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From
the Toronto Globe and Mail
http://www.globeandmail.com
Blocking Al-Jazeera is clearly censorship
By JEFFREY SIMPSON
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Seven years ago, the Emir of Qatar authorized the creation
of Al-Jazeera, the first Arabic-language, all-news channel.
Al-Jazeera, with journalists throughout the Middle East, quickly
became a sensation. It offered viewers an alternative to the state-sponsored broadcasters
of Arab countries and coverage of the Middle East by Western media outlets.
Al-Jazeera predictably got everybody angry. Some of the Arab
governments accustomed to controlling the press found it far too independent.
U.S. authorities oscillated between condemning it for bias and encouraging top
officials to be interviewed on Al-Jazeera because the network reached so many
people. Some Western media condemned it for shoddy journalism, while using Al-Jazeera
material that they did not have, including tapes from Osama bin Laden.
Love it or hate it, Al-Jazeera found a large audience among
Arabic-speakers in the Middle East, and now proposes to expand that audience to
Arabic-speakers in other countries, including Canada.
Rogers Cable and Vidéotron would like to offer Al-Jazeera as
a digital station. The prospect has the Canadian Jewish Congress and B'nai Brith
Canada up in arms, claiming that Al-Jazeera reports anti-Semitic material and
is systemically hostile to Israel.
The interested cable companies want to expand foreign-language
programming on digital. Although Al-Jazeera is drawing all the fire, the applications
before the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission involve
15 channels. They include Latin American channels broadcasting in Spanish, German
TV (a consortium of two German broadcasters), TV Chile, Romanian TV, and RAI International,
an Italian channel.
Al-Jazeera's opponents are making themselves heard. Almost
1,500 submissions have already been received by the CRTC, although two weeks remain
before the deadline for public communications. (In fairness, some submissions
are part of a write-in campaign from Italian-Canadians in favour of RAI.)
Critics should calm down a bit. These proposed new stations
will be shown on digital. All digital channels combined capture barely 2 per cent
of television viewers in Canada. Most of them attract risible numbers. Some went
out of business soon after being licensed; many others are teetering on the brink.
Digital may be the wave of the future, but so far, it's barely a ripple.
So it's not as if Al-Jazeera, or any other of the proposed
new stations, will be competing with the CBC or CTV. In fact, CNN, which has its
own built-in biases -- as we saw during the Iraq war -- outdraws CBC's Newsworld,
and will continue to enjoy a Canadian audience many, many times greater than Al-Jazeera.
The case against Al-Jazeera isn't so much about audience size,
but bias of the hate-inspiring kind. Not speaking or understanding Arabic makes
judgment difficult, so all one can say is that the case is "not proven."
There have apparently been anti-Semitic statements made on
Al-Jazeera, but these were by a few people being interviewed rather than by Al-Jazeera
reporters. Distressing as such attitudes are, they do form part of the political
and cultural landscape of the Arab world that Al-Jazeera is supposed to report.
Moreover, it would be strange if Al-Jazeera was anything but skeptical about,
or hostile to, Israeli policies, given that country's general reputation in the
Arab world.
Hate-speech laws in Canada could be used, if necessary, against
cable operators who show Al-Jazeera. So it's not as if Canada is defenseless,
should Al-Jazeera go off the rails.
Given the charges against Al-Jazeera in Canada, it's ironic
the network is sometimes accused of being too pro-American and pro-Western in
the Middle East. Many Al-Jazeera staff worked at the BBC and other Western media
outlets before landing at the Arabic network. Al-Jazeera is often used by Mideast
liberals as an example of how to get the media away from the propaganda and censorship
of state-run Arab networks.
Preliminary interventions must be received by the CRTC by
Aug. 11, and replies to those interventions by Sept. 15. The commission doesn't
have to hold hearings; it can rest a decision strictly on written submissions.
It could give the green light to the cable operators to package
all the new foreign-language digital channels together, so that a subscriber would
have to pay for all 15. Or, it could isolate Al-Jazeera and insist that subscribers
pay for it alone.
Canadian broadcasting is based on free speech and widespread
access to information within the laws of defamation and hate. Provided Al-Jazeera
stays within those limits, there's no theoretical or policy reason to deny those
who wish to pay for the service the right to watch it. Anything else would be
political censorship.
ENDS
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