1 July 2014
France 24 has concluded a new distribution agreement in Thailand with major cable operator Chaoren.
Thanks to this agreement, France 24 English version is now available in 300,000 additional households across the country in the operator’s basic offer on channel 22.
Already available in Thailand on various cable, satellite and IPTV offers, this new agreement allows France 24 to reach 2,525,000 households 24/7, which represents a quarter of all digital households in the country.
In addition, The France 24 Debate*, one of the channel’s flagship programmes, isnow broadcast every day to 14 million homes on the national TV channel PSI Saradee.
*subtitled in Thai
About France 24, a France Médias Monde channel (FRANCE24.COM)
France 24, the international news channel, broadcasts 24/7 to 250 million homes around the world in French, Arabic and English. The three versions have a combined weekly audience of 41.7 million TV viewers (calculation method used without extrapolation in 55 of the 177 countries where the channel is broadcast). From its newsroom in Paris, France 24 gives a French perspective on global affairs through a network of several hundred correspondents located in nearly every country. It is available via cable, satellite, DTT, ADSL, on mobile phones, tablets and connected TVs. France 24’s new media platforms, which are also available in three languages, attract 14 million visits, 7 million video views a month and 6.5 million followers on social networks.
1 July 2014
In the age of big data, Google critics say online services come at the price of freedom. Opponents say old business models for journalism are being redefined by the Internet and the people who use it.
Mathias Döpfner, CEO of media publishing house Axel Springer SE and U.S. Internet expert Jeff Jarvis locked horns in the first main debate at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn, Germany. Döpfner says that people pay for seemingly free online services with their freedom, while Jarvis says he’s glad “that Google knows where I live.”
The “Media summit” on the first day of conference focused on the future of journalism and the role of international broadcasters. Also participating in the debate were Salah Negm, Director of News at Al Jazeera’s English channel, Jawhar Sircar, CEO of Indian public broadcaster Prasar Bharati and Peter Limbourg, Director General of Germany’s international broadcaster, Deutsche Welle.
Jarvis accused Döpfner of calling for state funding to save the faltering business model of paid journalism, rather than concentrating on developing new ideas. In response, Döpfner said his publishing company had already changed radically, and that digital content generates two-thirds of the business’ profits. He said that Axel Springer SE wants to become a leading digital publisher. Speaking to an international audience that included many journalists, Jarvis pointed out that “It’s far too soon to know what the Internet is and that we should define it in analog of our ways in the past.”
In a keynote speech just prior to the panel discussion, Döpfner predicted that “a culture of paying for digital journalism will take root over the next few years. Content that is less valuable will continue to be free, content that is particularly relevant, exclusive or entertaining will be paid for.” He also said it was a misperception that people can access online content for free. “The services which are perceived to be free of charge have a much higher price than money. Those who pay with their behavior, pay in the end with their freedom.”
“My newspaper can’t do that”
According to Jarvis, anyone who wants to be successful online needs to be Google-oriented. Google isn’t a gatekeeper who decides what information reaches people, he said. “It is a platform that enables anyone and everyone to speak.” Jarvis also pointed out that Google has a strict service commitment to its users and the personalized online experience it is developing will be a big part of the future of journalism. “I am happy that Google knows where I live and where I work because I get relevant data back in return. My newspaper has no idea who I am and where I live and where I work and can’t give me relevance.”
Journalism is a mission, not a profession
Debate moderator Tim Sebastian pointed out that not only the business model of journalism faces insecurity, but that journalists themselves are too often in danger, citing the three Al Jazeera reporters sentenced to prison in Cairo without fair trial. On the topic of security for journalists, Salah Negm, called for more solidarity from the international journalism community. Negm said that for him, the future of journalism is less of a technical question. “The most important factor is trust,” he said, “and we have to earn that trust everyday and every minute. I would like to think of journalism not as a profession but as a mission.”
Peter Limbourg, Director General of Deutsche Welle agreed, adding that international broadcasters have a duty to stand up to their responsibility as information providers when national media outlets only show one side of a story. “I think it’s good that we have the Russians, the Chinese and the Gulf states in the market and they should come to us and they should bring their opinions,” he said, “but it’s a vice versa thing. Let me try to broadcast Deutsche Welle in Saudi Arabia. This would be a difficult thing. Let me try to go in and broadcast in China. Or let me go in and broadcast in Russia – everywhere with everything.”
International partners and co-hosts
DW’s national and international partners for the 2014 Global Media Forum include, among others, Amnesty International, Deutsche Telekom, the Grimme-Institut, NATO, the United Nations, the Vodafone Institute for Society and Communications and Voices of Africa.
The conference is co-hosted by the Foundation for International Dialogue of the Sparkasse Savings Bank in Bonn. Support is also provided by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development and the City of Bonn. Cooperation partner is The Right Livelihood College Campus Bonn.
For more information about the conference, go to www.dwgmf.de
30 June 2014
Radio Sawa is giving fans access, anywhere and at any time, to the most popular radio network in the Middle East through the launch of the new Radio Sawa app. Owners of iPhones, iPads and Android phones and tablets will have instant access to Radio Sawa’s streams of breaking news, music, Radio Sawa programs and hourly news updates. Listeners can click here to download the Radio Sawa app.
Content and features available through the Radio Sawa app include:
- Live Broadcasts of Seven Streams – Listeners can tune in to one of Radio Sawa’s seven streams to listen to Western and Arabic music, newscasts and news updates twice an hour, andRadio Sawa’s information programs. The country and regional streams available include Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Gulf, Lebanon and Sudan.
- User Participation Through Sawa Chat – Listeners can now interact with Radio Sawa’s popular interactive feature Sawa Chat on their phones. The feature asks listeners a question about social issues, and phone users can immediately record their audio answers and upload them. In conjunction with the launch of the Radio Sawa app, the first Sawa Chat question will be this: What is the one thing in your country that needs to change and how would you change it?
- Ease of Use and Sharing Content – The app features gesture-based navigation via swiping and using graphics and photos without complicated menus. Original content, such as the “Have You Read This?” social news section can be easily shared with friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter and e-mail.
- On Demand Podcasts – Radio Sawa’s news and information programs such as Sawa Magazine and its hourly newscasts will be available for listeners to tune in when it is convenient for them. If they miss an episode, it takes just a click on the app to hear stories such as child labor in Jordan, the Syrian refugee crisis, the Iraqi government’s fight against ISIL and corruption in Lebanon.
- Continuous Audio Playing – Audiences can tune into Radio Sawa while using other apps. This new feature will provide continuous Radio Sawa audio while listeners are multi-tasking and using other apps on their phone.
The Radio Sawa app is produced in partnership with the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Digital & Design Innovation (ODDI).
“We are very excited that this app will fundamentally change the way people can listen to Radio Sawa,” stated Brian Conniff President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), which manages and operates Radio Sawa. “The new app allows listeners from across the region to have access Radio Sawa’s brand of accurate and objective news in a way that is easy for them. This is especially important in countries where Radio Sawa does not have an FM transmitter.”
“We joined forces with MBN to design and build an app unlike any in the Arab market,” said Will Sullivan, Director of Mobile for the BBG’s Office of Digital & Design Innovation. “We focused on building a gorgeously designed, touch-driven, mobile-only application which played to the huge popularity of streaming radio on smartphone devices.”
Radio Sawa is an Arabic-language radio network that broadcasts music and news 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with more than 370 newscasts per week. Newscasts range in length from 30-minute in-depth reports (including interviews and analysis) to 90-second headline reports. Radio Sawa’s flexible format permits the station to respond quickly to developing news events and expand both newscasts and live coverage as required. According to international research firms, Radio Sawa has a weekly reach of more than 11 million people.
In addition to Radio Sawa, MBN also operates and manages Alhurra Television. MBN is financed by the U.S. Government through a grant from the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an independent federal agency. The BBG provides oversight and serves as a firewall to protect the professional independence and integrity of the broadcasters.
The BBG’s Office of Digital & Design Innovation (ODDI) builds the solutions to the biggest digital challenges faced by U.S. international media. ODDI works with technology to improve US international news media by creating new ways for journalists to reach their critical audiences and understand the audience from a technology standpoint. The ODDI Mobile team’s previous apps have been internationally-recognized for their innovation by being selected as finalists for the 2014 GSMA Global Mobile Awards “Best Mobile Publishing Product or Service” and the 2014 Appy Award for “Best Multicultural App.” (Source: Press release)
23 June 2014
The Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) today [23 June 2014] protested the sentencing of three journalists working for Al Jazeera English in Egypt.
The guilty verdicts were announced on Monday 23 June in a court in Cairo. The journalists – Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed – had been charged with aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news. Greste and Fahmy were sentenced to seven years in prison. Baher Mohamed was sentenced to a total of ten years in prison.
The prosecution alleged that Greste, Al Jazeera’s East Africa correspondent, and his two colleagues from the Network’s Egypt bureau, aided the Brotherhood and produced false news reports about events in Egypt. All three journalists vehemently denied the charges. The prosecution produced a range of items as evidence that were completely unrelated to the charges, including a BBC podcast, a news report produced when none of the three accused was in Egypt and a pop video by Gotye, an Australian singer.
“AIB and its members have been shocked by both the verdicts and the sentencing in this case. The case against the journalists was repeatedly demonstrated to be flawed. This Association joins the international call for the case to be reviewed immediately and the journalists released,” said Simon Spanswick, AIB Chief Executive. “Not a single piece of evidence was found to support the charges against them in a court case that at times bordered on the farcical. AIB calls on the Egyptian authorities to release the three Al Jazeera journalists and start an immediate, thorough and transparent review of the case to restore some level of international trust in Egypt’s justice system.”
Read more here.
23 June 2014
The Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) today [23 June 2014] protested the sentencing of three journalists working for Al Jazeera English in Egypt.
The guilty verdicts were announced on Monday 23 June in a court in Cairo. The journalists – Peter Greste, Mohamed Fahmy and Baher Mohamed – had been charged with aiding the Muslim Brotherhood and reporting false news. Greste and Fahmy were sentenced to seven years in prison. Baher Mohamed was sentenced to a total of ten years in prison.
The prosecution alleged that Greste, Al Jazeera’s East Africa correspondent, and his two colleagues from the Network’s Egypt bureau, aided the Brotherhood and produced false news reports about events in Egypt. All three journalists vehemently denied the charges. The prosecution produced a range of items as evidence that were completely unrelated to the charges, including a BBC podcast, a news report produced when none of the three accused was in Egypt and a pop video by Gotye, an Australian singer.
“AIB and its members have been shocked by both the verdicts and the sentencing in this case. The case against the journalists was repeatedly demonstrated to be flawed. This Association joins the international call for the case to be reviewed immediately and the journalists released,” said Simon Spanswick, AIB Chief Executive. “Not a single piece of evidence was found to support the charges against them in a court case that at times bordered on the farcical. AIB calls on the Egyptian authorities to release the three Al Jazeera journalists and start an immediate, thorough and transparent review of the case to restore some level of international trust in Egypt’s justice system.”
Al Anstey, Al Jazeera English managing director, said the verdicts defied “logic, sense, and any semblance of justice”.
“Today three colleagues and friends were sentenced, and will continue to be kept behind bars for doing a brilliant job of being great journalists. ‘Guilty’ of covering stories with great skill and integrity. ‘Guilty’ of defending people’s right to know what is going on in their world,” Anstey said in a statement.
Context about the journalists [source: BBC Monitoring]
Peter Greste
Australian journalist Peter Greste, 48, worked for a number of news organizations including Reuters and the BBC before joining Al Jazeera’s team.
An experienced correspondent, Greste started out reporting on Bosnia and South Africa and then moved on to cover Afghanistan, Mexico, and the Middle East. He was the BBC’s Kabul correspondent in 1995, where he watched the Taleban emerge, and he returned after the Taleban lost control of the capital in 2001.He has lived in Nairobi, Kenya since 2009 where he has covered Horn of Africa countries with a particular focus on Somalia. His documentary Somalia: Land of Anarchy won a Peabody award in 2011.
His story on the relationship between a baby hippo and a giant tortoise inspired a best-selling children’s book, Owen & Mzee [pictured right].
Greste has written open letters from Tora Prison expressing his frustration at being locked up on charges of falsifying news and damaging Egypt’s reputation. “After more than 20 years as a foreign correspondent, I know what is safe ground. And we didn’t stray anywhere near that edge,” he wrote a month into his incarceration.
He says that the “new normal” in Egypt has shifted so far from the middle ground that routine journalists’ work suddenly appears threatening. “How do you accurately and fairly report on Egypt’s ongoing political struggle without talking to everyone involved?” he asked.
Mohamed Fahmy
Al-Jazeera English’s bureau chief in Cairo, Mohamed Fahmy, 40, was born in Egypt but moved to Canada with his family in the early 1990s.
He is known for his keen professional interest in the Middle East and North Africa and has extensively reported on events there for other major news outlets such as CNN and the New York Times. Mr Fahmy is also the author of “Egyptian Freedom Story”, an account of the 2011 revolution that led to the fall of the regime of the then President Hosni Mubarak. In May 2014, the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom honoured the journalist with its annual award.
In a letter smuggled out of his prison cell, Mohamed Fahmy said that “A key part of our defence has been to convince the judge of our professional integrity; to prove to him that we are journalists striving for the truth; and not agents of terror. This award will go a long way toward making our case.”
Some prominent figures in Egypt have voiced their support for the journalist. Among them is former Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa, who wrote to the court saying that Mohamed Fahmy was “known as competent, has integrity and is objective”.
Baher Mohamed
Al-Jazeera producer Baher Mohamed, 30, has worked for various international media in Egypt since he graduated from Cairo University in 2005.
He was with Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper from 2008 to 2013, and did freelance reporting for CNN and Iran’s English-language Press TV. Baher Mohamed joined Al Jazeera English in May 2013 and covered the protests in Cairo that started on 30 June and led to the ousting of the country’s Islamist President Mohammed Morsi.
According to transcripts from Baher Mohamed’s interrogations by the prosecution, published in Egypt’s al-Ahram daily, the journalist said that his father was a member of the Muslim Brotherhood and made him go to religious classes organised by the Islamists.
Baher Mohamed is quoted as saying that he refused to attend them as they were “boring”.
23 June 2014
Intelsat S.A., a leading provider of satellite services, and Gilat Satellite Networks Ltd., a worldwide leader in satellite networking technology, solutions and services, today announced a multi-year, multi-transponder agreement under which Gilat Colombia will use Intelsat Ku-band capacity on Intelsat 907 at 332.5° East to support the Kioscos Vive Digital 2 (KVDII) project.
KDVII provides connectivity to rural communities and schools in six regions within the framework of the Colombian Ministry’s national Kioscos Phase 2/VIVE DIGITAL project. Gilat’s SkyEdge II WebEnhance was chosen to be used in four of these, including the regions serviced by Gilat Colombia. Under the agreement between the companies, Gilat Colombia will use Intelsat’s satellite services for the three year initiative. As part of the project, Gilat will integrate its SkyEdge II WebEnhance data networking platform with Intelsat’s satellite services to provide internet connectivity to 1,903 kiosks within rural communities located in Colombia.
“Satellite continues to provide critical broadband infrastructure to regions where terrestrial technologies are not cost-effective or are unreliable or impossible to use given geographies,” said Carmen Gonzalez-Sanfeliu, Intelsat’s Regional Vice President, Latin America. “Gilat’s high-performing and efficient technology combined with Intelsat’s flexible and high-performing satellite services closes that divide and delivers essential internet connectivity and telephony to children and adults in communities across Colombia. The KVDII project is a great example of how the satellite community works together to provide the necessary connectivity to aid in the educational and economic development of fast growing economies, such as Colombia.”
“We have had a long and successful history of partnering with Intelsat to deliver broadband connectivity in some of the remotest regions of the world,” stated Danny Fridman, CEO of Gilat Colombia and Peru “The quality, flexibility and reliability of their satellite fleet and willingness to reposition the Intelsat 907 spot beam to help us deliver the internet to communities in Colombia made them the best partner to help support our efforts with the KVDII initiative.”
About Kioscos VIVE Digital
Kioscos VIVE Digital is an initiative of the Ministry of Information Technologies and Communications which aims to provide community Internet access points to 100% of the population centers of more than 100 people, by 2014. The project is focused on rural areas and remote locations as part of the aim to achieve digital inclusion of children, youth and adults of all ages. www.intelsat.com.
