NATO, or the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, plans to start an online TV channel to improve the image of the Western military alliance. NATO TV will be launched April 2 at a summit in Bucharest, Romania, alliance spokesman James Appathurai said Wednesday last.
The new TV channel is the result of close cooperation between the NATO Public Diplomacy Division and the Danish Government to improve the way the Alliance communicates its work and image to the general public.
“When it comes to video, we are frankly in the stone age. NATO has no ability to gather video from the field, to show people what is happening. We are also barely on the field when it comes to the web,” NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said during a seminar on "Public Diplomacy in NATO-led Operations in Copenhagen in October 2007. This new channel will help address that challenge, NATO said in a statement.
The channel will be available on the Alliance's website on www.natochannel.tv.
Much of its coverage will focus on the mission of the alliance's 47,000 troops in Afghanistan. NATO plans to have five TV crews sending regular reports from the country. The channel will be available on the alliance's Web site, http://www.nato.int. Broadcast quality footage will also be available for TV networks to download. Denmark is providing much of the funding for the project, which is part of an effort to boost flagging public support in several allied countries for the Afghanistan mission.
