A little perspective on the meaning of bias in the media, FWIW.
Arab TV's Strong Signal
The al-Jazeera Network Offers News the Mideast Never Had Before, and Views That Are All Too Common
By Sharon Waxman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, December 4, 2001; Page C01
CAIRO
The correspondent for al-Jazeera, the Arab world's all-news network, is reporting from a fetid tent city somewhere in Taliban-controlled territory in southern Afghanistan. The camera shows the wretched conditions: toddlers staring numbly, a woman having a seizure. The reporter talks to an elderly man crying over the deaths of his son, brother and cousin.
Then, standing in front of the pup tents of some Western journalists who have been doing similar stories, he notes: These correspondents will soon be going back to their comfortable quarters, while the Afghan refugees have no such hope. He concludes: "This is what the world's most powerful country has wrought upon the world's most wretched country."
This is the world according to al-Jazeera, the 24-hour Arabic-language news channel based in the tiny emirate of Qatar. It is hailed by many as a revolutionizing force among Arab media long constrained by limited resources and state controls. At any hour, Arab audiences can see news from the Mideast, European and American capitals gathered by a large staff of Arab reporters, not translated from a Western news service.
Audiences see news live, not recorded and packaged -- a refreshing change in a part of the world where rumor and conspiracy theory thrive. They watch heated talk shows unfold without editing or censorship. CNN has even forged a news-sharing alliance with the network.
But what kind of news is it? Al-Jazeera, for all its innovation, slick graphics and flashy logos, is not an Arab version of CNN. From watching the network for any length of time, it's clear that al-Jazeera takes a consistently hostile stance toward the United States. In al-Jazeera's world, the Taliban is invariably an underdog force, the United States looms as an occupying power, and Egypt and other moderate Arab states have knuckled under to the superpower's pressure. The channel's other central topic is Israel's persecution of Palestinians, a constant litany of suffering and aggression. Otherwise there is little on al-Jazeera except sports.
Any news organization is, in part, a product of its native culture. All American-based news networks, for example, make the unspoken assumption that the state of Israel has a right to exist and that Osama bin Laden is evil. In the Arab world, that looks like bias.
But critics of al-Jazeera, including many Arab journalists, say that even when such cultural disparities are taken into account, its credibility is hampered by slanted coverage and a tendency toward sensationalism. Those critics say al-Jazeera is tailoring its approach to suit the preconceptions of the Arab audience.
Al-Jazeera's talk shows, which mirror the most ideologically driven gabfests on American news channels, provide a constant forum for examining American misdeeds. On such shows the American point of view may be represented, but there are usually two if not three others -- including the host -- criticizing the United States.
On a typical talk show recently the guest was a conservative Egyptian cleric, Sheik Yusuf Qaradawi, and the topic, announced the host, was "Globalization, the new face of occupation." He outlined the economic gap between rich and poor nations, then his guest chastised the West.
"If you want to be the master and the master alone, that's occupation, and that we refuse," he said. "The problem with Western culture represented by the United States government, a unipolar power, is that it calls for immoral ethics based on monetary beliefs and sexual liberation. And that is against our values." The host heartily agreed.
Afghanistan's fundamentalist rulers and their ideology have gotten no such scrutiny on al-Jazeera. In the midst of the collapse of the Taliban in Kabul, the network scored a live interview with the regime's spokesman in Kandahar. The official said the government was intact and unified. He talked about killing Christians and Jews and noted, "We're getting ready to bring Bush to justice." These statements passed without challenge from the al-Jazeera anchor.
The network aired Osama bin Laden's videotaped statements for several hours a day early in the war, provoking criticism from the State Department. While the channel showed frequent images of American bomb damage to civilian targets -- images that U.S. news organizations, for whatever reason, were reluctant to show -- al-Jazeera has barely mentioned the vast caches of documents exploring nuclear and chemical weapons found in al Qaeda houses in Kabul.
Such information might have interested viewers in the Arab world, where there is widespread skepticism about bin Laden's role in perpetrating terror.
The orientation of al-Jazeera has not escaped the notice of other Arab journalists, or of the people they cover. In one of many scoops the network has landed during the war in Afghanistan, anchor Ahmed Mansour recently interviewed a Pashtun leader, Sheik Abdurrab Rasul Sayyaf, whose support will be key in any postwar Afghan government.
Sayyaf took al-Jazeera to task for what he called biased coverage. "The general perception here in Afghanistan is that al-Jazeera has crossed the line in their reporting," he said on the air. "They were very protective of the Taliban. I hear your reporter . . . all the time, and he always reports what the Taliban does, but he never tries to come and see the villages and towns burned by the Taliban."
Mansour responded that the network's reporters have tried to get access to these areas, but were denied.
In an interview from Qatar, al-Jazeera's editor-in-chief, Ibrahim Hilal, vigorously denied that the network has a point of view. "I think it's nonsense to accuse us of being anti-America, or anti-Northern Alliance," he protested. "It's our credibility. If we touch our credibility, we lose everything we have."
He said the comment from the reporter in the tent city in Taliban territory was no more editorial than those of Western correspondents when viewing devastation created by U.S. bombs. He said al-Jazeera could not get access to the al Qaeda documents because it had been barred from Kabul by the Northern Alliance.
Hilal agreed that the talk shows are largely anti-American, but said: "Feelings toward America are the most famous thing in the Arab world, in the Muslim world now. Talking about it on talk shows is very justified. . . . Most of the guests are anti-American, but that's not our problem."
If the anchors are anti-American, Hilal added, "they can't show it on the talk shows. They would be punished immediately."
The innovative nature of al-Jazeera, combined with its clear political point of view, creates a strange paradox. The network represents a quantum leap forward for unfettered journalism in the Arab world, yet it takes an approach that by Western standards would be considered lacking in basic fairness and balance.
Still, by media standards in the Middle East -- where rumors about the United States poisoning relief packages in Afghanistan are printed in the paper, where newspapers whipped up a frenzy over the sale of leather belts that supposedly sapped male potency -- al-Jazeera is a model of fact-based reporting.
There is no doubt that the network has helped to create a far more aggressive and competitive environment in the world of state-owned Arab television news, nudging competitors toward live interviews and having more correspondents abroad.
For decades, Arab TV has been notable for drowsy coverage of unremarkable state visits and presidential activities, and for harsh invective against Israel. In the past few years this has been giving way to lively talk shows and a new sense of competition. Egyptian television, for example, now has a correspondent in Jerusalem -- encouraged, perhaps, by al-Jazeera's presence there -- and debates many aspects of domestic politics on the air.
Given its influence in a region of about 250 million Muslims, al-Jazeera's viewership is relatively small. Accurate figures are hard to come by, but it is available only to those with a satellite dish. Even Hilal says he doesn't believe the official claims of 15 million. But it is watched by decision-makers and journalists across the Middle East. Recently the Lebanon-based al-Minar, the network for the Islamic radical group Hezbollah (yes, it has its own network), even paid al-Jazeera to train its news staff.
"Al-Jazeera is as important to the Arab media as the introduction of [the Egyptian daily] Al Ahram was in the 19th century. It has changed the way television is being run in the Mideast," says Jamal Khashoggi, a prominent Saudi Arabian journalist. Live shows, political debate, contrasting opinions -- "those all are new in the milieu. Nobody would admit it, but they are doing it because al-Jazeera started doing it."
Nihal Saad, the anchor for the English-language broadcast on Egypt's Nile TV, says she has felt the sting of criticism when al-Jazeera has a particular story that her network has missed.
"Egyptian television doesn't have that network of correspondents around the world," she says. But, she acknowledges, "If they report on corruption, people start getting interested in it as a news story, so I will want to sell that news story as well. If this is something wanted in the market, why not sell it?"
On the other hand, Khashoggi notes, "al-Jazeera has a big problem with objectivity. They must work this out. They are being led by the masses, they don't lead the masses. They know the taste of the Arab street, and the Arab street is anti-American. They are just like the New York Post. This is not very good."
Al-Jazeera was launched in 1996, financed by the government of Qatar in an apparent effort to raise the emirate's profile. Early on it was accused by some here of a pro-Israel bias because the network interviewed Israelis, another innovation in the Arab world. But it has also annoyed Arab governments for what their officials call a lack of balance.
The Egyptian government was furious with al-Jazeera because of critical coverage of the country's elections last year and because of stories about Egypt allegedly bowing to American pressure over the Palestinian issue.
"It's a tabloid, no more than a tabloid. And tabloids, by the way, sell in millions," says Nabil Osman, head of Egypt's State Information Services.
"It was radical, it was not objective," agrees Saad, whose network, like all the news in Egypt, is run by the government. She and Osman both say al-Jazeera was hypocritical for criticizing Egypt but not Qatar, on which it depends for financial support and a home base. "We knew that Qatar had a trade office for Israel. Why not criticize their government for having trade relations with Israel?" she asked.
Says Osman: "I said to them, 'Why don't you put on a five-, 10-minute program telling us in Egypt about the election in Qatar, so we can benefit?' "
Qatar does not hold elections.
Those who watch al-Jazeera say the sensationalist approach is not so much about anti-American politics as it is about getting ratings: that the network is in the business of telling its audience what they want to hear.
"Viewers here like to believe that America does not mean well in its Middle East policies," says Amr Badr, a local leader of People to People, an American-based organization that promotes international cooperation. "Al-Jazeera will always take the side of the underdog, whether with the United States, the Egyptian government, the Saudi government, whatever."
Hilal said this was true in the early years of his network, when it was trying to attract attention, but no longer. "Now it's completely different. We follow the news as it comes," he says.
As to whether that strategy has worked to boost ratings, that is still unclear. Qatar had hoped for al-Jazeera to be financially independent within several years of its launch, but judging by the paucity of advertising, the network is still quite far from achieving financial solvency.
A dramatic drumroll and string music accompany a booming voice: "Innocents die." (Tight shot of a bleeding baby.) "Mothers crying." (Close-up of a woman in tears.) "Siege. Martyrs go to God. All in Palestine." A number pops up on-screen for viewers to call and contribute to the Coalition for One Body.
The next ad has a similar theme, about Muslims suffering in Chechnya. There is an ad for rose water, and then yet another dramatic ad for a Web site seeking charitable donations, and then another, with heart-rending images of children in bandages and wrapped in rags. ("Lift this agony. Call Qatar International Bank.")
The commercial break over, al-Jazeera returns to a heated debate among a moderator, an online journalist from the Arab Voice and a former U.S. ambassador to Syria, Christopher Ross, who is frequently called on to represent the American view because he speaks fluent Arabic. Today's topic is the American media and whether the U.S. government has been muzzling free expression in the name of fighting terrorism.
Both the moderator and the Arab guest say that it is. "Research shows that 155 people control the American media, and they are all in support of the war in Afghanistan," says the online journalist. "Arabs are not adequately represented in the media."
The host agrees. "The Americans, who are supposed to be for freedom of the press, are shutting up people who talk against them," he says, and refers to what he calls the "bombing" of al-Jazeera's office in Kabul by American forces. (The BBC's office suffered damage as well; a Pentagon spokesman says, "The U.S. military does not and will not target media.")
Ross shakes his head at the barrage of criticism. "I hope in the future you criticize the Arab media with the same fire that you criticize our media," he says.
Later comes a series of reports on the war from correspondents in Dubai, Peshawar, Cairo. There is a Q&A with the Arabic-speaking CNN correspondent Ben Wedeman in Kabul and an interview with the head of security for Fatah, the PLO's political wing, in Gaza. Then more public-service announcements featuring suffering, impoverished Muslims. A teaser for an upcoming sports program, a teaser for a story about a plane crash in 1958, and then a teaser for the rebroadcast of the talk show:
"Why was al-Jazeera's office in Afghanistan bombed? Is this the free press the West has always preached about?" a booming voice asks, as the network's whirling, golden logo swivels dramatically between shots of U.S. bombing in Afghanistan and suffering civilians, another spin of the news cycle in the war-torn world of al-Jazeera.
© 2001 The Washington Post Company |
