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Interview
by Abdullah Schleifer
 Abdul
Rahman al-Rashed is the general manager of the all-news
Arab satellite channel Al Arabiya. He came to Al Arabiya from
Asharq al-Awsat newspaper, where he served as editor
in chief. Prior to that he was editor in chief of the weekly
newsmagazine al-Majalla. TBS senior editor S. Abdallah
Schleifer met with al-Rashed in Dubai in April.
Schleifer:
It's been about one year since you assumed the leadership of
Al Arabiya. Do both the problems and the possibilities look
different now from when you took over as general manager?
Al-Rashed:
I think it's best to tell you about my perception of Al Arabiya,
and the perception of others, at the time I joined the channel:
that Al Arabiya was very politically involved in covering the
news, that Al-Arabiya was not detached but was taking political
positions in its news coverage. One year ago, the insurgency
in Iraq was rising, perhaps at its peak, and there was the Intifada
in Palestine with very violent attacks and counter- attacks
going on at that time. Covering Iraq was an issue of intense
interest for every single Arab in the region - whether politicized
or not - and television news was shaping Arab popular opinion
rather than necessarily always informing it.
So when I joined
Al Arabiya, I insisted we pay more attention to the technical
side of reporting. I stressed that to all the editors and reporters
and to the various producers.
I spent about three months devoting my thought to critical analysis
-- closely watching what we were putting on air, particularly
in Iraq, and engaging in constructive critical analysis. The
focus was on our Iraq coverage because it in turn would provide
a model that would open the door, so to speak, for dealing with
our reporting everywhere, since Iraq was the dominant concern
and the most dramatic model for all coverage.
I felt the three
months were extremely important to exchange opinions with my
colleagues, rather than to impose any sort of dictate as a manager.
During that ongoing exchange, my colleagues stressed a few points
that had complicated or even compromised our coverage, such
as the lack of safety for journalists on the ground, the difficulties
involved in gathering information, and finally the competitive
problem of getting scoops and finding exclusives, which of course
are essential and yet at same time dangerous because that search
for scoops provides opportunities for the players -- the news
makers -- or other forces to manipulate the press.
The solution was
to go back to the basic texts, and play it professionally by
the book. Luckily, all of our senior editors accepted that criteria
of going by the book. Prove to me, I said to them and to our
reporters, that everything on the ground that we are covering
we are covering by the book, and I'll go along with it.
In the summer of
2004 our office in Baghdad was targeted. A clear message. It
was a car bomb, or perhaps a suicide bomber. We are not sure,
but a group claimed responsibility, and in their statement said
they had done it because of our coverage. Experts felt this
was the work of the Zarqawi group. But that group denied responsibility
later on, so until this moment we don't know who was behind
it. As a result of that, we became collectively more insistent
on going by the book and to protect both our reputation and
the lives of our people (and) to say to everyone, "This
is the way we do things. Coverage must be balanced to reflect
both sides, and this approach should be understood by everyone."
Since then, we have
followed these rules. I have documents in my possession from
groups claiming Al Arabiya is no longer exclusively showing
their side of the story. Now when we approach different groups
on the ground, we tell them, "You can go to Al Arabiya
and say what you want, but you must understand we will report
on the other side as well." Today we can look back and
recognize we have influenced the nature of coverage inside Al
Arabiya and inside other Arab news organizations. They have
been influenced by our approach, and have tilted more towards
this approach
Schleifer:
Perhaps there are two reasons why your own staff and other Arab
news organizations, particularly Arab satellite television news
organizations, have turned out to be open to this approach.
First of all I sense a general reaction among Arab journalists
against the excessive emotionalism that characterized the coverage
of the invasion of Iraq and a certain acknowledgement that Arab
satellite television, including Al Arabiya, was in part feeding
the hysteria rather dispelling it, with facts from the field
-- something I noted in TBS about six months ago as a post-invasion
concern shared by nearly all the satellite news channels who
began calling for more professionalism. And the other reason
is that the level and nature of the terrorism practiced in the
name of resistance, of an initially highly romanticized resistance,
has been horrendous and so obviously dictated by the nastiest
sectarian or communalist considerations masquerading as patriotism
and/or piety.
Al-Rashed: Yes,
in the beginning of the insurgency there were many highly vulnerable,
even easy, US Army targets and attacks on those US military
targets could be justified by many people as attacks against
an occupying force. When the US military either hardened its
defenses or withdrew from the most confrontational street situations,
the insurgency became a terrorism targeting civilians -- those
you don't like for whatever sectarian reasons. It has become
difficult to ignore the ugly face of terrorism. Many people
have come to see this ugly face as the reality, a reality that
had been romanticized by the idea of a resistance.
You know after the
defeat - the collapse of the Baathist regime - many people had
the sense of having to take a second look. That sense was brought
about by their disappointment, but initially, in that disappointment,
they still didn't get the point. However, that widespread disappointment
did enable people like myself, writing opinion columns, to analyze
events and make the points that had to be made.
Let me mention something
that is particularly important, that illustrates changes over
the past year: the issue of tapes, both video and audio. They
became the center of controversy. For me as a manager of a channel
with a large audience watching the channel, I had to argue two
points, no more, no less. I was lucky; we have sensible people
in our news room, we can talk things out. I did not force my
opinions, I didn't press a button and say, "Stop the tapes,
that's it." I had to convince people in the newsroom. In
the end, we agreed on two principles: if you want to run a tape,
then show that part which is pure information. Anything that
is rhetoric should not go on the air as news. Going by the book
again. For instance, a hostage is shown on a tape identifying
himself as a Turkish driver, saying where he was taken, how
he was taken, and who he wants to send a message to and then
the message. Everything else -- the invocation of the Qur'an,
rhetoric, or faceless people making rhetorical statements --
we will not show.
Schleifer:
In other words, you will report that which is news in the tape,
but you will not provide a platform or serve as an unwitting
agent for the propaganda implicit in the tape.
Al-Rashed:
Right. And if you watch other Arab TV stations, they are now
doing the same. On top of that, one further step: it is good
to follow up the tape with an interview or report with someone
opposed to the insurgents who took the hostage and produced
the tape, to balance. So that's an example of what's happening
on the editorial level.
Schleifer:
What sort of feedback are you getting from your audience? And
have you lost audience because of these policies?
Al-Rashed: Our
tools to determine audience reaction and impact on market share
were surveys conducted by a consortium of advertisers, and not
just for us. It showed our news audience rising in three different
quarters of the year; I'm referring to share of audience for
the news bulletins. This is the most important indicator of
overall audience attitudes because individual programs could
reflect the popularity of the host rather than response to the
content, so I think it was a success and the fact that others
are following suit indicates it's the correct way.
Schleifer:
Shortly before you assumed the leadership of Al Arabiya you
wrote a very candid and courageous piece in Asharq al-Awsat
that began, in effect: "Surely most Muslims are not terrorists
but most terrorists are Muslim," and then went on to raise
basic questions about the sort of culture that has fostered
terrorism and apologetics for terrorism over the past few decades.
Aside from a scholarly group I happen to be connected with,
the Center for the Study of Islam and Democracy (CSID), which
had circulated a declaration that unambiguously condemned terrorism,
you were very much alone at the time because many of the condemnations
of terrorism coming from the region or from Muslim leaderships
anywhere were conditional - it was terrorism to kill American
civilians in the World Trade Center or Iraqi civilians praying
at a mosque or a church in Baghdad, but it wasn't terrorism
to kill a bunch of Israeli teenagers sitting in a pizza parlor
in Tel Aviv. Now we have the Madrid Declaration of Spanish Ulama
condemning all terrorism, and the much broader American Muslim
petition "Not in our name" that doesn't differentiate
between civilians, and we have a new Palestinian leadership
that has both implicitly and at times explicitly condemned Palestinian
terrorism. Are we at a turning point and what sort of flack
did Asharq al-Awsat, and later Al Arabiya take from your Saudi
audience over your rather historic column?
Al-Rashed: Obviously
the statement was meant to shock, to shake people out of their
moral complacency and at the same time it was accurate. It wasn't
politely put, but it was the only way to create debate, and
it did. And to my surprise, when I was reading the responses
coming in from readers on websites of Asharq al-Awsat
and other Web sites, the responses written in Arabic were more
supportive than the responses from Arabs writing in English.
Indeed most of the responses written in Arabic were absolutely
supportive, and that surprised me.
Schleifer: Well
that doesn't surprise me, because your reader or viewer who
doesn't know English, or doesn't know it well enough, probably
having a more traditional education has a firmer grasp of traditional
Islam, precisely because he has been less exposed to Westernizing
culture. In traditional Islam, there exists an entire corpus
of law, not to mention Qur'anic and Hadith passages, condemning
terrorism -- the conscious, intentional targeting of non-combatants.
Too often it's the Westernizing yet pious person who is uneasy,
defensive, and in denial and buys into apologetics in the worst
sense of the word.
Al-Rashed:
Arab News in Jeddah published the article in English and the
feedback from their readers, which was published in English,
was extremely negative. I found that interesting. But what mattered
was to stimulate debate. I exchanged correspondence with a lot
of readers and submitted the issue to statistical analysis.
The analysts confirmed that the majority of terrorist acts in
that period which was from 9/11/2001 until 9/11/2004 were committed
by Muslims, unlike the 1970s, when there was an outbreak of
global terrorism, but very few Muslims at that time were engaged
in it.
Schleifer: Right now, both Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera
have a very strong commitment to field reporting, which is the
heart and soul of television journalism, in contrast to Western
television news channels, which have increasingly abandoned
field reports and instead favor instantaneous live responses
from a stationary journalist fielding generally stupid or insipid
off-the-cuff questions by anchors instead of being out in the
field trying to get answers. Is this commitment by Al Arabiya
to field reporting a firm commitment or simply that you don't
have sufficient field satellite units to imitate the trend in
the West?
Al-Rashed:
The job we are supposed to do is to cover the news. We have
different priorities. Priority number one is to go after the
news in the region and in this case I am better equipped than
the Western TV news channels in the sense of staff on the ground,
more correspondents, more cameras on ground, more specialized
editors, and the language and rapport with the people. So this
is the most important factor. As a news station, we have no
bias or prejudice in terms of sources. It doesn't matter who
is the source for tape or for a report -- whether it's APTN,
freelancers, our own stringers, or our own full-time correspondents.
What matters is getting the news rather than worrying who is
the messenger or always imposing our logo on the footage we
go with. And the second reason we have an advantage in our reporting
and in particular our reliance on field reporting in that we
are beaming our news to an audience with a deeper background
than the American or British audience who is watching the live
shot from Baghdad that you find so shallow. Our audience can
handle the more intensive coverage we provide through our field
reporting. If I want to tell them about Lebanon, our audience
already has a far better grasp of what's happening there than
an American or Korean audience.
Schleifer:
The past few years, watching Arab coverage, print as well as
television, has also been somewhat disillusioning. It has meant
for me coming to grips with a fundamental lack of balance in
the way in which the suffering of Arab Sunnis -- be they Palestinians
or the civilians caught in the Falluja crossfire -- are worthy
of so much empathy from an Arab media that had so little or
nothing to say about the suffering of the Kurds and the Arab
Shiites under Saddam, or of the African Muslim tribes in Darfur
-- Sunnis but, like the Kurds, not Arab. I see an Arab Sunni
supremacism that is sectarian in reference to the Shiites and
racist in reference to Kurds and African Darfurians hiding behind
the banner of Arab nationalism and/or Islamism.
Al-Rashed:
But not intrinsically, not for all time, and not all the time,
because Arabism, the way it was understood in its historic origins,
had Lebanese and Syrian Christians identifying with Arabism
and the Arabic language in opposition to the Young Turks' sectarian
discrimination. For some Arab Shiites, at one time, Arabism
meant an alternative to the aggressive Sunni communalism of
the Ikhwan (Muslim Brotherhood).
The sort of Sunni
Arab supremacism you are referring to did not exist at the time
of the Arab Revolt, in which Arabic language, not sect, was
the determining factor. What went wrong comes later, from the
1930s on, with some Arab Nationalists adopting the European
Fascist mentality of exclusivity. Nazism, tragically, had much
influence on Arab intellectuals. But in its origins, the Arabism
of the World War I Arab Revolt was to draw together people with
a common language, who shared a common ambition for independence.
The Fascist perspective appeared from the '30s onwards and came
to prevail in the '80s; this fascist dimension poisons the Sunni
sensibility.
Schleifer:
Another syndrome of the times that becomes apparent -- transcribable
so to speak -- thanks to Arab satellite television talk shows
or comments in al-Quds al-'Arabi, is the drawing closer
of radical Islamist and radical Arab nationalist perspectives,
just as there has also been, in some circles and perhaps a bit
earlier, a drawing together of Arab Marxist and radical Islamist
sensibilities. What they all seem to have in common, consciously
or not, leftist or rightist, are Leninist instincts. Do you
see that?
Al-Rashed:
Unless I hear someone directly alluding to Marx or quoting Ibn
Taymiyya, you can't tell sometimes are they radical Islamist
or radical Marxist and or radical Nationalist. It came from
the Left, first to Arab nationalists and then to Islamists.
Mishari al-Dawbi wrote in Asharq al-Awsat about this phenomena.
But I do think Arab
satellite television is the tool -- if there are other tools,
they are minor -- to change Arab society, Arab political life
on a massive scale, for the good. The situation already is bad;
whatever bad also comes with Arab satellite television is almost
beside the point. But Arab satellite television has the potential
to change the society for the better. Look what's happening
in Lebanon. Now there is increasing competition in coverage
and competition in the media has a positive effect. Can you
imagine how the Iraqi elections would have been covered without
competition? In less than six months two important events; above
all the Iraqi elections -- shown live on satellite TV and everybody
could see it was free, even Al Jazeera, which initially was
dubious or negative about the election but changed its tone
halfway through the day. Without competition, the whole election
might have been ignored or downplayed.
Secondly, the assassination
of al-Hariri. Without competitive media, it could have been
passed off as an isolated Islamist assassination, but having
competition meant all TV channels insisting it was not that;
it was a crime against all Lebanese. There was
no satellite television at the time of the gassing of Kurds.
That's why television can do a lot of good for the region, just
on the basis of these two incidents. Without competition, there
would be the temptation to be effected or guided by one's political
tendencies, like a sympathy for Syria. But with competition,
no one can indulge that sort of temptation.
Finally, and I especially
address those who care about media or study media, they should
fight the idea of using television to serve a cause. You should
use the media to show the truth and if your cause (in the sense
of a personal conviction) has the truth, then the truth will
benefit the cause. That's why it's so important to rely on professionalism
and why you cannot go wrong if you do.
Al Arabiya has a
slogan and so does Al Jazeera, but do these slogans represent
reality? That question is valid for everybody. So let's watch
your news and see if your slogan is accurate. These slogans
are prepared by PR people. Ask questions! Is the news item fair
in presentation, and do you air two opinions? For Al Arabiya
the question is, Do you really cover controversial issues concerning
Saudi Arabia, and for Al Jazeera, What about controversial issues
concerning Qatar. Look, MBC -- our mother company -- gave us
the first taste of non-government news back in the early nineties.
That's when it all began. Al Jazeera went further. It went 24-7
and it pushed the boundaries further in terms of freedom. I
appreciate that.
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