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GENEVA: The United Nations said Friday that its findings showed that the shot that killed Al Jazeera TV journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on May 11 was fired by Israeli forces. The Palestinian-American journalist, who was wearing a vest marked “Press” and a helmet, was killed on May 11 while covering an Israeli army operation in Jenin camp in the northern West Bank. “We find that the shots that killed Abu Akleh came from Israeli security forces,” UN Human Rights Office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani told reporters in Geneva. “It is deeply disturbing that Israeli authorities have not conducted a criminal investigation. “We at the UN Human Rights Office have concluded our independent monitoring into the incident. “The shots that killed Abu Akleh and injured her colleague Ali Sammoudi came from Israeli security forces and not from indiscriminate firing by armed Palestinians, as initially claimed by Israeli authorities” she said. She added that the information came from the Israeli military and the Palestinian attorney general. “We have found no information suggesting that there was activity by armed Palestinians in the immediate vicinity of the journalists,” Shamdasani said. In line with its human rights monitoring methodology, the UN rights office inspected photo, video and audio material, visited the scene, consulted experts, reviewed official communications and interviewed witnesses. The findings showed that seven journalists arrived at the western entrance of the Jenin refugee camp soon after 6:00 am. At around 6:30 am, as four of the journalists turned into a particular street, “several single, seemingly well-aimed bullets were fired toward them from the direction of the Israeli security forces. “One single bullet injured Ali Sammoudi in the shoulder; another single bullet hit Abu Akleh in the head and killed her instantly.” UN human rights chief Michelle Bachelet has urged Israel to open a criminal investigation into Abu Akleh’s killing and into all other killings by Israeli forces in the West Bank and in the context of law enforcement operations in Gaza.
CANNES: The award winners for this year’s Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity have been announced.
This year saw 25,464 entries from 87 countries competing to become the global benchmark for excellence in creativity and effectiveness.
“This is always such a pivotal moment for us because the work entered provides a compelling insight into the global creative marketing landscape,” said Simon Cook, the festival’s CEO.
The Middle East region bagged more than 20 awards, including two Grands Prix for the UAE. “The Election Edition,” a campaign by Lebanese newspaper An-Nahar and Dubai-based marketing communications group Impact BBDO, won the highest number of trophies in the region.
The campaign, which won eight awards, including a Grand Prix in the print and publishing category, had “the kind of genius simplicity that we often see in Grand Prix-winning work,” said jury president Natalie Lam, who is Publicis Groupe’s chief creative officer for Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa.
The final Lion of the night... Congratulations @AMV_BBDO, Media Lions Grand Prix winner for Hope Reef. #CannesLions2022 https://t.co/5ofz5RdvZR pic.twitter.com/3LKqPGUhzR — LIONS | The Home of Creativity (@Cannes_Lions) June 23, 2022
The final Lion of the night... Congratulations @AMV_BBDO, Media Lions Grand Prix winner for Hope Reef. #CannesLions2022 https://t.co/5ofz5RdvZR pic.twitter.com/3LKqPGUhzR
“The irony is that it’s a Grand Prix in print and publishing when there was no printing at all — something that shows that the power of an idea can transcend design,” said Dina Richa, the CEO of Impact BBDO.
Havas Middle East Dubai followed closely with seven trophy wins, all for Adidas. The campaign “Liquid Billboard” won a Grand Prix, one gold, two silver and one bronze in the outdoor category as well as a silver trophy in the media category.
The agency also won a silver trophy in the Entertainment Lion for Sports category for Adidas.’ “I’m Possible Billboards” campaign.
Horizon FCB Dubai’s innovative use of a new technology resulted in the campaign “Breakchains with Blockchain” for the Children of Female Prisoners Association, which won three silver trophies in the digital craft, media and creative commerce categories.
In Egypt, thousands of women are sent to prison every year for being unable to repay loans often worth only a few hundred dollars.
Working with global artists, the agency and the association created non-fungible tokens, each designed to tell the story of why a woman was sentenced to prison and priced at the amount it would cost to free them.
Other winners from the region include TBWA\RAAD Dubai for its “Chickenstock” campaign for KFC, which won a silver trophy, the UAE Government Media Office for “The Warm Winter Livestream” campaign, which won a bronze trophy, and VMLY&R Commerce MENA Dubai’s “Twitter Feminine Arabic” campaign for Twitter, which won a silver trophy.
Carla El-Maalouli, head of marketing for Twitter in the MENA region, said the company was honored to be recognized at the festival for a campaign “that captures our ethos of inclusivity.”
“As a company, Twitter is continuously exploring new ideas and projects to ensure the platform is representative of the diverse voices that shape the conversation and the Arabic Feminine language setting is a continuation of our work around inclusive language,” she added.
The special awards of the night included:
Creative Company of the Year (previously Holding Company of the Year): WPP
Network of the Year: Ogilvy
Independent Network of the Year: Serviceplan Group
Agency of the Year: Dentsu Creative, Bengaluru
Independent Agency of the Year: We Believers, Brooklyn, USA
Creative Brand of the Year: Burger King
The Regional Network of the Year for Europe, Middle East and Africa was awarded to Publicis Worldwide.
LONDON: Netflix Inc. said it laid off 300 employees, or about 4 percent of its workforce, in the second round of job cuts aimed at lowering costs after the streaming giant lost subscribers for the first time in more than a decade. The move mostly affected its US workforce and came after the company cut 150 jobs last month. “While we continue to invest significantly in the business, we made these adjustments so that our costs are growing in line with our slower revenue growth,” Netflix said in a statement on Thursday. The world’s dominant streaming service has come under pressure in recent months as inflation, the war in Ukraine and fierce competition weigh on subscriber growth. After the subscriber drop in the first quarter, Netflix has forecast even deeper losses for the current period. To arrest that downtrend, the company plans to introduce a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier for which it is in talks with several companies.
CANNES: The Saudi Research and Media Group (SRMG) concluded its participation in the Cannes Lions Festival for International Creativity on Thursday with an impressive night of art and music and panels on digital well-being and connectivity.
SRMG partnered with the region’s leading music platform, Anghami, to organize a special night called ‘MENA Night’ which was attended by many talents, creators, media experts and award winners of the Festival.
“Celebrating the creative talents who represented the MENA region at the Cannes Lions Festival is a unique opportunity to showcase their incredible talent and innovation to the world,” said Jomana Al-Rashid, CEO of SRMG.
“At SRMG, we are delighted to host the talents that represented the MENA region at the Cannes Lions Festival, and as one of the most respected and largest media groups in the Middle East, we always, and will continue to, embrace the best and brightest talent from the region and the world.”
Various rising stars from the Middle East attended the event, including Bird Pearson, Lush and Samee’ Lamee’ from Saudi music entertainment company ‘Middle Beast.’
Guests also had an exclusive look at NFT artworks from regional artists and creators including Faisal Al-Khuraiji, Alaa Balkhi, Amr Boughari and Rex Chouk.
The show was organized by Nuqta, the first collaborative, mobile and web app, which invites the public to post images of Arabic calligraphy and typography as they experience it anywhere.
The media powerhouse hosted a series of interactive panel discussions and a virtual experience in a dedicated pavilion at the festival throughout the week.
Al-Rashid outlined SRMG’s digital transformation strategy and its vision to upgrade from one of the largest and most influential media groups in the MENA region into an integrated global media giant.
In one panel moderated by Haifa Al-Jedea, managing director of SRMG Think, the media group hosted Larissa May, founder and executive director of #HalfTheStory, in conversation with Abdullah Al-Rashid, founder of Sync Summit and director at Ithra.
The panel discussed the importance of raising awareness of the negative impacts of 24/7 connectivity on our health and well-being.
The panelists called on digital platforms to prioritize the digital well-being of young people by incorporating ethical design principles.
May said that the role of #HalfTheStory is to empower the next generation of consumers to “thrive online and in life,” and to set boundaries for their digital use.
“We often don’t step back and notice how our devices have infiltrated our lives — especially those of us who work in the media industry,” she added.
Meanwhile, Abdullah Al-Rashid said that Saudis are among the world’s top users of YouTube, Snapchat and Twitter in some metrics. He asked guests: “The majority of our population are connected all the time and have only ever experienced that way of life. What does that mean for them?”
In another panel, Riad Hamade, director of business news at Asharq Business with Bloomberg, a subsidiary of SRMG, was joined by Rebecca Bezzina, SVP and managing director at R/GA London; Per Pedersen, founder and global creative chairman of by The Network; and Laurent Thevenet, head of creative technology at Publicis Groupe APAC and MEA.
The panel explored how technology is creating new ways to tell stories and disrupt the communications industry.
SRMG, one of the largest media and publishing groups in the Middle East, owns more than 30 major media outlets in the region, including Arab News, Asharq Al-Awsat, Asharq News and Sayidaty.
DUBAI: Applications are being accepted for the second round of the CNN Academy Abu Dhabi journalism training program, which will begin in September.
The inaugural program, which began in January 2021, offered a full-time, five-week course featuring a combination of online learning and in-person workshops at CNN’s offices at twofour54 in Abu Dhabi.
Now it once again is offering a hybrid, intensive training program that includes workshops, this time at Yas Creative Hub, along with online webinars presented by senior CNN journalists, content creators and production specialists who will share the organization’s best practices in news gathering, verification of sources and content production for its various platforms.
“Participants in this year’s CNN Academy Abu Dhabi will go through a very clear student-learning journey,” Alireza Hajihosseini, the director of CNN Academy, told Arab News.
The class size has been expanded to accommodate 25 students, he added, and the number in-person activities and events have also increased.
During the initial stages, the participants will complete 10 courses covering core topics such as ethics in journalism, writing for TV news, and mobile storytelling and editing. They will also have the opportunity to attend the Global Media Congress alongside delegates from CNN.
CNN Academy “wants to empower the next generation of global journalists,” which means equipping participants with the tools “they need to succeed in a digital-first news ecosystem,” said Hajihosseini.
“Among the most important of those skills is the ability to gather and verify news via social media,” he added. “To do this effectively, you must combine traditional journalism skills with digital technology.”
With this in mind, the program includes courses on mobile storytelling and multiplatform storytelling. “We are living in a golden age of content production, where more people have access to a wider array of tools to tell the stories they want,” Hajihosseini said. “Most of us have smartphones, which have effectively removed the barriers to the production and dissemination of content.”
The mobile storytelling course will teach participants how to film and edit engaging content using a smartphone, which is especially useful when producing stories for social media, or for field reporting during a breaking news event, he added.
“Online formats provide a huge range of opportunities and affordances to storytellers, so journalists need to understand the tools they have at their disposal to present their work,” said Hajihosseini.
The multiplatform storytelling class, he added, will consider questions such as: What are the foremost considerations for writers to ensure that users engage with their content? And how do you structure and design new digital platforms, such as newsletters?
During the final week of the program, the participants will take part in the first CNN Academy Newsroom Simulation at Yas Creative Hub, which has been designed in consultation with CNN journalists from around the world and Professor Rex Brynen from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.
This competitive challenge will require participants to investigate and report on a fictional breaking news story that puts their journalism skills to the test in a realistic, fast-paced setting. Each element of the scenario has been tailored to reinforce the journalistic best practices they have learned in conjunction with the broader CNN Academy curriculum.
“It is a week-long event where participants will work in teams to get to the bottom of a fast-developing story with multiple characters and sources,” said Hajihosseini.
The simulation will also include a specially developed, artificial social media platform “that will introduce challenges such as how to filter out the noise and avoid going down rabbit holes of misinformation,” he added.
At the end of the challenge, participants will produce video reports that will be judged by a panel of experienced CNN staff.
Several graduates of the first CNN Academy Abu Dhabi have gone on to establish a career in the media, including five who worked for CNN through paid internships, fixed-term positions or full-time roles.
Mohammed Abdelbary, for example, took part in the academy last year and subsequently joined CNN Abu Dhabi as an associate producer on the show “Connect the World with Becky Anderson.”
“CNN Academy opened my eyes to the type of journalist I could be,” he told Arab News.
He came from a marketing background, with no academic or work experience in journalism, and said he found the program unique in that “it was made for anyone and everyone to experience. The program positions itself for storytellers, not just journalists.”
He added: “I started the program with no experience in the world of journalism but came out with the tools to get my foot in the door. I can honestly say CNN Academy fast-tracked my career by at least two to three years.”
Applications for CNN Academy Abu Dhabi are being accepted now and must be submitted by July 15. It is is open to UAE nationals and residents over the age of 21 who have a background and/or interest in media and multiplatform storytelling.
ABU DHABI: Abu Dhabi Media, the UAE-based public broadcaster and media company, has appointed streaming platform Starzplay to exclusively handle advertising sales and commercial services for its entire portfolio.
As part of the long-term deal, Starzplay, supported by its shareholder E-Vision, will manage ADM’s commercial and advertising deals in all general entertainment fields, including TV, radio, digital and publishing, across the Middle East and North Africa region and beyond.
The partnership will “contribute significantly to enhancing Abu Dhabi Media’s commercial proposition” and support the company’s “mission to further extend our reach to new commercial partners in line with our strategic priorities, while also being able to create new opportunities with our existing advertisers,” said Abdulraheem Alnuaimi, ADM’s general manager.
Starzplay already has a “long-standing relationship” with ADM and the deal “further strengthens our market leadership and we look forward to offering cutting-edge solutions to our partners, in conjunction with our shareholder E-Vision,” said Danny Bates, Starzplay’s co-founder and chief commercial officer.
Further to the agreement, Starzplay has assembled an internal advertising-sales business team, led by Hamad Malik, and plans to expand its sales network across the Gulf Cooperation Council region.
“The market is continuously evolving and, as leaders in the industry, we have always striven to innovate and evolve with the changing trends,” Bates added. “The addition of advertising sales is a long-term strategic decision and we look forward to exploring multiple opportunities in this space.”