Inside Cairo
Al Jazeera, the 24 hour news channel based on the outskirts of Doha, shows more graphic imagery than the BBC, ITN or Sky. It was the channel of choice for Bin Laden’s message after 9/11, and is now the channel of choice for breaking news now that the spotlight is on the Middle East revolutions – breaking news from clips such as the YouTube offering that seemed to confirm that Gaddafi security forces were attacking civilians. The scenes on Al Jazeera are more grizzly. They are not afraid of controversy. You will often see corpses and blood. On New York’s Daily Beast, the health warning of “graphic imagery” will accompany most clips aggregated from Al Jazeera. According to a recent article in The Sunday Times, there’s greater use of new media such as their Twitter feed and mobile phone footage downloaded from Facebook.
Egyptian revolution on Facebook
These videos add to the sense of immediacy and constant news. There’s always this question – how verifiable is this footage – is there an agenda behind posting graphic imagery. Can this immediacy be manipulated either by the rebels, or the regime?
By strange inversion, in the autocratic states themselves, TV is the untrusted medium. In Egypt, more trust is invested by the public in footage uploaded onto social networks which in turn makes the news on Al Jazeera, a channel which has been banned in Libya, and was also banned in Egypt after the uprisings.
“The way the news is presented is more sensationalist,” says Alex Hands, artistic director of Land in Focus, living in Cairo at the time of the revolutions. “The regime announced curfews during the revolution, but they were completely ignored. There was only rumour of when the curfew was. It was on TV but people didn’t believe State TV at the time and there wasn’t the internet to confirm these things.”
It may be a strange inversion, but when the broadcast medium is monopolised by the untrusted state, perhaps it is no wonder that the trust lies with footage edited by the people.
Words – HL
5 tips for online video (via Documentally)
Quite frankly, making online video is about keeping it simple. Don’t overcomplicate things and if you’re struggling, you’re probably doing something wrong.
And the best video to emphasize that is Documentally’s 5 tips for successful online video which we heartily recommend.
He does omit tip 6: use funky music. We’ll throw that one in for free.
You can follow Christian @documentally
Words by HL
iVideocracy 