Asia

DW’s popular Indonesian science magazine, Inovator, is being broadcast by even more Indonesian partners. TV9 Nusantara in Surabaya, TirtaTV in Tangerang, JayaTV in Papua and JakTV in Jakarta und Medan are including a weekly episode of the popular show in their lineup. Select episodes are also available on-demand.

Iflix, Asia’s largest OTT provider, is a new DW partner with on-demand content from DW in English being provided to 15 million households in 30 Asian countries, including India, Pakistan and Indonesia. Along with linear TV, Iflix also includes series from DW’s documentary catalogue, DW Transtel.

The Singapore-based OTT platform HOOQ is now carrying a DW English HD livestream that is available in Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, India and the Philippines. The service also includes a subtitle function for DocFilm documentaries. The HOOQ app has around 30 million downloads and in Indonesia alone, it has 2 million users.

The Karachi-based cable providers Lucky Seven and Luvis Cable, along with New Grand Dera Ghazi, New Links Peshawar, New Eagle Rawalpindi will broadcast DW’s English TV channel as part of their basic packages. Together the partners reach 60,000 households in Pakistan.

Europe

Starting in October, Telenor Norway will include DW in its TV lineup. Based in Fornebu near Olso, the broadcaster reaches 520,000 households.

The largest streaming service in Europe, Zattoo, is streaming all four of DW’s television channels. Zattoo has over 20 million subscribers.

Africa

Star Times is one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s largest digital TV providers, and since August, they have been carrying DW’s flagship English TV channel. Vincent Yu, the media chief operating officer at Star Times said that DW was a rich addition to Star Times’ portfolio, which includes other international broadcasters like BBC World News and Al Jazeera. Star Times reaches an audience of 10 million viewers across Sub-Saharan Africa.

DW’s Nigerian radio partner Platinum FM is broadcasting DW’s Bundesliga radio series in Hausa, Bundesliga Radio Kai Tsaye. The partner, based in the northern city of Keffi, already broadcasts the Hausa magazine and the radio novella Crime Fighters in English and Hausa.

Eco@Afrique, the French version of DW’s environmental program, Eco@Africa, has been picked up by Label TV in Gabon, Anfani TV in Niger and Tele-tchad in Chad.

DW’s complete French radio program is also being broadcast by Radio Voix des Jeunes and Radio Diocésaine Siriri, both in the Central African Republic. Both partners have been broadcasting the radio novella Crime Fighters and Radio Voix des Jeunes will now additionally broadcast DW’s Bundesliga program in French.

Asia

DW content in Bengali, Urdu, Hindi and English is now available on the Indian content aggregator app, Times Internet, which has over 10 million downloads on the Google Play Store.

The Indonesian OTT provider, First Media X, will soon carry DW’s Indonesian tech magazine Inovator. First Media X is owned by the Indonesian IPTV market leader First Media.

Also in Indonesia, the pay-TV provider K-Vision now includes DW in its basic package. K-Vision offers 100 channels, 50 of which are international broadcasters, and reaches over 100,000 subscribers across the country.

In Pakistan, Radio Humara FM 90 is broadcasting DW news bulletins in Urdu five times daily during the week and three times on weekends. The station is received by 2 million listeners in the Faisalabad region.

Africa

Since November, DW has been broadcasting Germany’s premier soccer league, the Bundesliga, in Portuguese via eight radio partners in Mozambique and one partner in Guinea-Bissau. DW also added three new Mozambican DW radio partners – Radio Arco in Homoine, Radio Vida in Nampula and Radio Voz Coop in the capital Maputo

DW’s English-language TV channel is available throughout South Africa on the online streaming service Digital Discover, being offered by the media group Vubiquity.

Europe

DW’s flagship English-language television channel is now being offered on the popular streaming services Zattoo and Waipu.tv. Zattoo is Europe’s most-used streaming service and will provide direct and easy access to DW television on devices ranging from smartphones to Smart TV. Waipu.tv is a German streaming service that will include DW’s English channel in its basic package.

Asia

Clip TV, a popular multiplatform streaming service in Vietnam, now carries DW’s English-language TV channel in its basic package. The service is the VOD arm of Vietnam’s most successful online and mobile provider, Vega Corporation.

AstroAwani.com, a Malaysian news website, is a new DW partner and will soon be including videos from DW’s digital technology show Shift as well as English-language news articles.

DW’s Urdu and Pashto science program, Sawal, is being broadcast in Pakistan on Aruj TV, which reaches over 6 million households. The primary coverage areas are in the provinces Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and Karachi.

DW’s Indonesian science program Inovator has been growing in popularity in Indonesia. A new partnership with the Malang-based TV station UBTV will bring the program to an estimated 900,000 people in the East Java region.

Latin America

DW will be opening a correspondents’ office in Bogotá, Colombia in 2018. The new office will add to DW’s reporting across Latin America. The plans were announced during a meeting between DW’s Director General Peter Limbourg and Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos. The president praised the quality of DW’s reporting and is looking forward to welcoming DW’s correspondents. With around 14 million TV households, Colombia is DW’s second-largest market in Latin America after Mexico.

Online videos from DW are being posted by Brazilian partner Terra using Facebook’s cross posting function. It is the first time DW content has been used in a cross posting partnership. The cooperation has already registered an increase in total views for DW videos posted on Terra. Terra posts DW videos on its Facebook page and names DW as a source and links to DW websites.

Europe

Following a new partnership, DW’s English-language TV channel will have increased availablity in Scandinavia starting in September 2017. DW’s partner channel, Canal Digital from the Telenor Group, is available to 430,000 households in Norway, 255,000 in Sweden, 46,000 Denmark and 34,000 in Finland. The partnership also puts DW’s English TV channel in many hotels across Scandinavia.

Spiegel TV is carrying DW’s German language programs Euromaxx, Made in Germany, Projekt Zukunft and Reporter on its web TV lineup. The cooperation is expected to be expanded in the near future.

Asia

DW’s articles in English and Hindi are now available on the popular Indian news aggregator app, InShorts. The app features articles shortened to 60 words and has 10 million active users.

DW News is being broadcast once a day during the week on Hong Kong’s free-to-channel ViuTVsix. DW’s English-language channel is also being included in the basic package of Indonesian pay-TV company SMV Freeview. The channel is also being included in the basic package of Hyderabad, Pakistan-based cable station Hyderabad Cable Communication.

In some countries, there is a climate of insecurity when it comes to freedom of expression. Recently, DW, the BBG (Broadcasting Board of Governors), the BBC and France Médias Monde, have launched a website that helps people learn about methods to circumvent censorship.

More people around the world than ever before can easily communicate and access information. But it is easy to forget that there are many places where people who publish dissenting thought are punished and the free flow information is blocked. DW has made fighting censorship a core principle and works consistently to provide people everywhere with the information they need to understand problems and issues affecting their societies.

Available in English, French, Spanish, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese, and Russian, Bypasscensorship.org features tools that get around government censors and enable free access to the Internet. Tor is a tool that provides anonymity and free access by relaying a signal around a global network so that websites cannot read an actual physical location. Orfox uses Tor technology for Android mobile devices. Psiphon is a tool that DW uses, for example, to get DW content around the Great Firewall of China to users in Mainland China. And these are only a few of the many tools available.

And DW is focusing its efforts during a critical time for Internet freedom. In its Freedom on the Net report, Freedom House analyzed 65 countries, and more than half are experiencing a decline in Internet freedom.

Internet filters keep people from sharing and receiving important news and information. But there is also active persecution of people who publish dissenting thought. In places like Bangladesh, Pakistan or Vietnam, bloggers and online activists are being struck down as targets of violence and oppression.

Outright censorship is a different form of oppression where “mainstream” international news outlets are filtered along with any other online content the authorities deem to be unacceptable. Censors try and keep independent and unbiased news coverage from reaching the public. In Iran and China, there is a constantly evolving campaign of online censorship.  China has the worst rating by Freedom House, Iran the third worst.

But as censors continue to try and control information, DW and its international media partners are fighting back by promoting freedom of speech and taking action to make sure unbiased and factual information is available all over the world.