Gatekeepers keep out Al Jazeera
Reviewed by Stuart H. Loory Posted Tue, Feb 20 2007
The entry of Al Jazeera English into the international news distribution business has given rise to discussion of whether an organization based deep in the Arab World can present news fairly and accurately enough to be taken seriously in the Western world.
When a news organization boasts that it was denounced by both sides in a controversy, it is indicating that it really told the truth. When a news organization scores a “beat” and presents news no other outlet has, that is “enterprise.”
In times past, then Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and the government of Saddam Hussein both condemned Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera has received exclusive video of Osama bin Laden, the world's most hunted man. It is accused of anti-Americanism in its coverage and propagandizing for bin Laden, even accused of presenting in the bin Laden videos coded information that the leader was sending to his world-wide terrorism troops to instruct them on where and how to fight the infidels.
Elsewhere in this issue, David Marash, a former distinguished correspondent for the American Broadcasting Company program Nightline and now the Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English, argues the case for his new employer and predicts that although it is watched only in high places and on one provincial cable system in the United States, it will soon be available to millions here.
Let's hope that is really so and that it becomes readily available elsewhere in the world: North and South (to use Marash's geography), developed and underdeveloped (going by the economic delineation). What is needed in the worldwide news business is not a concentration of voices from the nations with the biggest hold on communications technology but also voices from those nations that have different views of the news.
Of course, in the fairest of all possible worlds, those voices would all have a truthful point of view. But in the real world, they are conditioned by cultural, social, political and economic differences.
All news consumers deserve the right to listen to all the different points of view. It is not enough to fall back on the idea of only listening to news organizations in countries that have what is believed to be a free press. In the United States, the Bush administration and other government organizations have gone to great lengths to try to silence many news organizations that have fallen out of their favor. They have compelled reporters to face prison sentences if they refuse to disclose sources; they have given favored correspondents and reporters more access to information than those considered hostile; they have leaked dubious information to reporters to make a favorable point and most egregious of all, they have paid for the falsification of news by journalists of questionable credentials. The Pentagon even established an office to write and send propaganda masquerading as real news to new news organizations in Iraq at the same time that it was trumpeting establishment of democracy as the goal there.
The argument can easily be made that democracy is enhanced and the free flow of information encouraged not only by fighting those who would stifle a free press in their own countries but also by guaranteeing access to news channels by organizations such as Al Jazeera and others that want to make commercial inroads by selling their output. Certainly not every cable system would buy, nor should they. But there are some who would consider such a service a useful supplement to the American 24-hour news channels or BBC world in their mix. They should not be discouraged by outspoken criticism from decision makers for disloyalty.
Twenty years ago, Ted Turner gave me the job of organizing a weekly television news program that would bring together all the world's television news organizations in a single CNN program that would present news and information each from their own point of view without any editing or rewriting and without refusing a piece except if it were outside the bounds of good taste. He allowed the program unlimited time to air starting at midnight on Sunday nights and able to go until 6 a.m. Monday morning if necessary.
The program ran for several years, bringing together reports from Israel and the Occupied West Bank, from the then still Apartheid South African Broadcasting Corp. and new television organizations from the emerging black-run countries of Africa. There was some fear that Turner's new program would bring cancellations of use by cable operators in the United States and abroad. Instead, it brought general approval.
Al Jazeera and other international news organizations are scoring great success on the Internet and, Marash says, great success in developing countries. It deserves to be watched and listened to in the developed countries of the world as well. Part of the great tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan is that Western World does not understand the ways of the East. Al Jazeera can help change that.
Stuart H. Loory
Stuart H. Loory, an international journalist, is Lee Hills Chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism and editor of Global Journalist. Loory worked for TBS/CNN from October 1980 to March 1997 as CNN vice president and Washington managing editor, Moscow correspondent, and executive producer, among other positions. Before joining TBS/CNN, Loory spent 28 years in the newspaper business. Among his positions were Moscow bureau chief for the New York Herald Tribune and White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times during the last years of Lyndon Johnson and the first two of Richard Nixon. He was a member of the Nixon enemies list. He was later managing editor of the Chicago Sun Times where he supervised several award-winning investigative reporting series.