[Mb-civic] Watch Out World: Al-jazeera Is Going Global

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

Today's commentary:
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2005-05/15schechter.cfm

==================================

ZNet Commentary
Watch Out World: Al-jazeera Is Going Global May 18, 2005
By Danny Schechter 

Doha, Qatar: If Doha Is the capital of the state of Qatar (pronounced
Cut-ter) known for its 900 trillion standard cubic feet of proven gas
reserves (and more than 15.2 BILLION barrels of oil) Al-Jazeera is known
here as" the Capitol of Doha," In a few short years this satellite TV
station has become the electronic capitol of the Arab world and the fifth
best known brand in the world. 

Jazeera means island, but in many ways this emerging global broadcaster
functions more like an oasis in the dessert country where it has based, as
well as in the international TV news industry in which its dedication to
hard charging news makes it an anomaly. 

Before its emergence Doha had a sleepy if less than stellar international
profile. 

"In l991," sneers former Terror czar Richard Clarke in his book "Against
All Enemies, "Qatari police cars that were escorting my motorcade managed
to crash into each other in a city with almost no traffic." 

Today the city is bursting with rush hour traffic, and a construction boom
thanks to the vision and guile of its ruler and Emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin
Khalifa Al Thani, who not only hosts the largest US regional US military
base outside of Iraq (which spawned the Coalition Media Center during the
invasion of Iraq) but earlier founded Al-Jazeera in l996, 

To many, that seems like to contradiction, but, ironically, for many years
Arabs who disliked its interviews with Israelis and US officials denounced
Al-Jazeera as too-pro US. Before the Iraq War, 60 Minutes featured a
profile of the station as an example of atilt towards pro-American
democracy and modernism. 

Within months, the Bush Administration pronounced it the anti-Christ for
its airing interviews with Bin Laden and other "evildoers." Donald
Rumsfeld fulminates against Al-Jazeera for "manipulating world opinion."
Yet all the might. so far, of the US imperium has not squelched its voice
even though an Administration that claims to support a free press has
tried to suppress. 

While in Qatar as a guest of Al-Jazeera's first TV production festival to
show my film WMD (Weapons of Mass Deception) to a very receptive audience,
I was invited to visit the newsroom and do an on-air interview in the
studio shown in the film Control Room. 

In network TV terms, Al-Jazeera is tiny, crowded with reporters and
producers squeezed around pod-like tables churning out packed newscasts on
a 24/7 basis. The whole operation would fit into a corner of the spanking
new CNN news operation I toured recently in the opulent Time Warner Center
in New York's Columbus Circle. A visiting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak
likened it to a "matchbox" saying "All this trouble from a matchbox like
this." 

There was literally no place for a visitor to sit so I shared space in the
Chief Editor's tiny office which has three desks and as many cell phones
ringing off the hook as he heatedly defends a decision to his boss, or
barks orders to the director to add pictures or sharpen up the questioning
of correspondents whose stand-ups from various hot spots flash across the
screen. 

There was an aura of no-nonsense earnest professionalism in the building.
On the wall, the Al-Jazeera Code of Ethics in English and Arabic mandates
a strict separation of news and opinion. It was developed in response to
constant criticisms, some fair, many not, of on-air bias. 

I told the chief editor of being interviewed live on Fox News when it
aired a story deriding the code. I called it "a good idea" and suggest
that that Fox should should try it. 

The reaction was nothing short of horror. 

"Are you suggesting that Fox is like Al-Jazeera," was the dismissive come
back. 

"I am not the first one," was my rejoinder. 

The two networks are news leaders but clearly inhabit different worlds
with far different worldviews. What does connect them is an aggressive
attitude and love of controversy. 

Al-Jazeera talk shows are outspoken but open to all points of view in the
spirit of "the opinion and the other opinion." 

Fox prefers more predictable opinions and its own "message points." One of
those messages is to constantly target and caricature Al-Jazeera even as
it spent as much as $10,000 monthly to buy its feed according to Hugh
Miles excellent new book on Al-Jazeera, "The Inside Story of the Arab News
Channel that Is Challenging the West." 

That challenge will soon no longer just be with its approach to news. Its
one satellite news channel is already spawning a larger media company with
websites, wireless news, a sports channel, a children's channel and
documentary channel. 

But the big news--and the buried lead in this article-- is that Al Jazeera
is going global, launching an international channel in English that plans
to be on the air in 2006. Its goal is nothing less than to "revolutionize
viewer choice." It is a bold challenge to western TV hegemony. 

This is good news for the vast audiences defecting from network and cable
news for its tepid and celebrified and sanitized coverage. It promises a
fresh approach with news features and analysis that they insist will be
"accurate, impartial and objective." They will show hard-hitting
documentaries, air live debates from bases in Doha. Washington, London and
Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. 

It has assembled a team of TV pros from BBC, APTN, ITV, CNN, and CNBC
among others and will have 40 bureaus worldwide. 

"Al Jazeera International Is a World Channel for the 21st Century and it
is the channel the world is waiting for" is its idealistic proclamation.
Its programmers are already buying up documentaries and seem to relish
having a go at the news companies they have left, at least according to a
spirited conversation I had with programming Director Paul Gibbs who
worked with BBC and the Discovery Channel. I was very impressed with the
multinational members of the corporate strategy team that are gearing up a
sophisticated approach to build a new more 

The conservative news world will be waiting and watching and so will
alternative media channels like Link Television or the new International
World Television channel which hope to do something similar. 

Unlike the alternative media groups, Al-Jazeera does not seem to be
lacking in money, 

But challenges remain: can they get carriage for their channel on cable
and satellite systems controlled by western media cartels? Getting their
signal up is far easier than bringing it down into people's homes. 

More importantly, can the Al-Jazeera approach, which has been associated
with controversy and terrorism, find a receptive audience among viewers
who have never really seen its news product (and couldn't understand it if
they did) but have been prejudiced against it all the same? Will they/we
tune it in and give it a chance, 

Its always hard to be the last kid on the block but these kids are (a) not
such kids; (b) have a lot to say and c) know how to say it, 

As the demoralized, compromises and dumbed down news system in the west
implodes with mounting scandals and erosion of both viewers and
credibility, is there a new savior, a genie in the bottle arising in the
East? 

Twenty five years ago. I worked in the basement of what was once the
Progressive Jewish Country Club in Atlanta on another news venture that
wanted to change the world. It was dismissed by the TV industry as the
Chicken Noodle Network. Its founder Ted Turner had a grand vision that was
co-opted by parochialism, greed and market logic. Years later he would be
bemoaning the big media outlets he sold out to, 

A quarter of a century later, its time for someone else to give it a try. 

Years ago, a critic wrote of "hearing the future of rock and roll, and his
name is Bruce Springsteen." 

I may have just seen the future of global television and its name is
Al-Jazeera. 

(Don't be suprised if Al-Jazeera morphs into Al Jaz in the way that
Federal Express became Fed Ex.) 

Who knows, BUT: we all know, inshallah, that we need something new in TV
news and badly. Don't we? 

News Dissector Danny Schechter, a former CNN and ABC News producer, is the
"blogger-in chief" of Mediachannel.org and director of WMD (Weapons of
Mass Deception) www.wmdthefilm.com 

 While he was in Doha, Danny was interviewed by the Friends of Al-Jazeera
 website 

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   ---   George Orwell


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