Middle East-based news channel al-Jazeera International has opened offices in Johannesburg and has hired former South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) senior reporter Kalay Maistry as its Southern Africa correspondent.
Speaking to the South African Press Association on Monday evening, Maistry, who has extensive broadcast journalism experience, described joining the channel as a ”fresh challenge”.
”It’s a 24-hour international news challenge and I’ll be doing what I’ve always dreamed of: being a foreign correspondent.”
Maistry left the national broadcaster recently and Monday was her first day at al-Jazeera International.
She said she believed the news channel had no hidden agenda and that it was committed to impartiality and reporting on Africa in a way that would show a different side to it.
”For a change, Africa will not be just a slot in the news agenda but part of the everyday agenda showing different sides to the stories,” Maistry said.
Al-Jazeera International is building on the groundbreaking debut of its sister Arab language channel — al-Jazeera, which was responsible for changing the face of news within the Middle East — and extending that fresh perspective from regional to global, said al-Jazeera International’s director of news, Steve Clark.
Al-Jazeera International was the only international channel inside the Middle East looking out. Clark said the channel intended to ”dig deeper” to show stories from Africa that had not previously been covered.
Other offices of the news and current affairs channel are in London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur, with its headquarters in Doha.
Staff at the Johannesburg bureau include senior news producer Claude Colart and South African cameraman Chevan Rayson.
The channel is expected to start operating from March/April 2006. – Sapa