I am posting a select few of the pictures I have uploaded to flickr, which area select few of the ones I have taken. For more pictures of my tour of Al-Jazeera, go here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jdickins_photos/
Here are some notes I took on the Al-Jazeera tour:
-Al-Jazeera decided to license its Gaza footage from the recent conflict under Creative Commons because they were the only reporters on the ground and they believed the images should get wide distributions.
-In the line of the above note, this weekend they will be having a conference to discuss new media’s impact on intellectual property in the media. So cool.
-They have a “new media” office which is dedicated to spreading Al-Jazeera’s reporting through emerging media such as YouTube and Facebook. My own opinion, their YouTube channel is the best video news coverage on YouTube.
-Al-Jazeera has been criticized (says our tour-guide) for airing Osama bin Laden’s tapes. Our tour guide made two points on that. First, they only air the portions of the tapes which are newsworthy. Second, because of their editing, Osama bin Laden stopped sending tapes to Al-Jazeera because he was upset they edited his tapes, and started sending they to Reuters. Now he uploads them to the internet in their entirety to avoid editing.
-Al-Jazeera was founded (says our tour guide) to reverse the flow of information. To send news about the developing world to the developed world, from the global south to the global north. I thought this was a cool concept.
-We were live filmed because we were in the newsroom during a show.
-Al-Jazeera is funded by the Emir (more on this when I leave the country)
Almost every student on the tour wanted to work for Al-Jazeera once we were finished. It was an impressive enterprise.
Inspirational Quote:
Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out.
Robert Collier
