Al Jazeera, the first regional news television, celebrates 5 years of broadcasting. “Five-year plans” is always a good opportunity for looking back and checking how much has been done, and one of the founders of Al Jazeera Balkans, Edhem Foco, talks about the past five years.
Thousands of hours of broadcast, reporting live from Egypt, Turkey, Ukraine, Syria, Lebanon, the United States and many other countries and locations, monitoring the most important regional events and crises, documentaries that remind us why the documentary program used to be one of the most important segments of television, more than 43 million views on YouTube, investments worth more than 160 million BAM … However, from all the above that they can be proud of in the Al Jazeera Balkans, one of the main “culprits” for this project praised about something else.
“In these five years of the Al Jazeera Balkans, in the families of our employees, was born 100 babies. The number will be increased soon, and it is our great joy. We are proud!” said Edhem Foco, Director of the Al Jazeera Network.
Al Jazeera is certainly the biggest investment in the media in recent decade in the region. Which amounts are we talking about when it comes to investing?
All our investments are transparent and all the money for Al Jazeera Balkans in BiH enters through the system of direct foreign investment. From 2011 to the present, we have invested more than 160 million BAM in the Al Jazeera Balkans, and since our headquarters is in Sarajevo, most of it, therefore, was invested in BiH.
Can you explain what it meant for BiH?
The money came from our parent company, from Al Jazeera. We need to justify the money every year and precisely show where it went. Al Jazeera Media Network verifies the justification of investments and we have received the highest marks in the past. In these 5 years, the best grades in the Al Jazeera network, received our director Tarik Djodjic. I think that Al Jazeera gave a fantastic incentive for the local economy, and we have allocated more than 20 million BAM for contributions to the salaries and payroll taxes. We have paid nearly 2.5 million BAM to the Indirect Taxation Authority, and over a million BAM on the name of the customs duties. We have paid more than 47 million BAM to domestic suppliers for delivered goods and services.
Some will say that Al Jazeera is too big television for too small country. Regional television as part of the global network is located in the city which is really small, poorly connected, let’s say by air traffic, with the world…
These observations are true. However, I would go with a different logic. Al Jazeera network had quite ambitious ideas: launching the channel in Spanish, Turkish, Swahili … Of all these projects, a small team, Al Jazeera Balkans, managed to finish the project within the given time and financial limits. Other mentioned projects were not implemented or died out. Balkan region is small, but very active. You cannot compare this small region with some big countries that have more people or resources, but the Balkans has always been more turbulent and somehow, historically, more important and more present. We can talk about the different approach, Al Jazeera was necessary in this part of the world, in the sense that the region conditionally “little shifts” and to gain self-confidence, but also to prove to other media that the Balkans should not be neglected.
What is the goal in the next “five-years”?
We are facing challenges in a world that is rapidly changing, and where new technologies are overtaking each other. Online content is increasingly important, and the region lags behind the world in this field. We must be more dedicated to this digital content, AJ + is a good platform and we are planning to bring it to the region. Of course, we will not neglect the development of our TV program and reporting. I hope that we will do something in the field of education, that we will soon make a media training center, which would be based somewhere in the region. Basically, we are optimistic about the growth of Al Jazeera in the coming years.
(Source: N. Novalic/Klix.ba)
