Al-Jazeera: When the medium becomes part of the story
By Imad Musa Posted Jul 1 2003
It dawned on me when my co-workers and I would get hearty congratulations from strangers on the street upon learning that we worked at Al-Jazeera TV. They were people who did not speak Arabic and had never seen Al-Jazeera beyond some of the screen captures shown on the U.S. networks and in newspapers. But they assumed Al-Jazeera was “fighting the powers that be.” They saw Al-Jazeera as an underdog un-afraid to offer a different version of events during the recent Iraq war.
Were we? At times, it seemed Al-Jazeera was indiscernible from any other global television station. I could look up from my desk in Washington, D.C., to find a long panel of TV sets tuned to different stations showing the same scene: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in a news conference, or the night sky of Baghdad, or correspondents speaking live from U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar (10 minutes away from Al-Jazeera’s headquarters).
We all strived to interview top U.S. diplomats like Colin Powell and, of course, the same string of political and military analysts whom everyone hosted.
But at the same time, when you listened and watched closely, you could tell the difference. From the beginning, Al-Jazeera was bent on showing that this war was not a “clean war,” and the focus on human suffering and casualties was inescapable. Many people took this focus to mean that Al-Jazeera was taking a stance against the war, and some — especially the Iraqi people themselves — went further, saying Al-Jazeera was pro-Saddam.
I think both are inaccurate. Al-Jazeera is an Arab news medium and hence reflects Arab culture, just as American media outlets reflect American culture. Al-Jazeera caters mainly to the 300 million people in the Arab world, along with the millions of Arabs in the West. Today, around 45 million Arabic speakers watch it every day, according to the best of our information. (It is impossible to discern viewership precisely, as there is no ratings system in the Middle East and the veracity of opinion polls there is suspect.) The only place for which we have good numbers is North America, where Al-Jazeera has about half a million viewers via Dish Network.
By no means was Al-Jazeera going to alienate itself from its audience by adopting the U.S. military’s name for the war, “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” as some U.S. outlets did. It also was not willing to call the invading forces “the coalition.” A military coalition conjures up images of a large number of countries participating in the fighting. Eritrea, Afghanistan and Iceland were simply not on the ground. Notwithstanding Morocco’s contribution of a couple of thousand monkeys that were dispersed to walk over and detonate land mines, Al-Jazeera opted to call the effort a “U.S.-British invasion.” This did not go as far as the other Arab TV stations, which called it an “aggression.”
Unfortunately, for almost the entire duration of the war, Al-Jazeera became a part of the story instead of the coverage. Our office in Baghdad was bombed by the United States, and one of our reporters, Tareq Ayoub, was killed. Two freelance financial analysts, who had been hired five years ago to report from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, were kicked out. The fact that Al-Jazeera was the only Arab news medium that had reporters on the floor of the Exchange is testament to its professionalism and desire to get news from the source.
Al-Jazeera did not shy away from airing pictures of Iraqi, American and British prisoners of war and gruesome pictures of those killed. To Al-Jazeera, war is ugly, and these were the images of war. Unfortunately, we are always being pressured by Arab governments to refrain from airing certain images or information at certain points of time because of the “instability” they will cause.
But we realize that the time to air bad news will never come, so it is preferable not to play politics with the news and air whatever is timely, relevant, accurate and of interest to our viewers. This is the main reason for our sour relations with many Arab countries, such as Kuwait, Syria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Bahrain — all of which are used to dictating what the media can air.
One day the station was accused of playing into the hands of the psychological operations of the Pentagon, and the next, we were part of the Iraqi propaganda effort. One day we were being berated by Powell on National Public Radio, and the next we were being kicked out of Baghdad by the former Iraqi regime. It’s true that our collective news judgment might sometimes be flawed — our editors in Doha are only human, have to deal with information overload and must make split-second decisions. But one thing is for sure: Al-Jazeera’s preference is to give its viewers unfiltered information as soon as possible before political pressures begin to flood in from all over the globe and despite accusations of hurting morale.
This is why the video and audiotapes of Osama bin Laden are aired in their entirety, much to the consternation of U.S. officials, many of whom think Al-Jazeera is providing a “platform for terrorists,” in the words of Vice President Dick Cheney. On the contrary, the editors do not wish to be accused of having edited any newsmaker’s words, even for time. (Al-Jazeera does not have to live and die by ratings numbers because the Qatari government makes up for whatever it can’t raise in advertising.) The same goes for U.S., Israeli, European or Arab leaders on Al-Jazeera; their statements are taken in full.
It has gotten to the point where Western media pundits describing Al-Jazeera’s talk shows use the term “no-holds-barred debates” in a derogatory way, as if “muzzled debates” were preferable. Sometimes it reaches the point of blatant racism, as if the Arab peoples were not worthy of a station where people can say whatever they want, where information flows freely and where people argue in the marketplace of ideas.
One has to wonder how this tiny station — with a worldwide staff of less than 650 and in its short lifespan of seven years — has become a household name in the United States, where many people surely could not name any media outlet in France, Germany, Mexico or even Canada (famous or infamous is another topic). Today, it is on a path of becoming part of the global media family, and it works with the major players as an equal. Resistance to this trend is to be expected, and Al-Jazeera’s reports may be dismissed by some as “propaganda.” But if its information is consistently timely and accurate, it will have achieved a great degree of journalistic success.
Say what you may — and believe me, we have gotten our share of biting calls and e-mails over the past two months — Al-Jazeera has shaken up the calcified media situation in the Middle East and made it impossible to turn back time to the old system of timid, shackled, state-controlled media.