Tearing Down The Walls

It was a typical al-Jazeera moment, one loaded with controversy. Two weeks ago, a story broke that a U.S. State Department official had told the Arabic-language TV channel that the U.S. had acted with arrogance and stupidity in the Iraq war. The State Department initially denied that the official, Alberto Fernandez, a spokesman for the Near Eastern Affairs bureau, had said any such thing. But a review of the transcript soon proved otherwise. The broadcast was accurate. And al-Jazeera had made news again.

The channel — which celebrates 10 years on the air this week — has been doing that since it was founded. It has its faults. But al-Jazeera has served the truth far better than many of its detractors would acknowledge. Indeed, arguably nothing — including the Bush Administration’s panoply of democratization programs — has done more than al-Jazeera to open minds and challenge authority in the Middle East. The channel’s launch marked the beginning of a process of tearing down the psychological wall that made ordinary Arabs afraid to speak out, and which had rendered Arab dictators so invincible. It is loathed by autocrats in the Middle East, while the Bush Administration, too, has had its beefs with al-Jazeera, at times vigorously objecting to its coverage of the U.S.-led war on terror.

The channel’s journalists have faced endless professional and personal hazards. But al-Jazeera has remained on the air, which, given the region’s legacy of repression, is a remarkable achievement in itself. Later this month, a long-anticipated channel in English, al-Jazeera International (aji), should finally start broadcasting. So 10 years on, it’s worth asking: How has al-Jazeera done what it has done? What can it do better? And what does its future hold?

The channel’s founding story is by now familiar in the Middle East. In the mid-1990s, a partnership between the bbc and Saudi investors to launch an all-news channel collapsed. The Emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, brought the newly unemployed Arab journalists to his gulf state, pledging not to interfere in their editorial decisions. Indeed, there is a sense in which al-Jazeera’s story is also that of the Emir.

Born in 1952, Sheik Hamad staged a coup against his inattentive father in 1995. A reformer by nature, the Emir is married to the conservative gulf’s most progressive First Lady. When he came to power, he was concerned about the region’s stagnating politics and rising extremism, and so sought to distance Qatar’s future from that of Saudi Arabia, its domineering Wahhabite neighbor. The Emir promulgated Qatar’s first constitution, held elections, appointed a woman to the Cabinet, modernized the education system and allowed Christian churches to be constructed. Al-Jazeera’s popularity brought Qatar status and diplomatic clout, and has also given the Emir political cover as he has turned Qatar into one of the region’s closest U.S. allies, despite the unpopularity of Washington’s policies. Qatar hosts the U.S. military’s regional command center for the war in Iraq.

But it is for its impact outside Qatar — in less liberal parts of the Arab world — that al-Jazeera is most famous. Lawrence Pintak, a former cbs News correspondent who directs the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism in Cairo, says, “You cannot overstate the impact that al-Jazeera has had on the Arab world and the broader Muslim world.” For the first time, independent Arab journalists delivered uncensored news reports, rather than government propaganda and lies, to Arab TV audiences. Al-Jazeera’s talk shows featured hosts and guests who roundly criticized anything they wanted to — not only the U.S. and Israel (that was to be expected) but Arab leaders as well.

The channel’s programs broke ground by examining social issues such as polygamy, and provided in-depth coverage of foreign topics such as American presidential campaigns. Thanks to satellite technology, al-Jazeera was able to beam its broadcasts across national borders, hooking up Arabs from Morocco to Iraq in a vast, unprecedented conversation about the region’s concerns. “Suddenly you had a channel that was saying things and showing things that you never heard or saw before,” Pintak says. “People were saying on television what they had only said behind closed doors.”

That changed everything, from the way Arabs understood themselves and the outside world, to the manner in which Arab governments related to their people. Al-Jazeera programs told the stories behind political assassinations, and showed viewers how Arabs lag in both economics and culture. “One program explained how the number of books published in Greece is 10 times more than the number published in all Arab countries,” says Ahmed Sheikh, the Arabic channel’s editor in chief. “We were saying, ‘This is a reality. We have to catch up with the rest of the world.'”

Many experts see the impact of al-Jazeera and its imitators on the quickened pace of political reform in Arab countries. When the channel first aired, Arab rulers unprepared to accept internal criticism or news reports they could not control bitterly complained to the Emir, or simply banished al-Jazeera’s reporters from their countries. The Iraqi government closed the bureau in Baghdad in 2004, for example, and it has not reopened since; Saudi Arabia never allowed one to open there. Qatari officials say that last week, Tunisia, which also bans the channel’s journalists, recalled its ambassador after al-Jazeera broadcast an interview with a Tunisian dissident in Paris. But other regimes have begun to change their state-run channels to appear more like al-Jazeera, and some genuine competitors have appeared, such as the al-Arabiya channel, owned by Saudi investors related to the late King Fahd and his powerful son, Prince Abdul Aziz.

It was not just in the Arab world that al- Jazeera’s impact was felt. The channel has also driven changes in U.S. diplomacy. “For all its huffing and puffing, the West cannot ignore the impact of al-Jazeera on the mind-set of the Arab populace,” says former staffer Jihad Ballout. Washington’s decision to launch its own U.S. government-financed Arabic-language channel, al-Hurra (the free one), was an obvious attempt to counter al-Jazeera’s influence. Some U.S. officials acknowledge that the al-Jazeera phenomenon prodded the State Department’s new emphasis on public diplomacy.

Yet though U.S. officials appear on al-Jazeera and acknowledge its influence, it is not loved in Washington. Al-Jazeera gives full vent to criticism of U.S. foreign policy, from American support for Israel to the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

As Marc Lynch, author of a book on the channel, puts it: “A nutshell of al-Jazeera’s narrative is that the Arab status quo is a mess and that the fault lies with the Americans and Arab regimes.” Undoubtedly, as U.S. officials have complained, al-Jazeera has sometimes crossed a professional line that divides journalism from advocacy. The channel has scooped the world’s media by obtaining several exclusive video statements by Osama bin Laden. But its repetitive airing of bin Laden’s early speeches initially served al-Qaeda’s propaganda aims more than any journalistic purpose. Al-Jazeera won loyal viewers with its on-the-spot coverage of the Palestinian intifadeh in 2000, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars waged in 2001 and 2003, and the conflict in Lebanon this past summer. But the tone of the output was often partisan, and some thought its grisly footage of death and destruction accompanied by angry commentaries took al-Jazeera’s journalism toward the realm of incitement to hatred.

In their defense, the channel’s executives say that al-Jazeera is just the bearer of bad news. And there is evidence that the channel has consciously moderated its line over the years, scaling back the Arab flag-waving in its news bulletins and talk shows. It now makes a real effort to include opposing views, including those of U.S. and Israeli spokespersons. Yet when even a State Department official can let slip that U.S. policy in Iraq has been arrogant and stupid, it’s no surprise that views critical of U.S. policy permeate al-Jazeera’s shows. One U.S. official comments on the similarities between al-Jazeera and Fox News in the U.S. Like Fox, the official said, “Al-Jazeera has an agenda, a point of view and plays to its audience.”

For their part, al-Jazeera’s executives point to what they claim is a campaign against the channel. They note that U.S. forces fired on al-Jazeera’s offices in Kabul in 2001 and in Baghdad in 2003 — when correspondent Tareq Ayyoub was killed. Al-Jazeera officials claim that politics is at work in the jailing of two of its journalists. Tayseer Allouni was convicted in Spain in 2005 of carrying funds to al-Qaeda; his conviction was affirmed by Spain’s Supreme Court. Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman for the channel, was detained in Pakistan in December 2001, and has been held at Guantánamo Bay by the U.S. ever since. Says Wadah Khanfar, Director General of the al-Jazeera network: “Tayseer is a victim of the new mood in Western countries. Sami al-Hajj is a victim. It is about al-Jazeera.”

aji is aiming to be just as revolutionary in English as its sister company has been in Arabic. “Al-Jazeera is the only international network that is based in the developing world, and that will be the departure point for the English channel,” says Khanfar. “The ‘south’ has not been presented in the international media properly. Most of the international media organizations are centered in the West.” Whether a highly wired planet needs another 24-hour satellite news channel will become clearer once aji‘s broadcasts begin streaming into living rooms around the world. But aji starts off with some advantages: it has a feisty crew of 500 mostly young journalists, and it has the deep pockets of the Emir.

Money alone will not guarantee success — and nor will headline programming such as a talk show to be hosted by Sir David Frost, one of TV journalism’s most famous figures. Indeed, so muddied is al-Jazeera’s reputation in the U.S. that when aji managing director Nigel Parsons first began trying to persuade U.S. cable and satellite operators to add the channel to their lineups, he recalls, “There were some who thought they wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole in case they lost other business.” At least initially, aji‘s main audience is likely to be in Europe, as well as among the growing numbers of viewers in Asian countries such as India where English is widely spoken. In such markets, aji, with its extensive news operation and slick programming, could give cnn and bbc World a run for their money.

To achieve its founders’ goals, however, aji will have to solve a conundrum that has plagued it from the time the idea was first mooted: Can it aim to be a first-rate global channel in English while maintaining the crowd-pleasing partisanship that has become the Arabic channel’s trademark? The channel pledges to cover more stories in the developing world — which would be welcome, so long as it does not become merely a platform for anti-Western propaganda.

Al-Jazeera executives stress that the two channels will remain separate, yet in the next breath say they will share crews, news footage and even on-air journalists on some occasions. According to aji news director Steve Clark, editors from both channels are trying to come up with a common mission statement and code of conduct, including an agreement concerning the use of words such as terrorist, suicide bomber and invader. While aji says it will strictly avoid “martyr” to describe casualties of conflict, the Arabic channel continues to use the term when describing Palestinians killed in clashes with Israeli forces.

Khanfar, who heads up both channels, says that though they may differ in the way they present stories, they will both represent “the al-Jazeera spirit-courage, rethinking authority, giving a voice to the voiceless.” A Palestinian who spent 12 years studying and researching in Africa, Khanfar signed up as an al-Jazeera reporter in Johannesburg in 1997, before covering the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Khanfar insists that al-Jazeera’s editorial line will not be tailored to suit political pressures.

When Karen Hughes, the U.S. State Department’s Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs visited al-Jazeera’s headquarters last year, Khanfar says, she complained that the channel misrepresented U.S. foreign policy and fired passions in the region. Khanfar says he held firm, standing on the channel’s professionalism. “I don’t know if we agreed on certain issues or not,” Khanfar says. “I don’t think we did.” But he insists that the exchange was valuable, reflecting al-Jazeera’s core belief in “the opinion and the other opinion.” In the past, the Arabic channel may not have always lived up to that lofty principle. English-speaking news junkies, from the U.S. State Department to homes all over the world, will soon be able to judge for themselves whether al-Jazeera’s latest and most ambitious venture can match the professed ideals of its founders.