Al Jazeera Is King Of Egypt Protests Story, Has Its Hour Come?
Comment on HOW EGYPT PROTESTS CREATED RECORD INCREASES IN ONLINE TRAFFIC FOR TOP SITES ON ARAB NEWSAl Jazeera Is King Of Egypt Protests Story, Has Its Hour Come?
Posted:Sat 12 Feb, 2011 (07:44 EST)The pro-democracy protests in Egypt have produced many surprises. One of them is that was the Arabic global news channel Al Jazeera whose bureau in Cairo was closed, and its journalists beaten up by the police.
I was not an Al Jazeera fan, but its coverage of the Egyptian protests has turned me completely. Neither CNN nor BBC has been to touch Al Jazeera; the depth of analysis its reporters (and guests) have brought to the coverage, or the penetrating questions of its anchors.
Al Jazeera’s excellence on the Egyptian story has been widely acknowledged. It has been reported that its viewership has skyrocketed. But the most stunning statistic is what happened to its website. The people rushing to read about the Egyptian protests grew its site traffic by a mind-boggling 2,500 per cent!
I think Al Jazeera moment’s as the undisputed “Arab news voice” might finally be here.
Elsewhere, as the rest of the western media that used to shape the worldview of events shut down and close their foreign bureaus, the Chinese News Agency Xinhua and the likes of Al Jazeera are expanding. Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, was quoted telling the news site Huffingtonpost that Al Jazeera now has more bureaus in Latin America, the USA’s backyard, than CNN and BBC.
And at the end of last year, Xinhua announced plans to expand its newsgathering operation from 120 to 200 overseas bureaus and as many as 6,000 journalists abroad. In the next few years, Xinhua, not Reuters, AFP or AP might well be providing most of the world’s wire copy.
If Al Jazeera firmly establishes itself as the go-to channel on the Middle East, it will leave Africa as the only continent with a global network storyteller.
RELATED ARTICLES
- HOW EGYPT PROTESTS CREATED RECORD INCREASES IN ONLINE TRAFFIC FOR THE TOP SITES ON ARAB NEWS
I was not an Al Jazeera fan, but its coverage of the Egyptian protests has turned me completely. Neither CNN nor BBC has been to touch Al Jazeera; the depth of analysis its reporters (and guests) have brought to the coverage, or the penetrating questions of its anchors.
Al Jazeera’s excellence on the Egyptian story has been widely acknowledged. It has been reported that its viewership has skyrocketed. But the most stunning statistic is what happened to its website. The people rushing to read about the Egyptian protests grew its site traffic by a mind-boggling 2,500 per cent!
I think Al Jazeera moment’s as the undisputed “Arab news voice” might finally be here.
Elsewhere, as the rest of the western media that used to shape the worldview of events shut down and close their foreign bureaus, the Chinese News Agency Xinhua and the likes of Al Jazeera are expanding. Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, was quoted telling the news site Huffingtonpost that Al Jazeera now has more bureaus in Latin America, the USA’s backyard, than CNN and BBC.
And at the end of last year, Xinhua announced plans to expand its newsgathering operation from 120 to 200 overseas bureaus and as many as 6,000 journalists abroad. In the next few years, Xinhua, not Reuters, AFP or AP might well be providing most of the world’s wire copy.
If Al Jazeera firmly establishes itself as the go-to channel on the Middle East, it will leave Africa as the only continent with a global network storyteller.
RELATED ARTICLES
- HOW EGYPT PROTESTS CREATED RECORD INCREASES IN ONLINE TRAFFIC FOR THE TOP SITES ON ARAB NEWS
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