Vladimir Kozlov on RT’s new, Berlin-based video agency which will sell its video content globally.
The video agency is going to be a commercialized version of the station’s current project FreeVideo, which provides free online access to Russia Today’s materials to 12,500 subscribers. However, with the opening of the video agency, there are plans to seriously expand the content that will be offered to customers.
"While FreeVideo is an online project where only materials that we filmed for our purposes are uploaded, the new project will be operating as a full-fledged video agency," Russia Today’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan, was quoted as saying by the Russian daily Izvestiya. "We will be shooting videos specifically for the agency, filming interviews and selecting experts."
Read more here.
Sultan Al Qassemi reports on the rise of Al Jazeera and its current hardships in the wake of the Arab Spring.
Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya are not unique in compromising their journalistic standards in Syria. Western media organizations such as the Guardian were fooled by an author claiming to be a gay girl in Damascus -- and who turned out to be an American man living in Scotland. The BBC World News editor also criticized the sensationalism of initial reports of a massacre in the town of Houla, writing, "it's more important than ever that we report what we don't know, not merely what we do."
Of course, the other side has been just as bad. Iranian propaganda outlets recently stepped up their defense of Iran's Baathist ally, publishing a series of articles that accuse Qatar of financing terrorism and colluding with Israel. Such Iranian media attacks had commonly targeted the Saudi government but are a new phenomenon with regard to Qatar, with which it shares the world's largest gas field. Russia Today, in both Arabic and English, has mirrored Iranian state media outlets in it coverage, referring to any anti-regime protesters as terrorists or militants, while turning a blind eye to the regime atrocities. Like Iran, Russia Today has also targeted Qatar, accusing it of "playing in tune with Washington's policies in the region."
Read more here.
Pew study shows that more viewers are turning to YouTube as news source and highlights RT as by far the largest provider of news video footage on the platform.
“Russia Today has developed a large online following through a combination of factors. The network has actively promoted its online content. The RT YouTube channel has more than 280,000 followers and the videos in its official channel have been viewed more than 740 million times, a number far greater than many other well-known sources such as Al Jazeera English (380 million views), Sky News (52 million) and Fox News (23 million). Other prominent news organizations have far fewer followers, such as ABC News (111,000), the New York Times (78,000) and ITN News (54,000).”
“Most of Russia Today's popular videos (68%) were not edited news packages in any traditional sense. Nor were they about Russia. Instead, they consisted of first-person video accounts of dramatic worldwide events such as the Japanese earthquake or the June 2011 riots in Vancouver following the Stanley Cup Final. The people who shot these videos may not be Russia Today reporters, but the organization acquired the footage and broadcast it, using its own dissemination tools and graphics. In that sense, Russia Today is functioning as a kind of video-sharing service itself, on television, which it then turns around and shares again on YouTube.”
Read more here.