RFE/RL is redoubling efforts to secure his release.
“Stanislav has been held virtually incommunicado for two years because of his unflinching reporting from his native Donetsk,” said RFE/RL Acting President Daisy Sindelar. “I know I speak on behalf of a growing number of rights advocates, government officials, lawmakers, and journalists in deploring his detention and demanding his freedom.”
Aseyev, who also wrote for the Ukrainian publications Mirror of the Week and The Ukrainian Week, began blogging for RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service in 2014 under the pen name Stanislav Vasin, contributing dozens of posts about the effects of the conflict on daily life, schooling, politics, and culture until his detention in the summer of 2017. Separatists have reportedly accused him of espionage and threatened him with up to 14 years in custody, although RFE/RL has no knowledge of him being formally charged by any recognized authority of any crime.
In August 2017, the Ukrainian government included his name among those officially listed for a possible prisoner exchange under the supervision of the Trilateral Contact Group, which oversees negotiations among the sides to the conflict. The bipartisan U.S. Congressional Freedom of the Press Caucus has condemned his detention, championing him as “one of the few independent journalists to remain in the region under separatist control to provide objective reporting.” In November 2018, the U.S. Mission to the OSCE urged “the Russian Federation to secure the release of Stanislav Aseyev.” In recent weeks, U.S. Senators Robert Menendez and Marco Rubio and U.S. Congressman Eliot Engel have called for his freedom.
The One Free Press Coalition, a group of 33 prominent media organizations from around the world, recognized Aseyev this month among its “10 Most Urgent” cases of journalists under attack for pursuing the truth.
Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich has added her voice to efforts on Aseyev’s behalf, writing, “It goes without saying, I am with you in your struggle on behalf of Stanislav Aseyev.”
RFE/RL has also urged the release of Ukrainian Service contributor Oleh Halaziuk, who has been held by Russia-backed separatists in Donetsk since August 2017. Crimean contributor Mykola Semena was convicted of separatism by a Russian court in 2017 and is banned from practicing journalism and leaving the peninsula.
In Isolation: Posts From Donbas is a collection of English-language translations of Aseyev’s reports from the conflict zone for RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.
RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, known locally as Radio Svoboda, together with its subsidiary Donbas.Realities and Crimea.Realities regional units, averaged 5 million monthly visits to its website in 2018, and sets a standard in the Ukrainian media market for independence, innovation, and professionalism.
[Source: RFE/RL press release]
12 July 2019
- TRT World Citizen launched first international edition of “Journalism for Juniors – J4J” program to help empower Afghan high school students to tell their own stories. Basic journalism workshops were held in the Afghan capital Kabul, in cooperation with the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency (TİKA) in the TİKA Education Center on July 8nd – 11th
- More than 100 students from various high schools in Kabul participated in introductory workshops to mobile journalism and story-telling, designed and run by TRT World staff.
- Launched two years ago, the J4J program has so far reached 1,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey as well as local students
Afghanistan has one of the youngest and fastest growing populations in the world – with approximately 63 percent of the population (27.5 million Afghans) below 25 years of age and 46 percent (11.7 million children) under 15 years of age according to the National Statistics and Information Authority (NSIA).
TRT World launched its “World Citizen” initiative — the first of its kind by a global media network whose employees are on the ground – alongside grassroots humanitarian-based groups.
TRT World has institutionalized its commitment to inspiring humanity’s collective conscience with the launch of “World Citizen” and under the World Citizen umbrella introduced “Journalism for Juniors – J4J” program in October 2017.
Journalism for Juniors workshop series have taken place in Gaziantep, Kilis, Istanbul, Ankara, Kahramanmaraş and many other cities across Turkey.
In partnership with TİKA Turkish Cooperate and Coordination Agency, TRT World Citizen launched its first international edition of “Journalism for Juniors – J4J” program to help empower Afghan high school students to tell their own stories.
TİKA Turkish Cooperate and Coordination Agency has implemented 1,056 projects including education accessibility for 100,000 children in Afghanistan. TİKA also carries out its activities in 59 countries with 61 offices. With TİKA’s offices in Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Herat, Afghanistan is the only country where TİKA has three offices.
With more than 100 participants, an intensive two-day introductory workshop to mobile journalism and story-telling, designed and run by TRT World staff, was provided to young students as an opportunity to learn the basics of journalism while empowering them to take control of their own narratives. After lessons in creative story-boarding, digital news-making, responsible social media usage, and verifying news credibility, the students were asked to write, film, and edit original stories of their own. Over time they will gain the confidence to tell their own stories and share their voice with the world.
Participant Bilal from Kabul, Afghanistan said: “I cannot express my feelings in a few words, but it was a great opportunity. Before the program, I thought journalists have to have a great expensive camera, and all those expensive equipments, but at J4J, I learned that I can be a great journalist by just using my phone.”
Tanya Goudsouzian, TRT World journalist and J4J mentor, said: “It is very important to give these kids the tools they need to tell their own stories and help broaden the media narrative about their country. The media landscape has changed and now allows anyone with a smart phone to share information online. But the basic values and rules of journalism have not changed. What we hoped to achieve is to instill in them a sense of responsibility: to be accurate and ethical in what they convey.”
[Source: TRT World]
12 July 2019
John F. Lansing, Chief Executive Officer and Director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM), testified in front of the U.S. Congress that the Kremlin’s weaponization of information has led to what he calls “the fight of the 21st century.”
Lansing was one of three government witnesses called before the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Agencies for its United States Efforts to Counter Russian Disinformation and Malign Influence hearing on July 10.
“Make no mistake,” said Lansing, in prepared remarks, “We are living through a global explosion of disinformation, state propaganda, and lies generated by multiple authoritarian regimes around the world. The weaponization of information we are seeing today is real.”
However, this threat does not remain unchallenged. Lansing laid out for the subcommittee how USAGM offers an alternative to Russian disinformation with accurate, independent news and information. Examples included the 24/7 Russian-language digital and television network, Current Time, and fact-checking websites Polygraph.info in English and Factograph.info in Russian–all initiatives led by the USAGM networks of the Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Current Time in particular aims to reach Russian speakers globally-not just within the boundaries of Russia-and to inform and engage savvy, younger audiences on social, economic and political issues that state media ignores. This model provides objective news that enables viewers to make informed opinions.
“Russia’s goal is to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts,” explained Lansing to the lawmakers in his oral testimony. “But our impact in Russia is clear.”
In Russia, a nationally-representative 2018 survey found that USAGM content on TV, radio and online was consumed by 7.7 percent of adults each week, or 7.9 million people. Also in 2018, more than half of Current Time’s 520 million video views on social media came from within the Russian Federation.
“Honest and truthful journalism as a catalyst for change represents our best weapon on the information battlefield,” Lansing concluded.
Lansing testified along with two representatives from the U.S. Department of State: Lea Gabrielle, Special Envoy and Coordinator of the Global Engagement Center, and Jim Kulikowski, Coordinator for U.S. Assistance to Europe, Eurasia, and Central Asia. A second panel featured Dr. Alina Polyakova Director, Global Democracy and Emerging Technology Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution and Nina Jankowicz from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Kennan Institute.
[Source: USAGM press release]
3 July 2019
The UK/Canada hosted Global Conference on Media Freedom will open in London on 10 July, with over 70 international government delegations, intergovernmental organisations, broadcasters and NGOs taking part. The focus of the Conference is spreading understanding of the need for media freedom, and gaining global consensus on how media freedom can be achieved, leading to greater prosperity, transparency and democracy.
The AIB will be at the event, along with a range of our Members from around the world. You can demonstrate your support for media freedom – tweet about it, share on social platforms, and talk about it to friends, family and colleagues.
And do contact us for more information on the work that the AIB is doing in this vitally important area.
27 June 2019
We’d set the deadline for entering the AIBs 2019 as 28 June. But we’ve been asked to extend this by many organisations who cannot meet the original closing date.
The new closing date for the AIBs is now 12 July 2019.
There’s plenty of time to get your work into one or more of the 21 categories that we’re featuring in the AIBs. These range from daily journalism to human interest documentary; sport to science, technology & nature; investigative documentary to domestic affairs. Full information is in the AIBs microsite, at theaibs.tv. Download the entry book here.
And we have been delighted to see that people continue to talk about the AIBs across the year: the picture above was put on Instagram by UK sports presenter Jake Humphrey. The picture shows an AIB in the MD’s office at UK production company Whisper. The company won an AIB for its coverage of Formula 1 in 2016 (pictured right).
