Al Jazeera Tells its Story: In-Depth Studies

grasp on the enormity of the pressure, difficult decisions and surprises that can shake newsrooms. One piece of breaking news is sufficient to change the entire news agenda, and this can bring quick and surprising feedback. Quality Control team members understand the amount of en- ergy expended by their colleagues to find a guest who represents a dif- ferent viewpoint and the extreme disappointment if the guest does not participate for any given reason. One of the quality-related problems in television is aligning speed, truth and professionalism. While the Qual- ity Control unit understands these circumstances, it also believes that part of its obligation is to constantly be the eyes of the viewers, who are not privy to the details of problems behind the scenes, so the unit will continue to strive for quality and insist on providing excellent service. There are constant meetings between quality experts, journalists and editors at the network, during which they give feedback from those who receive the quality control reports. These meetings have greatly improved the development of formulating reports and presenting in- formation, and the clarification of the circumstances or details of some mistakes. It is also an opportunity to address problems and discuss the importance of these reports reaching their intended audience. This top- ic takes on even more importance when the quality unit is tasked with covering specific aspects of journalistic output, such as a specific event, or notification of a repeated visual or voice mistake, making it possible to build a corrective vision without the need of direct meetings. Building Standards In the first meetings after the Quality Control team was set up and expanded, it was asked to immediately begin the monitoring process. The most prominent challenge it faced was choosing the methods of its task and which standards to apply and how much of it would be gleaned from external sources. Al Jazeera did not begin with a completely blank slate, but rather built its experience cumulatively, starting with its initial launch efforts, which were a result of a number of instructions and directives. These directives were saved in the Style page of the network’s employee sys- tem intranet, iNews, or on platforms for journalists, such as TalkBack, which is used for internal communication inside the newsroom. Jour-

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