Hamas to launch new satellite TV channel - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East - 1 views
www.al-monitor.com/...atellite-tv-channel-media.html
media Palestine Gaza Hamas television TV satellite
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The Hamas-led Gaza government is preparing to launch its own Al Ra’i satellite television channel, a new addition to an array of print and electronic media outlets by the same name
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The Gaza government and Hamas own a number of media outlets, mostly established after Hamas’ victory in the 2006 elections. They include a daily and semi-weekly newspapers, a number of local FM radio stations, a monthly newspaper that deals with social issues, a variety of local news agencies and websites, a media production company and the Al-Aqsa satellite television channel, as well as a few television channels and news sites abroad.
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The current staff is comprised of approximately 30 employees, some of whom come from various government ministries and possess the required qualifications. We are also collaborating with local media production companies to produce programs at a lower cost, or sometimes free of charge,
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According to a number of Hamas officials interviewed by Al-Monitor, the movement felt that it lacked the proper venue on other Palestinian, Arab and foreign media outlets to express its views, because those outlets are biased toward either the Palestinian Authority (PA) or Israel and limit their coverage to exposing the movement’s negative aspects, without any mention of its positive ones.
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Hamas gives great importance to the media, and has tried on more than one occasion to pressure media outlets into adopting its point of view or political line. Its dispute with Fatah also compelled Hamas to try to control the Palestinian Journalists Syndicate in Gaza, where Fatah controlled the majority of board members. Hamas formed its own Journalists Syndicate board of directors in Gaza, composed of journalists affiliated with the movement and Islamic Jihad. But the experiment quickly proved to be a failure when the board announced its resignation several months later.
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“The channel’s discourse will be different from the one adopted by other Hamas-affiliated media outlets. It will express the point of view of the government and will not be similar to that of the Hamas-affiliated Al-Aqsa satellite channel. We will try to focus attention on the human aspect and the suffering of people, as well as the positive qualities of Palestinian society in the Gaza Strip,”
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“There was a clear mix-up, in Arab and foreign countries, between the stance of the Gaza government and that of Hamas as a movement, after the ouster of President Mohammed Morsi. As a result of satellite channels abroad being agreeable to the Muslim Brotherhood, and our lack of control over their editorial policies, it became necessary for us to have our own television channel that would target Arab and Western audiences and clarify the government’s stance independently.”
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the Gaza government still bars the distribution of West Bank newspapers in Gaza, in retaliation for the PA’s ban on the distribution of Hamas-affiliated newspapers in the West Bank. Hamas continues to forbid Fatah-affiliated media offices from conducting business in Gaza, but has allowed some of their reporters to file from Gaza, in return for the Ramallah government allowing Al-Aqsa TV and Al-Quds reporters to work there