Phil Taylor's papers
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BACK TO : PROPAGANDA AND THE GWOT Year 3 - 2004 (mainly Iraq)
For Al Jazeera, Balanced Coverage Frequently Leaves No Side Happy by S Habt 
For Al Jazeera, Balanced Coverage Frequently Leaves No Side Happy By SAMUEL ABT International Herald Tribune Published: February 16, 2004 OHA, Qatar - A poster on a wall at the headquarters here of Al Jazeera, the Arabic-language television network, shows a giant eye and a superimposed question: "Everybody watches CNN. What does CNN watch?" Underneath is an answer: "Al Jazeera Channel." As boasts go, it does not seem far-fetched. Defended by its newsroom managers as newsworthy and balanced, Al Jazeera's broadcasts of taped statements by Osama bin Laden are widely watched and analyzed. The channel, which often draws the wrath of the Pentagon, is in the midst of a one-month ban in Iraq, and it was denounced as well in Saddam Hussein's time. It is also the target of an advertising boycott in some Arab countries, Al Jazeera executives say. This diversity is a mark of strength, executives said in a series of interviews here. As Wadah Khanfar, the managing director and a Jordanian, put it, "We have been accused from the beginning that we were created by international agencies like the Mossad, the C.I.A., and that the Americans are behind us, that this regime or that regime is behind us, that Osama bin Laden is behind us. This kind of nonsense is for us a sign that what we are doing is right." Another sign is that, in its eighth year of broadcasting, the channel says that it has 35 million viewers daily around the world, most in the Arab world but some as far afield as China and Japan. Now, Al Jazeera says it is planning to expand into the English-speaking world. After the introduction of an English-language Web site last fall, it expects to start a satellite channel in English "hopefully next year," Mr. Khanfar said. That would follow the introduction of an all-sports channel in November and plans for an "Al Jazeera for kids." Haidar Haq, a Lebanese who is head of the channel's sports section, remarked: "America, Italy, France, they bring what they want to bring to us - their ideas, their images, their officials. Now, we bring our idea to the Arab world. Maybe next year there will be an Al Jazeera in English to bring an Arabic idea to foreigners." And Mr. Khanfar said, "Already we are recruiting journalists and constructing a building" for the English-language channel. "Most of the people we will hire," he continued, "might have English as a mother language, and they might not necessarily be Arabs. The main qualification is their experience and professionalism." In London, Chris Cramer, managing director at CNN International, said he was pleased by Al Jazeera's plans. "It's good for viewer choice," he said. Editors say that professionalism is a priority at Al Jazeera, whose name literally means "the island" and by extension "the peninsula," alluding to the Saudi land mass from which all Arabs are said to have spread. "We are trying our best to be comprehensive and accurate," said Ibrahim Helal, an Egyptian who is the newsroom chief editor. "To be accurate, not to achieve an ideological aim.'' Mr. Helal added: "We are working in a very sensitive time in the Arab world. The Arab region is in the focus of the world's news. What we are trying to do is bridge the gap between the two ways of understanding the news in the East and the West." Al Jazeera's managing director, Mr. Khanfar, explained: "We don't see ourselves as a political party that has an agenda. We see ourselves as a TV station that reports. That's it. We do not carry slogans or propaganda, not at all. We are just ordinary people with a love for journalism." Nevertheless, suspicion persists. A magazine article posted on a bulletin board quoted Mr. Helal as complaining about the frequent Western news agency description of "a report by Al Jazeera that could not be confirmed by an independent source." Why, he wanted to know, was confirmation necessary? Is his channel not independent itself? Nor is Al Jazeera without doubters in the Arab world, where it can be critical of governments and interviews opposition figures. This kind of journalism is not without business risks. "Making money?" Mr. Khanfar said in response to a question. "Not really. We're losing it. Agencies are boycotting us. A lot of companies are not putting adverts in our organization because most of them are owned or at least hosted in certain countries that are not happy with us, like Saudi Arabia." Profit and loss may not be an overriding concern for the people who put up the money to start Al Jazeera and keep it going. Channel officials identified the backers as Qatari businessmen, while The Economist magazine has said the money comes from the government of Qatar "because it regards Al Jazeera as a part of its plans for political liberalization." The channel reports that it has 750 employees in Doha, Qatar's capital, and 23 bureaus worldwide with about 70 correspondents. In all, Mr. Khanfar said, there are 1,300 to 1,400 employees, 450 of them journalists and the rest support staff members, technicians and computer specialists. He said there were many female employees. He and the others were talking in the newsroom, a sleek place with 10 pods of 3 desks, each with a computer and television set. Clocks show the hour in Washington and Tokyo as well as Greenwich Mean Time, and a wall is dominated by 16 television monitors showing channels including CNN, BBC World News, Reuters and national television stations from Iraq, Abu Dhabi, Egypt and Qatar. Studios, production rooms and archives line the room, and an electronic chart displays satellite booking times. The news is broadcast every hour and changed often. "We don't have an exclusive Middle Eastern agenda," Mr. Helal said. "Sometimes we lead with a worldwide story - the chicken flu story, for example." "When we started in 1996," he said, "we didn't really imagine that the Arab audience would be interested in 24-hour news, but gradually it happened. We pushed competitors to do the same. We enforced an Arab agenda on other TV's; we made them extend their Arab coverage." Prominent in this coverage are the periodic tapes from Al Qaeda leaders. Calling Mr. bin Laden "a news- maker," Mr. Khanfar analyzed his choice of Al Jazeera as an outlet to the world. "If you want to pass a message to the biggest audience, you go to the most acknowledged TV station," he said, "and Al Jazeera, in the Arab world, is the biggest. That is not to say we have become the voice of Osama bin Laden, the voice of terrorism. We look at it from a news point of view. "If you give me a tape and I just play it 100 or 15 or a few times, then I am propagating a message. But if you give me a tape and I take certain elements, certain paragraphs, which I think are newsworthy and put that into my own context and host people who are analysts from different points of view to discuss the discourse, then I am putting it in a context. "And this is exactly what we do with all his tapes. The people who come to refute that particular tape make the discourse very vulnerable. Very vulnerable." |