14 May 2012
The Roosevelt Foundation, a private establishment dedicated to the ideals and achievements of Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, has presented Al Jazeera Media Network with its 2012 Freedom of Speech and Expression Award.
The Foundation recognised Al Jazeera Media Network for “its longstanding efforts to provide independent, impartial news for an international audience and to offer a voice to a diversity of perspectives from under-reported regions”.
Ahmed bin Jassim Al-Thani, Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network, accepted the award at a ceremony on May 12, 2012 in Nieuwe Kerk in Middelburg, Netherlands in the presence of Queen Beatrix. He said:
“It is with immense pride and sincere humility that I accept the Freedom of Speech and Expression Award on behalf of Al Jazeera Media Network.
“Al Jazeera launched in 1996 as the first independent Arabic news channel in the world, with a vision to provide unbiased news coverage in a region where independent and balanced reporting did not exist.
“From the beginning, Al Jazeera led the way in putting the human being at the heart of its news agenda – with the opinion and the other opinion as the foundation of our journalistic values.
“Now, with the largest news network of bureaux across the globe, we stand tall as an international media network – with journalists, channels, and initiatives that transcend boundaries and challenge conventional wisdom.
“At the heart of Al Jazeera’s strength is our employees. They are our biggest asset. The courage of our people who risk their lives on a daily basis serves as an example of true heroism and courage.
Previous winners of Freedoms Medals have included Nelson Mandela, Kofi Annan, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, J. William Fulbright, Arthur Miller, The Most Rev’d Desmond Tutu, Terry Waite, Vaclav Havel, Mary Robinson.
Since 1982, the centenary of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s birth, the Roosevelt Institute and the Roosevelt Stichting have awarded Four Freedoms medals each year to individuals who exemplify the vision of the Four Freedoms that President Roosevelt outlined in his famous January 6, 1941 speech. The laureates are chosen, based on their lifetime commitment to these ideals, which President Roosevelt, described as essential conditions of human liberty.
A full text of Al Jazeera Media Network’s acceptance speech can be viewed below or here: http://www.aljazeera.com/pressoffice/2012/05/20125121725384344.html
27 March 2012
Al Jazeera Balkan, the newest addition to the Qatar-based broadcaster’s international portfolio, has gone live with the Mosart newscasting system at its Sarajevo news studio. The first of Al Jazeera’s channels to base its news studio around Mosart, Al Jazeera Balkan broadcasts at least six hours of news per day, with a remit to provide objective coverage of events to audiences across the former Yugoslavia in their own languages.
Specified by project integrators Qvest Media for a news production facility that includes Sony cameras, a Snell video mixer, Vizrt graphics and an Avid iNews newsroom system, the Mosart newscasting system provides Al Jazeera with multifunctional studio control to streamline workflow, while enabling very high production quality. The all-new file-based studio infrastructure has been designed to facilitate speedy and efficient production processes, and the exceptional control and flexibility of the Mosart system will allow gallery staff to adapt easily to extended broadcasting hours when the station increases its on-air schedule.
“Using the Mosart system means we can run a very high quality news production with a small gallery team, while still being able to respond instantly to breaking news,” said Miljenko Logozar, chief technical officer for Al Jazeera Balkan. “Setting up for the launch with a completely new studio infrastructure meant our staff had a lot to learn, and the Mosart system has been invaluable in simplifying a major part of the workload. It also means that we can readily scale up our news schedule because we don’t have to train a lot of new staff for the extra hours on air.”
With its open-standards ability to integrate with the widest range of studio equipment, sophisticated device control, and ability to make powerful concurrent event triggering simple for the operator, Mosart has been adopted for newscast automation by many of Europe’s most prestigious broadcasters and news operators, including Sky, the BBC, YLE, N24, ARD-aktuell, and NRK.
“From a system integration perspective, the Mosart system offers substantial benefits,” said Johannes Friedel, project manager for Qvest Media. “The ability to provide advanced automated control of all the components used in newsroom operations from a configurable user interface makes Mosart a powerful tool for twenty-first century news broadcasting.”
Mosart is the only open newscast automation capable of working with all major video switchers (Snell, Grass Valley, Sony, and Ross), news production systems such as ENPS, iNEWS, Open Media, Dalet, Octopus, and NorCom, and most other widely adopted brands of vision mixer, video servers, graphics systems, and camera robotics systems. Mosart is based on open system IT standards and interfaces, and uses a story- and template-based architecture, which allows the broadcaster to change or add broadcast hardware devices without modifying rundowns, changing show configurations or replacing the automation. Mosart runs on commercially available high reliability client/server hardware, and a fully redundant architecture is achieved through server hot-switching and duplicated graphical user interface clients.
“As one of the world’s fastest-growing and most forward-looking TV networks, Al Jazeera sets the highest technical standards,” said John Kjellevold, managing director, Mosart Medialab. “By creating a state-of-the-art news facility based around the Mosart system, Al Jazeera Balkan has set the benchmark for productive, high quality news broadcasting, and we are delighted that they have joined the rapidly growing band of Mosart users.”
