Al Jazeera – Smart Play
Over the last few years, Al Jazeera has been able to gain a solid foothold in terms of international viewership, except perhaps in America. (Islamic Broadcaster = Influence Paranoia). Al Jazeera’s recent decision to make high quality footage of the Gaza invasion public under the Creative Common’s license is a brilliant move.
This allows Al Jazeera to work around broadcast gagging to directly reach it’s audiences through blogs, forums and video sites like youtube. While Israel may have restricted international media in hotspots, Al Jazeera who was already in the thick of it has effectively turned the tables.
From International Herald Tribune:
“Part of our mission, our mandate, is to get our news out,” said
Mohamed Nanabhay, a 29-year-old Al Jazeera executive who established
the company’s new-media group in 2006. “We don’t have the direct
commercial pressures that others have. If we can make some money that
is great.”