Journalism.co.uk Editors' Blog » Gaza

Reuters runs safety training course for Gaza journalists

Laura Oliver — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:54:20 +0000

Reuters’ Gaza bureau ran a four-day training course this week in recognition of cameraman Fadel Shana, who was killed in the region on 16 April 2008.

Twenty Palestinian journalists received tuition in TV production, with extra training on aspects of safety and ethics in conflict zones, a release from Reuters said.

Sessions on filming and editing ran alongside first aid training, including the treatment of gunshot and blast wounds.

In April 2008, Shana was killed by a shell fired by Israeli soldiers. He was the first Reuters journalist to be killed in Gaza. The cameraman was on his way to cover an incident when his vehicle stopped. On getting out of the vehicle an explosion killed Shana and two bystanders.

A soundman travelling with Shana escaped serious injury.

In August last year the news agency said it was ‘disappointed and dissatisfied’ by an investigation by the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) into Shana’s death, which said soldiers were justified in opening fire on Shana, as they believed his tripod-mounted camera might be a weapon.

Commenting on the training programme, Reuters bureau chief in Israel and Palestinian territories, Alastair Macdonald, said: “Fadel was killed doing a job to which he was dedicated and to which he brought immense talent and promise. To honour his memory and to improve opportunities for young Palestinian journalists who would wish to follow his example, we are delighted to be able to provide this training.”

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Where does the BBC have bureaux and why?

Judith Townend — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:14:58 +0000

Journalism.co.uk had been surprised to learn at last month’s Journalism in Crisis event that the BBC used only stringers to cover South America, according to director of news Helen Boaden.

The location of global bureaux ‘is something to do with your colonial past’ she said, adding to comments by BBC director-general Mark Thompson, when he was questioned by an irate audience member on the corporation’s lack of coverage in that part of the world (specifically Latin America).

Audio here:

Does the BBC really have no bureaux in Central and South America? Well, the BBC press office later told Journalism.co.uk, it depends how you define stringers and bureaux.

There is a distinction between ‘newsgathering hub’ bureaux and ‘non-hub’ regional bureaux the BBC spokesperson said. While there are no ‘newsgathering hub bureaux’ in South and Central Americas, there are four regional offices, located in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Mexico City and Havana. How many in each, Journalism.co.uk asked.

Two in each of the four cities: one producer and one local fixer, both on sponsored stringer contracts with retainers. Other individual stringers cover the rest of the continent other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with freelancers working from Colombia, Peru, Venezuela, Chile and Jamaica.

It’s an interesting question: where are international news organisations’ bureaux and why? A particularly pertinent one to raise, given the difficulties in accessing material from Iran at the moment. The BBC office in Tehran remains open, but permanent correspondent Jon Leyne has been ordered to leave the country, the corporation reported yesterday.

While the BBC had two producers inside a Gaza office in 2008, it did not have any permanent crew on the ground and this affected its coverage of the crisis at the end of that year, and the early part of 2009.

It was helpful for Al Jazeera to have people already based in Gaza, as its two correspondents told Journalism.co.uk in a live-blog interview in April.

NB: Whether Al Jazeera were the ‘only’ English-language international broadcaster in the area for the 12-day media block is still a bone of contention: a journalist later reminded Journalism.co.uk that his employer, Iranian government-funded Press TV, was also reporting from the region during that period.

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Going it alone: Al Jazeera’s Gaza correspondents live interview FRIDAY 2pm (GMT+1)

Judith Townend — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 09:00:08 +0000

What happens when you find yourself as the only English-language television broadcaster at a breaking news scene?

What happens when that breaking news scene is a major war in the middle east?

That’s exactly what happened for Al Jazeera journalists Sherine Tadros and Ayman Mohyeldin earlier this year when Al Jazeera English found itself the only major English television broadcaster allowed inside Gaza.

Al Jazeera Gaza Correspondents: ‘Going it Alone’

A 12-day ban prevented other Western media networks entering the area – although the BBC used two producers already on the ground. Read this post by the POLIS researcher Nina Bigalke, on Charlie Beckett’s blog, for a fuller context. “If 12 hours are a very long time in the world of journalism, 12 days seem like an eternity,” Bigalke writes.

Journalism.co.uk first met Tadros and Mohyeldin, who reported from Gaza throughout the conflict, in February:

“To be the only English channel on the ground could be a ‘one-off experience’ during her career, [Tadros] said. While she thrived on being part of the only English-language media team on the ground – ‘everything we did was exclusive’ – Tadros was aware of the responsibility to cover as much as possible for an English speaking audience.”

Now it’s your chance to join in and put your questions to the pair. Visit this site at 2pm (GMT +1). Journalism.co.uk will be putting a series of questions, via CoverItLive, to Tadros and Mohyeldin about their experience. Was it liberating to find themselves without the BBC working alongside? Was it a daunting responsibility?

Leave your own questions in the comments below this post and they will be included in the interview. See you at 2pm (4pm Doha time). You can also submit questions to @journalism_live on Twitter.

UPDATE 15.00 BST: THIS EVENT HAS NOW FINISHED. Thank you for your questions and thoughts. Please leave additional comments on the subject of media coverage in Gaza below this post. If you participated and wish to comment on the use of CoverItLive in this format please send your feedback to judith at journalism.co.uk. Did it seem a good way to present an interview? Was the balance of questions between Journalism.co.uk and users about right? Many thanks in advance for your help.

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Live at the Frontline @7pm: ‘Gaza – Missiles and Messages’

Judith Townend — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 15:54:39 +0000

Tonight at the Frontline Club, ‘Gaza Missiles and Messages,’ hosted by Roy Greenslade and with:

Jonathan Miller, (C4)
Alan Fisher (Al Jazeera)
Harriet Sherwood, (the Guardian)
Ruthie Blum Leibowitz (The Jerusalem Post)
Lior Ben Dor (Israeli affairs specialist)

Here is the video from the event:

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Gaza images projected on BBC Broadcasting House

Judith Townend — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:09:30 +0000

Courtesy of photographer Fil Kaler come these images from BBC Broadcasting House on Portland Place, London, on Monday night: the International Solidarity Movement projected the DEC Gaza appeal onto the building in protest at the BBC’s decision not to broadcast the appeal. These other and other images relating to the Gaza protests can be viewed on Kaler’s Flickr account.

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That DEC Gaza Crisis appeal video the BBC would not show…

John Thompson — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 21:01:15 +0000

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BBC and Sky News abstain from DEC Gaza appeal; Al Jazeera and Number 10 site show support

Laura Oliver — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:18:38 +0000

The BBC has been on the receiving end this weekend of some fairly heavy criticism for not broadcasting an appeal from the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) for donations to help people in the Gaza region.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, a group of 50 MPs launching an Early Day Motion, 11,000 viewers and protestors outside Broadcasting House have urged the corporation to reconsider its stance.

“What we’re not going to do is run a free-standing appeal on our airwaves. We do want to cover the humanitarian story, we want to cover it in our news programmes where we can put it in context and we can do it in a careful, balanced objective way,” said director-general Mark Thompson on BBC Breakfast.

Thompson also explained the decision via the BBC Editors Blog.

Sky News joined the broadcaster today in saying it will not show the DEC message – following up the announcement with an online debate with foreign news head Adrian Wells.

But elsewhere Al Jazeera will run public service announcements relating to the campaign from today and the 10 Downing St website is carrying a news release and link to the DEC site.

Meanwhile Tony Benn used an appearance on the Today programme to mention the appeal despite the BBC’s stance.

As such, there’s an argument that the BBC’s refusal to broadcast the charity’s appeal is generating even more coverage for it.

Blogger Martin Belam points out that an info box on DEC is carried on several pages of bbc.co.uk.

“Depending on where you stand, the BBC decision over the DEC appeal is either a fig-leaf to cover a previous lack of impartiality, evidence that the BBC will do absolutely anything to appease their Israeli masters, or a cunning ruse to to gain even more publicity for the appeal than merely broadcasting it ever would have done,” writes Belam.

As such, what is inarguable is the heated response that any coverage of the Gaza situation by the BBC will receive and the disagreement it will cause, says Belam.

A lose-lose situation for the Beeb?

UPDATE: The video has now been aired on ITN and you can view it here.

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A week of innovation from Al Jazeera ends with launch of mobile sites

Judith Townend — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:57:29 +0000

Media coverage on Al Jazeera English hasn’t always been positive, but since its launch it’s done some interesting things multimedia-wise: launching all its content on YouTube, in April 2007, for example (its English content page can be found here).

More broadly the Al Jazeera network, which includes the Arabic channels, has also not been afraid to try out new technology, with the launch of a ‘citizen-journalism upload portal’ for example.

This week we’ve reported on its video content partnership with the Independent newspaper site. While they’ve tightened up the PR act (no longer in-house, it’s managed by Brown Lloyd James, the same agency that handles press for the Telegraph group) these are newsworthy developments.

Events in Gaza have been a chance for Al Jazeera to experiment and show off its multimedia – through projects showcased at Al Jazeera Labs. Follow Al Jazeera’s head of new media, Mohamed Nanabhay, @Mohamed, on Twitter to find out more.

Particularly exciting is its release of material under a Creative Commons licence, in its 3.0 form – allowing other sites reproduce the broadcaster’s video content as long as they attribute the source.

Today comes further news from the broadcaster: the beta launch of its Arabic and English mobile websites, which will work on any mobile handset with web browsing ability.

“Users only need to bookmark the following web addresses on their mobile, for English news http://m.aljazeera.net/, and for Arabic news http://ma.aljazeera.net/,” a release from the company said.

“The mobile web initiative is one of the key services that is being launched as part of our New Media strategy”, Saeed Othman Bawazir, Al Jazeera’s director of technology, said in the release.

“The aim is to make our content more accessible to new audiences across various new platforms. With the launch of this mobile service, we hope to provide our audience with a customized news browsing experience on the mobile device of their choice,” he said.

This initiative includes ‘delivering video and other content over interactive platforms,’ such as YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and iTunes, the release said.

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Live stream from Gaza hosted on Ustream

Judith Townend — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 11:32:16 +0000

This live stream ‘Live Gaza Action’, hosted on Ustream, is fast attracting attention and comments (hat tip: Al Jazeera’s head of new media, Mohamed Nanabha, @mohamed via Twitter).

According to the stream’s description, the stream is coming from Ramattan and NanaLive, ‘a Gaza news camera contractor and a Israeli news organization respectively.’

“It seems there are large blocks of Live stream of the war zone, but you’ll also see commercials and news commentary like any normal news organization,” the description says.

The stream is embedded here, but follow this link to follow the fast-paced comments alongside the live stream.

Free TV Show from Ustream

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Mashable: How to track Gaza news using social media

John Thompson — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 20:33:13 +0000

A collection of sites and tools you can use to track news from the conflict in Gaza. Full story…

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