No. 5, Fall/Winter2000

Special Issue:
The Arab World

continued: A Dialogue with Mohammed Jasim Al-Ali
Managing Director, Al-Jazeera
Page 2 of 3 / page 1 / page 3

Schleifer: There are two places I can see an effect you were responding to: first, with the Gulf War, everyone was watching CNN. It was rebroadcast—the Saudis would tape CNN, censor it a little (but not significantly) and then rebroadcast it; or, like here in Egypt, it was direct retransmission. This had a tremendous effect on people. It made them hunger for more, for independent television journalism rather than just the government line. The other influence, I believe, is BBC. In Qatar, the UAE, with a strong British presence, people were watching and listening to the BBC. And the BBC Arabic television service on Orbit was a catalyst; people were seeing BBC in Arabic.

Al-Ali: But it was encrypted, so you had to pay—which means a limited audience.

Schleifer: Can you evaluate the effect of CNN and BBC in terms of Al-Jazeera? Did people who had seen them support you?

Al-Ali: Of course we came with our own ideas and our own perspective. But with regard to these two channels, the background came from the BBC more than CNN; we are closer to the ideas and the rhythm of the reports of the BBC. Al-Jazeera, from the idea up to the launch, was built on a staff coming from Arab countries. Maybe they have had experience working with Western media—they're ex-BBC, ex-US media—but all are Arabs. So they take the professional experience from the BBC, but their background as Arabs means we can adopt this experience and apply it to the Arab world. We know the mentality of the Arabs—but we also want the expatriate Arab audience, who are used to Western media.

It's also a question of the content of the news. You often get here someone reading an item about leaders arriving in the country, sitting together at a meeting—it's not news, they only do it to give them TV time. The video is of leaders sitting together, talking together, and everything is fine, there's no news. But behind the scenes everything is not fine. They never put that on the screen. People saw something dramatically different in CNN's coverage of the Gulf War. At that time everyone was watching CNN; no one was watching any entertainment then, just the news. There were so many stories in the war; human interest and war stories even took the place of entertainment.

Schleifer: If you compare the Al-Jazeera news to the BBC Arabic news—they had very few Arab correspondents. Most of them were translators, and their reports suffered from a certain coldness, because so much of it was British material that they just translated into Arabic.

Al-Ali: They did that with about 85 percent of the news. Al-Jazeera produces all our own news, from the idea of the story up to the end.

Schleifer: The BBC Arabic service got into trouble with Orbit and the people who financed it because time after time they would go for commentary on important news from Saudi Arabia to Mr. Masari, a very militant spokesman for the militant Saudi opposition, rather to someone who was detached like a scholar or a London Middle East think-tank specialist. They went to Masari even when they needed a commentary on the Saudi budget. He was in the studio and went on the air with his commentary as soon as the king had finished presenting the "state of the budget" speech, which the BBC Arabic TV service took from Saudi TV. But it was the Panorama story about executions in the Kingdom, treated as a sensationalist expose without any comparative study (like respective crime rates) or context, which broke the camel's back. But let me also put it this way: have you ever interviewed anyone from the Qatar opposition?

Al-Ali: In the beginning, we tried to interview some of them but we didn't succeed. The main problem now is that we don't have any opposition after the attempted coup. Sometimes we hear imaginary names, but they're not on the ground. Anyone is welcome on Al-Jazeera if they'd like to come forward. Sometimes the news pushes you to bring in the opposition; for example, in London there is a lot of Bahraini opposition. And we know relations between Qatar and Bahrain aren't perfect, but that doesn't mean that we're going to put on the Bahraini opposition just because there's a problem between Qatar and Bahrain. When it is necessary, when there's news, we do, but not all the time.

Schleifer: What are you doing in your day-in day-out field reporting? What are the steps you've taken in your commitment to field reporting?

Al-Ali: There are two very important things we do: the news and the talk show. These attract the Arab audience. Our aim is to bring these in, and field reporting has become a big part of our news. To start extensive field reporting from scratch is really a big project. In the beginning, we started with only one reporting program, but the number has grown. In contrast, talk shows are easy and relatively inexpensive to produce—you're in the studio, and within a few weeks or a week you can put a two-hour program together. To produce a documentary or in-depth report takes a lot more time and investment. So it was difficult in the beginning. But the number of reporting and documentary shows we're doing has more than doubled.

Schleifer: Don't you have more correspondents in the field now than you used to?

Al-Ali: Of course. In the beginning we were cooperating with news agencies like APTN to help us with reporting. Some reporters were doing rewrites from our bureaus rather than being out in the field. But now we have our own offices, our own equipment, and our own reporters who go out into the field. And of course we have plans to open offices in other Arab countries. At first we had three offices; now we have 24 all over the Arab world, Europe, and in Washington DC. These are linked directly by satellite, so we can get field reports up as soon as possible. With the revolution on the communication technology side it's getting easier and easier, and cheaper.

The future challenge is transferring from the satellite business to the Internet business. Within five or six months, I think, we'll start to really move step by step towards this, bringing the equipment to feed through the Internet. And it'll make it much easier on the reporter—it's usual now in Egypt, for example, that to feed a story they need to go to Video Cairo Sat to send via satellite, and it can be time-consuming or overbooked. With the Internet, as soon as he finishes a report, he can send it directly. The mission of news and current affairs will be better served.

Also, it's not just a matter of budget or time available to make more field production--it's also finding people with the experience and training to do them. It was a question of creating a culture of TV journalism. The journalists in the Arab world have to be trained by experienced TV correspondents to be good reporters. And the other challenge is between the reporter and the government. There are many Arab countries that don't even allow local journalists to shoot in public without permission.

Schleifer: This question goes back a bit in time, to when you started up. How did you get up to speed so fast? It was less than six months.

Al-Ali: First, it's because we are totally independent. To go through the government channels would take a long time, there is a lot of paperwork and regulations. The chairman of the board just took action, so it was very easy; we didn't have to wait for so many people to make decisions. We have facility of administration.

Schleifer: The chairman of Al-Jazeera's board is from the ruling family, Hamid Bin Thamer El-Thani.

Al-Ali: Yes—and he's a journalist also.

Schleifer: What makes him so different than other members of ruling families?

Al-Ali: He's got good experience in the media. He's a graduate in communications from Qatar University, he's got 14 years of experience in the field. He thinks as a journalist, and that helps us a lot, he knows what we want exactly. continued

Next page: Plans for expansion in Cairo's Media Free Zone