How the Arab world views Washington
By Adam Schreck Posted Oct 1 2007
Blocks from the White House, a makeup artist touches up Abderrahim Foukara’s forehead as the Al Jazeera Washington bureau chief skims right-to-left through his Arabic notes. An anchor at headquarters in Qatar follows with the headlines. “OK, animation on the air,” a producer shouts. Images of the U.S. Capitol and an American flag fill the screen. “Min Washington” (From Washington), the network’s weekly U.S. affairs program, is on the air.
With a staff of about 25, Al Jazeera’s Washington bureau — not even counting the station’s new English-language operations — is the largest of any Arab news organization in the United States. But it’s hardly alone. More than 20 Middle Eastern newspapers, news services and television stations have correspondents stationed in the capital. What those journalists report — and how they report it — plays a key role in shaping the United States’ image in the Muslim world. For a post-9/11, wartime America, that image matters more than ever.
The U.S. State Department’s Foreign Press Center estimates that around 150 journalists are voluntarily credentialed to work for various Arabic news organizations in Washington. Many others are part-time stringers who only write occasionally. One State Department analyst who monitors Middle Eastern media estimates that up to a quarter of the Arabic news networks’ news hole is filled with coverage of the United States — mostly what happens in Washington.
“America is present in the daily life of every Arab,” says Hisham Melham, a longtime Washington correspondent who recently became bureau chief for Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera’s biggest competitor. “That presence is political, it’s economic, it’s cultural. So it’s incumbent on you to try to provide a kind of critical look at this society.”
The two satellite channels have the largest operations. Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language bureau employs four reporters and another four or five producers. The station also has “a steady stream of interns” drawn from the United States, Canada and the Middle East. The modern newsroom — bustling with jeans-clad staffers and sharply dressed reporters — and studio occupy two floors.
“This is a pretty big operation for any country, and obviously countries don’t get much more important than the U.S.,” Foukara says.
A few blocks away, inside the landmark National Press Building, sit the recently relocated offices of the Middle East’s other major 24-hour news network, Al Arabiya. Created in 2003 with financing from Saudi Arabia, Al Arabiya has quickly come to rival Qatar-backed Al Jazeera. Inside the utilitarian office, a staff of 12 — nearly all native-born or naturalized U.S. citizens — plus interns work in a space that combines a newsroom with small, bare-bones studios. The bureau employs three full-time reporters and two producers.
“This is one of the key bureaus. The other two are in Baghdad and Palestine/Israel,” Melham says. “The ones that almost break our back financially,” he adds with a smile.
Only a few national papers and state-run news services in the Middle East can afford to maintain full-time correspondents in Washington, and instead rely on wire services or stringers based in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs. Those that do have bureaus tend to be one-man affairs. George Hishmeh, a columnist for two English-language papers in the Middle East who helped found the Washington Association of Arab Journalists, puts the total number of full and part-time print journalists writing for Arabic news organizations at around 50 or 60.
Two of the most influential Arabic newspapers are based not in the Middle East, but in London. The distinctive green Asharq al-Awsat styles itself as an international paper of record for the Middle East, drawing more than half its readers from Saudi Arabia. The 29-year-old broadsheet maintains a staff of three in tight quarters on the eleventh floor of the National Press Building, and also syndicates translated stories from The New York Times and other U.S. papers.
Down the hall, Joyce Karam works out of a two-room office with an oversized desk and a stack of old newspapers piled in the corner. At 28, she is the sole Washington correspondent for Al Hayat, another London-based pan-Arab broadsheet that’s popular with intellectuals. Her editors are eager for stories from Washington, and she frequently ends up on the front page.
“It’s interesting to cover a democracy like this,” she says. “You cannot do that in many places where I come from.”
Key beats for all the major Arabic news organizations include the State Department, the White House and the Pentagon. Not surprisingly, stories tend to highlight issues of interest to Arab audiences. Al Arabiya’s Melham, while speaking about his own station’s operations, sounded a theme shared by other correspondents.
“What we do essentially is two things. We cover those issues relevant to Arab-American relations: the American involvement in Iraq, the Palestine-Israel conflict, economic interests, oil-related issues, and sometimes the Arab-American and Muslim communities,” he says. “The other thing we try to do is provide a window on America, to try to explain to people over there what makes the society tick.”
The constant flow of daily stories makes meeting that second goal tough. After all, much of U.S. foreign policy — Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Israel-Palestine, Darfur — involves Arab and Muslim nations.
“I’m trying to … do stories about the lives of average Americans, how are they responding to the war in Iraq — you know, get out of the official Beltway box,” Karam says. But given “the magnitude of the issues on the table, like Iraq and everything, you hardly have time.”
To keep up, the correspondents constantly monitor cable news and read The Washington Post, The New York Times and the wires. Like most Washington reporters, they rely on the Reuters Daybook — a D.C. tip sheet of the major events of the day — and depend heavily on transcripts of big speeches and hearings provided by the Federal News Service. And of course there’s the Internet.
“You have to look at the Drudge Report,” says Salameh Nematt, a Jordanian print journalist who until recently was Al Hayat’s bureau chief. He’s not the only fan of the news and gossip Web site. “It makes it easier for me to (decide) what’s important today, or over the last few hours,” says Munir Mawari, Asharq al-Awsat’s political correspondent.
Despite the pressures, other issues do get covered. For example, an Al Jazeera reporter recently spent time in Los Angeles exploring social issues such as immigration, the new Iranian-American mayor of Beverly Hills, and Americans’ love affair with their pets. Al Arabiya recently did stories about Ellis Island, the Library of Congress’ preservation of old Middle Eastern manuscripts, and Iranian-Americans’ outrage over the Hollywood film “300.”
There was a time when Arab public opinion wasn’t such a priority for the U.S. government, and reaching sources was tough. Not anymore. Since 9/11, the Muslim world — and the Middle East in particular — are front-and-center in the minds of U.S. policy makers. This has made Arab foreign correspondents popular.
“We are a precious commodity in town these days … compared to 1980 and 1990, (when) nobody was paying much attention to us,” says Mohammed Ali Salih, a longtime correspondent from Sudan who now writes for Asharq al-Awsat. “The joke is that … before, we were chasing sources. Now they’re looking for us.”
In fact, when it comes to getting an official response, foreign correspondents may even have an advantage over American journalists.
“When we contact the White House, we get an answer right away,” says Mawari of Asharq al-Awsat. He has had similar success with other government departments. But, he says, the responses tend to be official, and therefore less newsworthy. “The major American media outlets have better sources to get information through indirect channels. We get our information from them. I cannot compete with The Washington Post or The New York Times, because they build contacts over years and years.”
Foreign correspondents in the capital get plenty of institutionalized help. The Foreign Press Center provides foreign reporters with workspaces, newspapers and access to closed-circuit press briefings — services welcomed by journalists for smaller outlets without offices of their own. Perhaps most popular, though, are the center’s organized reporting tours to places such as the U.S. Army base at Ft. Riley, Kan. or the Baltimore-Washington International Airport for a behind-the-scenes look at airport security, costs for which are usually covered by the news organizations. The trips give the State Department a chance to put a positive spin on policy issues and cast American society in a good light. For the reporters, they provide valuable access.
“You can go to places that are very hard to otherwise go on your own,” says Mawari, who through tours met with NATO officials in Brussels, visited Kosovo in an American military helicopter, and toured the U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla. He says he never felt manipulated or pressured by officials to slant his coverage in exchange for the access.
“Whatever their intention, it doesn’t affect my job,” he says. “They gave me the access, and they never told me to write this way, or not to write. I am in control of my own writing 100 percent.”
Al Arabiya’s Melham, who generally enjoys good relations with U.S. officials, says there is nonetheless a tension between journalists’ news values and the issues the administration hopes to project through Arab media. His job is to provide “as dispassionate coverage as possible,” he says.
“I have no interest whatsoever in showing the United States in a negative fashion, or to be an apologist for the United States government,” he says.
“When somebody says something nice, we report it. When someone does something stupid, we report it.” And sometimes, as in the case of abuse by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison, he says, “you report it, and you cringe.”