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By
Issandr El Amrani
In March 2006, a
Dubai company’s attempted acquisition of several US ports
proved a major embarrassment for President Bush after both Democrats
and Republicans protested that it endangered US security. In
light of the anti-Arab racism exposed by the incident, it seems
unlikely that many Americans will welcome the new English-language
channel Al Jazeera International (AJI) into their homes.
Before the channel
can even think about competing with any US network, AJI faces
the more immediate challenge of simply getting on the air in
America. Determined constituencies already are agitating against
the network, the cable distributors that will carry it, and
its potential advertisers. In early April 2006, the United American
Committee (UAC), an organization that describes its goal as
“the unity of all Americans against the threats of Islamic
extremism which face our nation,” announced that it would
organize a protest in against the planned US launch of AJI on
April 30, 2006. Said Lee Kaplan, a member of UAC’s executive
committee: "It's as if Joseph Goebbels, the Propaganda
Minister for Hitler, were to have set up a station in America
during WWII." Once AJI launches, the UAC has called for
non-stop protests to take place in front of the channel’s
Washington, DC, studio, asking supporters to write to their
local cable company to threaten to cancel their subscriptions
if their bouquets include AJI.
The UAC’s press
release on the planned protests continues:
The UAC realizes
that the American government can not, nor should make any law
to prohibit Al Jazeera from broadcasting in America, but feels
that it is the duty of the American people to let the network
know that they are not welcome in the United States, and to
send a message to any cable providers not to carry Al Jazeera's
planned American station which the UAC feels broadcasts propaganda
sympathetic to the enemies of the US.
United American Committee
member Robert Sandoval reacts to the news of Al Jazeera America
(sic) and the UAC's planned protest; "I support a free
media, and do not wish for the government to interfere, but
when that media is planning on broadcasting to my children messages
from our enemies and videos of beheadings, it's the peoples
right to stand up against it."
One of the most common
fears among Al Jazeera’s American detractors (most of
whom don’t seem to realize that the Arabic channel already
is available in the US to 200,000 viewers on the Dish Network,
a cable operator) is that AJI might carry secret messages to
Al Qaeda operatives poised to carry out a new terror attack
as AJI broadcasts the latest Osama bin Laden videotape. This,
despite the fact that anyone in America could see segments in
heavy rotation on US and other networks anyway, though, admittedly,
Al Jazeera probably runs the longest excerpts from these videotapes.
While the virulence
of the UAC’s opposition to the Al Jazeera brand may be
unusual, it reflects a widespread suspicion of Al Jazeera among
ordinary Americans. Despite the nuanced approaches taken by
many articles, books, and even more recently (if relatively)
the Bush Administration, negative views of Al Jazeera continue
to proliferate, especially among conservatives.
These views are echoed
frequently on conservative blogs, including some of the most
popular Web sites in America, which routinely refer to Al Jazeera
as “Jihad TV” or “The Osama Channel.”
These monikers are likely to stick to the new channel. Already
the general perception that Al Jazeera is anti-American, or
worse, pro-Al Qaeda, has been used to attack some of the TV
news stars it recruited.
Even some of these
recruits seem to have had doubts about the channel that wanted
to hire them. Interviewed by The Guardian, Sir David
Frost, the avuncular former BBC broadcaster who was snapped
up by AJI to present a London-based talk show, admitted that
he had consulted with contacts “in Whitehall and Washington”
to confirm that Al Jazeera was not involved in terrorism. Two
other high-profile AJI hires, former CNN International interviewer
Riz Khan, and Dave Marash of ABC’s current affairs show
Nightline, felt compelled to write op-eds in American
newspapers titled: “Why I’m Joining Al Jazeera.”
Meanwhile, Fox News dubbed former Marine Captain Josh Rushing,
made famous by the documentary film Control Room, a
“traitor” for joining the channel. Veteran broadcaster
Ted Koppel, also of Nightline, was quoted by The
Washington Post as defending a lunch he had with AJI executives
(whose offer to join the station he declined): “Come on!
I routinely meet with some of the nastiest people in the world
… I meet with terrorists, I meet with murderers behind
bars.”
In Search
of Identity?
Because of the reluctance
of AJI officials to provide journalists with behind-the-scenes
access to the evolving channel, it is difficult to tell what
AJI will be like once it airs. The foremost question many people’s
minds is how much will Al Jazeera International be like Al Jazeera?
AJI’s senior
management is ambiguous about what the relationship will be
with the Arabic channel. Nigel Parsons, AJI’s managing
director, says that the two channels will co-locate when possible
and share information. But the collaboration is not likely to
go much further., The Arabic channel’s broadcasters will
not be crossing over to the new channel although several speak
fluent English. Only Hassan Ibrahim, formerly a senior producer
at Al Jazeera, will cross over in a thus-far undefined capacity.
AJI’s leading on-screen talents are personalities who
have already met some success in other international news stations—indeed,
in the case of Frost and Khan, broadcasters who are closely
associated with the images of their former stations, the BBC
and CNN respectively.
While visiting Al
Jazeera studios in February 2006, this reporter was surprised
to hear that the two stations’ staff had never been introduced
to each other. This, despite the fact that AJI had moved into
the Arabic channel’s old newsroom, only a corridor away
from the new open-plan studio where Al Jazeera broadcasts its
news and talk shows. Staff from the Arabic channel said contact
between the two seems to have been minimized on purpose.
These staff members
cannot say anything for certain, however, as they have been
kept in the dark about the evolution of AJI. Many worry that
the new channel could hurt the reputation of its predecessor
if it strays too far from the original Al Jazeera’s editorial
line. Several of Al Jazeera’s Arab staff members with
whom this reporter spoke have expressed concern about how they
are being kept in the dark about the evolution of AJI. Rumors
that AJI staff have salaries that are two or three times higher
than their Al Jazeera counterparts have not helped engender
much goodwill either. “I am worried about identity,”
says Samir Al Khader, program editor for Al Jazeera. AJI “doesn’t
have an Arab identity; it should represent the new face of the
Arab world. CNN is American, BBC is British. Why can’t
we have an Arab channel?” Another prominent Al Jazeera
personality puts it more bluntly: “If the channel has
a different editorial policy, it will be a disaster.”
Others seem to share
this suspicion that AJI will be, from an Arab perspective, a
foreign product. They point to the fact that Parsons and most
of senior management come from a Western commercial television
background that is a far cry from the groundbreaking, ideologically
engaged, and risk-taking Al Jazeera. Most of the production
and on-screen staff is Western, with a particularly high proportion
of Britons.
Despite assurances
by Parsons that AJI is “not trying to be another CNN,
BBC, or Sky News,” these people still worry that it might
not be enough like the original Al Jazeera. Parsons has already
stated that on the most controversial topics it will have to
deal with, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, AJI will
not follow Al Jazeera’s lead. For instance, AJI will not
be using the word “martyr” to refer to suicide bombers.
“Different terms have different meanings in different
languages,” Parsons says. “Suicide in itself carries
a moral judgement in Arabic that does not exist in other languages.”
Non-Arab experts
on the channel also believe AJI’s identity could have
an impact on how the original channel is perceived. “If
AJI deviates from the line of Al Jazeera, it will be Al Jazeera
that pays the price,” says Hugh Miles, a British journalist
and the author of Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged
the World.
One worry is that if AJI does not assert a strong identity like
its Arabic-language sister, the channel will fail to draw viewers,
particularly in the West, where there already is an abundance
of choice for news channels. “It looks to me like they
want a slightly third world or Arab BBC,” observes Marc
Lynch, an associate professor of Political Science at Williams
College in Massachussets and the author of Voices of the
New Arab Public: Iraq, Al Jazeera, and Middle East Politics
Today. Lynch, one of the most prominent defenders
of Al Jazeera in US academia, believes that AJI would be better
off producing an English-language version of the original. “The
world does not need another BBC,” he says, whereas “a
kind of (anti-)Fox News with attitude would fill a niche.”
Getting to
the Market
Until it launches,
it is difficult to say which road AJI will take—one faithful
to the spirit of the original, one that situates itself within
the political and cultural references of Westerners or something
else altogether. Meanwhile, the primary issue is whether Americans
will be able to see it at all.
As AJI entered in negotiations with US cable companies, there
were reports that it was having difficulties finding partners.
Its launch date, originally scheduled for early 2005, has been
postponed several times and as of the publication of this article
the launch had been pushed back to September 2006 “for
technical reasons.” And AJI still does not have a US carrier.
The problem is not
merely the brand’s controversial reputation. Many consider
AJI’s international news product a hard sell in the already
tight American cable market, where speciality channels dedicated
to reality TV shows are likely to generate much more profit
than an all-news lineup.
Thankfully for AJI,
there is a world beyond the American cable market. The channel’s
executives say they believe they can reach an estimated 30 to
40 million viewers internationally soon after launch, and then
could simply focus on the rest of the world where satellite
dishes are more frequently used than in the US. The channel
has the luxury of being able to launch without an American foothold,
focusing instead on the international English-speaking market.
As AJI executives frequently boast, the channel is under no
pressure to generate profits immediately and can count for the
time being on the largesse of the Emir of Qatar.
If so, AJI’s
real competitors are the satellite networks that are internationalized
versions of home-grown channels, such as CNN International and
BBC World (both of which are substantially different in both
content and editorial lines than their mother channels). AJI’s
conscious effort to offer a view of current events that is not
Western-centric by dividing the 24-hour news cycle around four
broadcast centers in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London, and Washington
should further differentiate its content from what is available
on mainstream US news channels.
Issandr El Amrani is a Moroccan-American
Cairo-based freelance journalist. His work has appeared in The
Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Boston Globe, Salon.com, Bidoun,
The Daily Star, Middle East International, and elsewhere.
He is the former editor of the Cairo Times and managing
editor of Cairo magazine.
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