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AL-JAZEERA: IN THE NEWS
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Arabic broadcaster Al-Jazeera (which
means 'the island') keeps forty million Arabic viewers
tuning in and at the same time risks being turned
off by some of the very nations it's reporting on.
It was censored by Iraqis and condemned by the British
on the very same day during the Iraqi war.
Roots of an Arabic broadcaster
Historically the Middle East has been known for state-regulated
and state-controlled news services which espouse the
government's current point of view. One of the few
exceptions was the BBC's Arabic Television. BBC had
signed a deal with Saudi-owned Orbit Communications
to provide an Arabic news service. But the BBC's insistence
on editorial independence clashed with the Saudi government's
unwillingness to permit reporting on controversial
issues. When the BBC broadcast a story on human rights
in the kingdom which showed the beheading of a criminal
Orbit pulled out it's financial support and the BBC's
service was disbanded.
A few months later the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa
Al-Thani, launched an unprecendented campaign to end
censorship in his country. With a 150 million dollar
loan he established Al-Jazeera to provide the Arab-speaking
world with a freer and more independent source of
news. Many of the BBC's former staff were hired on
the promise that there would be no government censorship
or interference.
Controversial
from the start
Ever since Al-Jazeera first hit the airwaves in November
1996, the broadcaster has not only been making the
news, it has become the news. Dubbed the 'CNN of the
Arab world', it covered the Middle East twenty-four
hours a day. Anything from rigged elections to government
corruption is fair game on the network; this is what
gives it credibility.
Al-Jazeera motto and the name of one of its most popular
talk shows is 'The Opinion and the Other Opinion.'
Its programs regularly feature debates on controversial
issues by pitting one side against the other. The
network also frequently interviews political dissidents
of every persuasion including a 1999 interview with
Osama bin Laden.
Although popular with its viewers, most Arab regimes
have found something about Al-Jazeera to complain
about. Qatari diplomats receive an average of four
hundred official complaints a year about the broadcaster
from other Arab states.
Al-Jazeera reporters were thrown out of Bahrain for
covering anti-American demonstrations, kicked out
of Jordan for revealing that King Hussein had taken
money from the CIA before his death in 1999 and censored
in Saudi Arabia for doing critical stories on the
royal family. Saudi Arabia has even banned Saudi companies
from advertising on Al-Jazeera affecting the network's
bottom line.
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LAW, WAR
AND TV JOURNALISM
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Al-Jazeera's rise in popularity
Al-Jazeera was finally made famous
in the West after the attack on the World Trade Centre
when the network broadcast exclusive messages from Osama
bin Laden.
Suddenly the rest of the world - and the U.S. government
- took an interest in Arab politics. Within weeks Colin
Powell summoned the Emir of Qatar to ask him to get
Al-Jazeera onside with the U.S. on the war on terror.
The Emir refused to intervene. Although often critical
of Al-Jazeera's stories, the U.S. could not ignore its
large Arabic audience. Major U.S. leaders like Donald
Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice have since
been interviewed by the network.
Today the network has more than thirty
bureaus (including New York and Washington) and dozens
of correspondents covering all four corners of the
world. Its sister website, Al-Jazeera.net
debuted in January 2001 and is at the top of the internet
charts despite frequent hacker attacks. In 2002 it
claimed 161 million visitors and has tripled it's
audience since the onset of the war in Iraq.
Al-Jazeera's journalists have faced
expulsion, imprisonment, even bombs. As coalition
forces closed in on Kabul a U.S. missile flattened
the Kabul bureau just hours after the staff had left.
During the Iraq war a U.S. missile slammed into the
network's Baghdad bureau killing one of it's top journalists,
Tarek Ayoub.
In 2003 Al-Jazeera received an Index
on Censorship award for the 'special contribution
to the free exchange of information during the years
of crisis in the Arab world' at the exact moment that
it was condemned by Britain for broadcasting film
of dead British soldiers.
Al-Jazeera today
Despite its popularity among Arab viewers as a credible
source of information about Iraq, the network is currently
banned there. The new government complained that the
network's ongoing coverage of the hostages threatened
with execution caused further kidnappings.
Al-Jazeera currently has plans to launch an English-language
news channel by the end of 2005 to counteract 'unbalanced'
reporting by Western networks.
There has been interest in making Al-Jazeera available
to a Canadian audience. The network can now be seen
by some Canadians using 'grey market' technologies
such as illegal satellite dishes.
A recent ruling by the CRTC approved the Al-Jazeera's
distribution by cable companies but required any distributors
of the network in Canada to guard against the broadcast
of 'any abusive comment' - the first time the CRTC
has imposed censorship rules on a television station.
Advocates of Al-Jazeera complained that the ruling
would discourage cable providers from broadcasting
the channel.
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