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22
November 2004
Hafiz
Al Mirazi is the Washington bureau chief of Al Jazeera and
host of the channel's weekly program, From Washington,
which spearheaded Al Jazeera's coverage of US elections in 2004.
TBS's deputy managing editor Lindsay Wise interviewed
Al Mirazi about Al Jazeera's strategy for covering the US presidential
race and Arab media interest in the race in general.
TBS:
There has been an unprecedented level of coverage of the US
presidential elections in the international media, and especially
the Arab media. Do you think interest has increased? Why do
you think that is?
HM:
It is true that interest has increased in the US presidential
elections, and I believe for two reasons at least. First of
all, the Iraq war. Usually it used to be just the Arab-Israeli
conflict, but after a while, people in the Arab world realized
that the US elections do not really cause big changes when it
comes to the Arab-Israeli conflict or the peace process, but
the Israeli elections might have more effect on it, i.e., if
the Labor Party or a Labor candidate comes to power or a Likud
one. And Washington is going to cater at the end to whoever
is going to be in power in Israel. But the Iraq war and the
US presence in Iraq made this election more important given
the fact that the opponent to the incumbent president took a
position on Iraq against the war, asking for withdrawal, or
at least to reconsider the whole involvement in Iraq and calling
it the "wrong war." So somehow his views resonated,
and his criticism and attacks on the incumbent resonated with
the views of many people in the Arab world or in Europe, and
somehow they got into that wishful thinking that there would
be a change of regime in Washington the same way that Washington
changed the regime in Baghdad, but through the election, and
so they're watching it. That's part, the other one, in addition
to the Iraq war, is the development of the Arab satellite television
stations. They have been watching closely the whole process
even before Election Day on November 2, as in the case of Al
Jazeera--the whole primary, the conventions, all of that. That
was not really carried before in the same way, so that the Arab
viewers got the chance to watch it and follow it up through
television.
TBS:
Do you think there's also a factor of competition?
HM:
That could be. I mean competition is there always in the media
and in any coverage regardless of whether its television or
print media or anything like that. But yes, for us, for Al Jazeera
at least, we were the first to start the coverage, we were the
first to have a weekly show on Al Jazeera since mid-January
to cover it. But if there is a challenge for us, especially
in the Washington bureau, it's whether the Washington bureau
of a TV station that is an Arab television station headquartered
outside the US would be able to cover the elections much better
than even the US-based and funded television station like Alhurra,
and I can claim that we did a much better and more expansive
coverage than any other station, including Alhurra.
TBS:
Did Al Jazeera have a specific strategy for covering the elections?
Were there specific goals for your coverage?
HM:
They always say in the media there are three major issues--inform,
educate, entertain. So we were trying to inform the people about
the American political system, and educate them about it as
well, and inform the people who is ahead, who is behind, what
kind of background the challenger or the incumbent might have,
so that if they come to the White House people are not surprised
about their views. This is part of the information we were trying
to provide. The education is about the political system. That
was a chance for us to explain main things in the American political
system. Without the plug of the election or the excuse of covering
the election, you wouldn't have the chance to educate people
about it. And we had that chance and that was part of the reason
we did the coverage explaining the Electoral College, the two-party
system, all of that. And the entertainment came in having a
sky box in the conventions, and showing the kind of color and
festivities that take place even in a convention, that there
is not much news coming out of it, no surprises, but still the
dynamics of it, the color of it, is good for TV and would capture
audience attention.
TBS:
I noticed you had very extensive coverage and I was
wondering how many correspondents you had on the story and what
kind of resources went into it?
HM:
Well, we had one covering the Democratic Party, Wagd Waqfi,
our female reporter in the Washington bureau; we had one with
the Republicans who followed the president for most of his campaign.
That was Mohamed Al-Alami, the chief reporter in the office.
And then other reporters covered either Nader or some other
event. But during the conventions for example, we had four reporters
covering both conventions, in Boston and in New York.
TBS:
Your head office was in Washington but your headquarters are
in Qatar. Did you find that you had any challenges in terms
of resources or funding or access because you are based abroad?
HM:
No, not at all, the reason for that is that the Washington bureau
of Al Jazeera has the most resources among other Arab television
stations. We have a good team here and the staff is big enough
to cover a story like that, and they are also seasoned and familiar
with it. Some of us have been covering US elections since 1984.
So for them, that was a plus, in order to explain the whole
thing and to know where exactly you are going to put your resources
and what states you are going to cover, compared for example,
to other stations, mainly Alhurra. People when they started
their weekly show, they started just about four months after
Al Jazeera, or even five months after Al Jazeera started the
weekly show on our network on the elections. And the people
who were covering the elections for Alhurra came to Washington
just a few months before and really some of them needed to be
educated first about it. It's a challenge. I am sure they did
their best, and they are colleagues and we commend them for
whatever efforts they did. But they were at the disadvantage
of having just come to the States and then to have the burden
of explaining the whole thing to the Arab audience.
TBS:
We watched the coverage here from Cairo, and we noticed your
program From Washington about the US elections was not
very confrontational, unlike some other Al Jazeera talk shows
like Bidun Hudud and Al-Ittijah al-Mu'akis. It
seemed to have more of an educational and analytical bent. Was
that your intent?
HM:
That's my style, actually. I feel like you leave it for
the jury to decide. It's not the idea that you have to prove
it immediately when someone is wrong or to corner that person
or to keep repeating stereotypes. This is a chance for our audience
to understand the American political system. We are not going
to debate over and over again in all the hours that we are taking
for the coverage that the Americans are biased in the Arab-Israeli
conflict. These are things that we know and that the audience
already knows about, and there is no time for debating on that
one. We just wanted to know where Americans are coming from,
why they are taking these decisions. The more education you
give for your audience, the more they can appreciate the others
and the more they will understand, and there will be no surprises.
I was myself a little bit disappointed when I was in the Arab
world in the last two weeks and I found some people were surprised
that President Bush won a second term. I told many people that
if you'd been watching us closely on our election coverage,
you wouldn't have been surprised. We did not tell people anything,
but all the polls were showing that he was ahead, even by a
few points, but still ahead. He wasn't someone who came from
behind. So I think it's very important to allow people to speak,
and to give people the chance to express their views. Then the
news and the information they give to people would have more
entertainment value for people to stick around and to stay with
you, rather than just creating a fighting match, like a Crossfire
format. Sometimes you should have it, but it shouldn't be all
the time.
TBS:
Was it in your mind at any point, when you were putting
this program and coverage together, that the US election process
should be taken into consideration by the Arab audience or the
Arab world as a model? What applicable lesson, if any, for the
Arab world might be drawn from learning about the US system?
HM:
I was told by a veteran Arab television anchor, Mr. Hamdy Qandil--I
met him four months ago during our coverage of the elections--and
he himself told me, "When you started that weekly show
about the US elections in mid-January, I doubted really if there
is much to talk about and to fill in the time with the US election
story for months before November, but when I followed the program,
I found that there are so many things that are really beneficial
and that Al Jazeera managed to get a lot of information to people
to help them learn about the process." And that's really
a very nice complement and observation from someone like him
because the assumption is that people know everything about
America, that we don't really need to know a lot, and when it
boils down to Kerry versus Bush, people really lose sight of
things, and the idea is to explain issues in depth regardless
of whether it's US of other elections. So if there is a lesson,
it is don't take things for granted, don't just go with the
vision of the black and white, you're either with us or against
us, or whoever is going to be in the White House is not going
to be with the Arab causes or Arab views. But knowing more about
the candidates' background is very important, and the pressure
itself that brought them into power is important and that's
what really I feel that we should care about, whether we are
covering Iraqi elections or any other election, not only the
US election. I hope that people will care about the process
in covering the Iraqi elections, the same way we cared about
the process in covering the American elections, and not just
to get stuck on the day of the election itself, because the
day of the election is just ballots and people are going and
putting some ballots in boxes. That doesn't tell the story.
That is all I hope we will do in the future, that we will come
into coverage of events without our own ideological baggage
and without any preconceived positions--just to learn and share
that knowledge with our audience, regardless of whether it will
be beneficial for one person on one day, or one party on one
day or another.
TBS:
How did you decide who to have as guests on your program? Was
there any system to it? Some observers have suggested that there's
a liberal bias and that people who appear on your shows, the
majority of them, happened to be liberal or Democratic supporters.
Would you deny that, or would say there's a reason for that?
HM:
Well I'm not sure about that really. I mean, the liberal
bias label is already in the US all over. Anyone will consider
most of the US networks have a liberal bias. So if Al Jazeera
is branded as liberal-biased, I think it might be a compliment
within the American context of discourse. But to go to your
point, we were challenged really in this election, because first
of all you have a preference for Arabic speakers. There's a
language barrier. We do translate, we do get people, we present
them, but your preference still might be an Arabic speaker.
In 2000 that was not a problem, because in the year 2000 elections,
most of the Arabs and Muslims stood with President Bush. In
this year, because of 9/11 and in many other factors, most of
the polls were showing that the majority of Arab Americans were
against Bush, regardless of whether they were for Kerry or not
for Kerry, but they were against Bush. That was a challenge--how
to represent the community of Arab Americans and Muslim Americans
and how to get commentators from them, and yet make sure that
you have a balance between both. Even some Republicans were
Republicans but against Bush. Still, we had an Arab American
Democrat and we had an Arab American Republican. She wasn't
speaking Arabic, she was an English speaker. But she was a very
strong supporter of President Bush, with no compromise whatsoever,
and we insisted on her. So we compromised in the language issue.
We could have had that as an excuse, since we didn't have anybody
who was speaking Arabic, but we did not use that excuse. We
had Randa Fahmy, who was in the administration before in the
Energy Department, as a Republican commentator and we had Abdel
Aziz Awwad, as an Arab one. And actually some people like the
New Republic, and other magazines and publications, found that
the Republicans treated us very well in the convention and we
had more access to them even than with the Democrats. We have
never heard any complaints from the Republican Party of bias.
On the contrary they gave us more access than the Democrats
gave us, and more interviews.
TBS:
That was going to be my next question: Whether you had any trouble
getting campaign, government, or administrative officials to
come on the air because Al Jazeera has had a rocky relationship
with the US government.
HM:
The irony is that we didn't have that problem with the US government,
or with the Republican Party. We had it with the Democrats,
maybe because they were so worried that the Republicans would
attack them or use it against them, or perhaps they were not
sophisticated in dealing with international media. So the Kerry
campaign failed really to capitalize on that, and they missed
a lot of minorities, maybe not only us, in building relations
with international media, which usually is ethnic media also
because part of their broadcast is inside the US. While on the
other hand, the Republicans and the Bush campaign were savvy
and they managed really to get their word through, and if not
to make Bush likable by Arab American voters or our audience,
at least to make sure people were disillusioned about Kerry.
TBS:
Do you think your coverage was also reaching Arab Americans
through satellite and providing them with the forum and affecting
the way that they viewed the elections?
HM:
I think so and I hope so. I think that our coverage did make
some difference, I don't know when it comes to results whether
it made a difference or not, and maybe it's too early to judge,
but at least the feedback that we used to get from people was
very clear that they were watching our coverage of the conventions
and the whole process itself. An Arab American activist came
back to tell us that her mom has been in the States for forty
or fifty years and had never watched the convention or really
felt what they are doing and what she, her daughter, was doing
through her activism, and that thanks only to Al Jazeera's coverage,
and especially our live coverage from both conventions, she
realized the whole thing, and understood the process, and that's
really good. I mean, if we did nothing else, we did try to make
sure that this part of our audience is not in a ghetto. Because
the downside of them watching the [Arab] satellite stations
in Washington, or while they're living in America, is to be
in a ghetto and to only follow the news over there and forget
about their own society. And that coverage helped them to reconnect
again with the society that they're in and it empowered them
to feel that with a few votes one of those people could win
the whole election.
TBS:
Is there anything that you'd like to add reflecting on the election
coverage? What do you think Al Jazeera still needs to work on
in the future for improving its coverage of elections?
HM:
The only thing that I felt at some point was that the Arab media
all of a sudden came in in the last week before the Election
Day, and then you turn everywhere and people are talking about
the US elections. Sometimes it's too much. With all my interest
in the need for us to cover America, I'm afraid sometimes people
do it too much, to the point that they are alienating their
own societies. It is important that the same effort that we
sometimes put into, as I mentioned earlier, explaining American
elections and the American political system, we should also
put into coverage of elections and other stories in Arab countries,
even though people don't have the same trust or confidence in
elections or the political process in Arab countries. Yet it's
worth at least giving them a chance to explain, because the
way people vote or elect a president in Mauritania or Algeria
with only 60 percent of the votes to win is different from other
countries where the leader always wins by 99 or 95 percent.
If we don't explain that difference, if we don't make an effort
in explaining the Arab political systems for our audience and
just focus on America because this is what we have on the wires,
we're really failing our audience. So I think that the balance
is important. We should avoid this kind of alienation of people
just focusing of what's going on in Washington, or carrying
live press conferences from the US without carrying live what's
going on in the Arab world, including speeches or discussion
in Arab parliaments whenever these are available to be carried
live for the audience.
TBS:
Thank you very much for talking to us today.
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