By Elaine Pasquini
“MOSAIC: World News from the Middle East” is one of 32 recipients of the 64th Annual Peabody Awards honored as the best in electronic media for 2004. The University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication announced the winners in an April 7 ceremony at New York’s Museum of Television and Radio. Awards were presented May 16 at a luncheon ceremony at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel hosted by CBS news correspondent Morley Safer.
“MOSAIC,” Link TV’s daily news show featuring unedited English-translated newscasts from Middle Eastern broadcasters, is produced and directed in San Francisco by Jerusalem-born Jamal Dajani.
“I am very honored to produce a Peabody Award winner show,” Dajani told the Washington Report. “It is a testimony to the hard work of the small but dedicated MOSAIC crew. It is also a great win for Link TV, an organization with a vision.”
Link TV is the first satellite-only television network to win the prestigious award.
“MOSAIC” first aired in December 2001 after the 9/11 tragedy brought interest in the Middle East to the forefront of news programming. In a 2002 interview with the Washington Report, Dajani said he wanted Americans to “see the news that 280 million people watch.”
The following year Dajani was awarded New California Media’s Special Achievement Pathbreaker Award for his work in bringing news from the Arab world—the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, and the Palestine Broadcast Authority—to American audiences through his 30-minute uncensored news broadcast.
Ever since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, Dajani has been besieged by national and local television stations for his commentary and analysis of the war. In his daily show and in special programs Dajani brings to his audience news stories not reported by network television, including “Viewpoint with James Zogby,” Abu-Dhabi’s popular talk show linking Middle Eastern and American viewers.
For complete program scheduling and Internet streaming, visit .
*Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 2005.
