BBG Watch Commentary
Al Jazeera, Russia Today and BBC had thousands of Facebook “Likes” and Tweets for their rich in details and constantly updated news stories on the Saturday crash of a South Korean airliner at the San Francisco airport. The Voice of America (VOA) English news website had a very short initial report from Reuters that was not updated for at least three hours. And despite the fact that top Voice of America executives, VOA Director David Ensor and Executive Editor Steve Redisch, are both former CNN television professionals, Voice of America has posted no videos online on the crash, emergency response, press conferences, casualties, comments from surviving passengers, investigation or safety features of the Boeing 777 plane.
China’s international satellite television channel, CCTV, posted online multiple videos and video reports. BBC, Al Jazeera, and Russia Today also posted videos. These video reports had thousands of views.
Russia Today, a leader in news videos on YouTube with over one billion views, had 33,785 views for its video on the San Francisco plane crash.
The latest VOA news story on the crash, NTSB: Doomed Jetliner Flying Too Slow Before Crash, had no video, one AP photo used in earlier stories, and only 315 words. Other international media outlets had the same story a few hours earlier with videos and much more detailed information.
As of Sunday evening, the VOA news story had 9 Facebook “Likes” and 27 Tweets. VOA had similarly low social media engagement numbers a few days ago for its English news report on the ouster of President Morsi in Egypt, compared to thousands of Facebook “Likes” and Tweets for news reports from Al Jazeera, Russia Today and BBC.
Russia Today Video News Report on San Francisco Plane Crash Had 33,785 YouTube Views as of Sunday Evening. VOA English News Had No Crash-Related Videos Online
But let’s assume that a plane crash of an American-built plane at an American airport with international passengers on board and international audience interest in this story does not matter that much in the greater scheme of things. (This wasn’t a Russian-built plane crashing in Russia.)
At about 8:30 PM (DC Time), Voice of America posted to YouTube a video on Sunday’s protests in Egypt. It had 6 (six) views. Several hours earlier, Russia Today posted a video news report on the Egyptian protests. It already had 6,035 views.
Russia Today beat VOA in putting its Sunday Egyptian protests report on YouTube. Since VOA was late, YouTube views cannot be compared right away, but they can be compared in a day or two.
We took two earlier YouTube reports, both posted on July 5, to compare.
A two-minute VOA report, “Egyptian Military Clashes With Muslim Brotherhood Supporters,” had 2,319 by Sunday evening.
Russia Today report, “Night of deadly clashes between Morsi supporters, opponents in Cairo,” streamed live for over 3 hours had 30,618 views.
Russia Today has 949,322 YouTube subscribers and 1,019,935,843 (that’s over one billion) views.
Voice of America has 24,225 YouTube subscribers 27,277,036 views.
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