BBC goes head-to-head with al-Jazeera

SOO MAAL · October 26, 2005

Â· Arabic channel to launch in the west in March

Â· Corporation will make cuts to fund rival service

Owen Gibson, media correspondent

Wednesday October 26, 2005

The Guardian

In one corner stands the BBC World Service, the corporation's venerable 70-year-old voice to the world backed by Â£239m of taxpayers' money. In the other the upstart satellite TV channel al-Jazeera, barely a decade old, bankrolled from the bottomless reserves of the emir of Qatar.

The two broadcasters are going head to head in a battle for control of the new frontier for global TV - the Middle East. While al-Jazeera is finalising plans to launch an English language channel (star presenter: Sir David Frost), the BBC yesterday unveiled its counter-attack: a new Â£19m-a-year channel to be broadcast to the region in Arabic.

This is a fight not only for ratings but to gain the hearts and minds of viewers in the Middle East. The World Service director, Nigel Chapman, said the launch of its first television channel would increase its influence in the region and dismissed fears that viewers would see it as a mouthpiece for western interests.

"Most people in the Arab world are very clear that, despite being funded by the UK taxpayer, they see the BBC as an independent broadcasting force and have done for over 60 years," said Mr Chapman. He argued that with the growing influence of al-Jazeera and its rivals and the near-universal access to satellite television, the BBC's radio and online services risked being outflanked.

It comes at a time when al-Jazeera, the 24-hour Arabic news channel, is expanding rapidly and gearing up to launch an English language service in the west next March. That will give it a year's headstart on the BBC's mirror-image launch, which is scheduled for 2007. The BBC's new operation, which has been under discussion for two years, will mean cutbacks elsewhere at the Foreign Office-funded broadcaster and the closure of 10 radio services around the world. BBC broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai will cease by March.

According to some estimates al-Jazeera, which shot to prominence as the preferred outlet for Osama bin Laden's video addresses after September 11 2001, now has a global audience that rivals the BBC's. The irony is that al-Jazeera launched out of the ashes of the BBC's last attempt to build a presence in the region. A commercial joint venture, launched in 1994, foundered two years later. Many of the disappointed staff went on to launch al-Jazeera. "That experience does not negate the need for an independent news and information channel in Arabic from the BBC, as some have argued. It tells us instead we had the wrong funding model and means of distribution," Mr Chapman said.

Other observers have suggested that the BBC has missed the boat and questioned the need for a Foreign Office-funded service to rival established domestic commercial channels. Some BBC World Service staff are also wary of the idea fearing that, even if it is editorially objective, the new venture may be perceived as too closely aligned with Foreign Office objectives.

A spokesman for the Dubai-based news channel al-Arabiya said increased competition was healthy but viewers in the region would inevitably question the motives of the new channel. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds, said that it would be essential for the new BBC service to differentiate itself from the US-backed service and establish an independent voice from launch.

"The new BBC station has the potential to compete strongly with al-Jazeera. If it learns from the mistakes of al-Hurra, adopting an even-handed editorial policy instead of becoming a mouthpiece for propaganda, it will engage the many intellectuals and politicians who have shunned the American channel," he said.

Mr Chapman maintained that the government had no influence on the decision, which was editorial rather than ideological. "There is no political motive to this. Our job is to be a broadcaster. That's what we do," he said. "The notion that any group of people, anywhere in the world, is going to put pressure on us to follow a certain agenda or promote a point of view ... That will not happen."

He pointed to the BBC's 60-year heritage in the region, with a radio service that still attracts up to 10 million listeners and an increasingly popular online operation, as proof that the World Service was seen as distinct from the British government. A survey of satellite viewers in the region found that between 80% and 90% were likely to watch an Arabic television service from the BBC. Some Washington officials have described al-Jazeera as being anti-American and encouraging Islamic militancy, but it has worked hard recently to cement its reputation as a global news gatherer. Its drive for credibility has also informed the planned launch of al-Jazeera International and the signing of several star names from the west. Some see the launch of the new English-language channel as an attempt to placate western critics.

The services compared

Al-Jazeera

Launch November 1996

Base Doha, Qatar

Audience: 50 million (estimated)

Budget $30m a year grant from emir of Qatar, ads and syndication income

On air 24 hours

Other platforms Websites, al-Jazeera International English language channel launches next year

Bureau 30 across the world, soon to be increased for new channel

What they said "We are dealing with people that are ... willing to lie to the world to further their cause," Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary; "Al-Jazeera destroyed the Arab totalitarian media system," Saad Djebbar, political analyst

BBC Arabic TV

Launch 2007

Base London and Cairo

Audience "In five years we aim to win a significant share of the market for international television news." Current World Service global audience is 149 million a week

Budget Â£19m a year

On air 12 hours a day, rising to 24

Other platforms BBCArabic.com website, Arabic radio service with up to 12 million listeners a week

Bureaus 45 around the world

What they said "A service to the world as a whole, and perhaps the greatest gift to the world during the [last] century," Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, on the World Service

BBC squares up to Al Jazeera

By Rhys Blakely

The BBC World Service is to go head-to-head with Al Jazeera when it launches a new Arabic-language television channel.

The BBC's Arabic channel, due to launch in 2007, forms part of a Â£30 million package of new initiatives unveiled by the broadcaster today. The move follows a request from the Foreign Office, which funds the World Service.

Money for the new channel will be made available in part through the closure of several of the BBC's eastern European radio channels. The decision signals the way the geopolitical landscape has shifted since the end of the Cold War, the World Service said.

The radio closures will involve more than 200 job losses.

The Arabic channel will be the first publicly-funded international TV service from the BBC and marks a departure for the World Service, which has traditionally been known for radio services.

The BBC claimed the move will make it the only major broadcaster who will provide a "tri-media" service in Arabic to the Middle East - using TV, radio and online for "sharing views and perspectives" across the region.

The channel will initially broadcast 12 hours a day and will be freely available to everyone with a satellite or cable connection in the Middle East. "Our research suggests there is strong demand for an Arabic television service from the BBC in the Middle East," the corporation said.

Nigel Chapman, the BBC World Service Director, said: "Many of the European services being closed had their roots in the Second World War and have served their audiences well right through the Cold War years."

"But Europe has changed, fundamentally, since the early nineties. Now the countries to which these languages are broadcast are members of the EU, or are likely to join soon."

Al Jazeera, the leading Arabic-language channel, has courted controversy by airing material from al-Qaeda-affiliated groups. It was itself founded in the wake of the collapse of BBC Arabic in 1996.

The earlier channel had been a joint venture between the World Service and the Saudi-owned broadcaster Orbit. After its demise many of its staff went to work for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera.

In July, Al Jazeera announced plans to launch a new English-language satellite service called Al Jazeera International in an attempt to provide news about the Middle East, especially Israel, from an Arab perspective.

Money saved from the Word Service restructuring will also be invested in expanding the World Service's online operations. The broadcaster plans to supply more reports in areas such as South America, Russia, south Asia and the Middle East.

Money will also be invested in radio, marketing and overseas offices bureaux. The World Service will also explore opportunities to work in partnership with other groups.

"The changes add up to the biggest transformation of BBC World Service that has been undertaken -- and one of the most far-reaching -- since the BBC began international broadcasting more than 70 years ago," Mr Chapman said.

SOO MAAL · October 26, 2005

Al-Jazeera: The new power on the small screen

It only started broadcasting in 1996 but the Qatar-based station has already changed the face of broadcasting. Now even the World Service is launching an Arabic-language channel. Paul Vallely reports on a global media phenomenon

Published: 26 October 2005

It must have been seen as something of a back-handed compliment in the tiny Gulf state of Qatar. The BBC yesterday confirmed it is to axe 10 of its World Service radio services to find the money to launch an Arabic-language television station. The decision is powerful testimony to the extraordinary growth of al-Jazeera, the Arab satellite station which in less than a decade has developed from the personal indulgence of the Emir of Qatar into a global player on the international broadcasting stage.

Founded in 1996 the Qatar-based news network - which became a potent media force in during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq when its ability to report events in the Middle Eastern domain from an Arab perspective contrasted with the difficulties faced by other media organisations - al-Jazeera was recently voted the fifth most influential global brand (behind Apple and Google).

That status can only increase from next year when it launches an English-speaking international version, with a raft of top ITN and BBC executives behind the scenes, and Sir David Frost - who has interviewed seven US presidents and six British prime ministers - signed up as its big-name presenter. Its intention is to rival CNN and BBC World as the globe's biggest broadcaster.

In some parts of the world that notion will be greeted with a mixture of derisive mirth and horror. The station gained worldwide attention after 11 September 2001 when it began broadcasting videos in which Osama bin Laden and his sidekicks sought to justify the terrorist attacks on the United States. Al-Jazeera has, ever since, been routinely accused by the US Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and others of "consistently lying" and "working in concert with terrorists". He has even accused it of taking women and children to places where US bombs had fallen and pretending they were victims of the US attack.

This has not entirely been to their disadvantage. "The more Rumsfeld attacks us, the more popular we are with our viewers," the station's communications director, the surreally named Jihad Ballout has said.

But then things have been complex at al-Jazeera from the outset. It began in 1996. In April that year there were tear-stained faces at the BBC as 250 journalists were toldthe BBC World Service's Arabic television station was to shut. It had been a joint venture with a Saudi company and a lack of common ground on editorial policy came to a head when the Saudi government tried to censor a documentary on executions under its brutal interpretations of sharia law.

But the Emir of Qatar - a man sitting on the third-largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world - was waiting in the wings. He had liked the short-lived BBC Arabic, and believing the long-term interests of Islam were served better by truth than by censorship, he stumped up $150m (now Â£90m) and founded al-Jazeera. Large numbers of the BBC staff transferred from London to Qatar to run it.

There are 100 or so other Arabic TV stations available to those with satellite dishes. But all are either state controlled or not trusted by viewers. From the outset al-Jazeera was different. It ran stories about the corruption of government officials in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria and elsewhere. It aired debate of a kind rarely seen on Arab television. It even interviewed Israeli officials - never seen on other Arab networks. Its motto was: "We get both sides of the story."

But there are always those who do not want the other side to get an airing. And not just totalitarian governments in the Middle East. When US President George Bush launched his "war on terror" he pronounced that you had to be either with him or against him. And though al-Jazeera in total showed just five hours of bin Laden's speeches, compared with 500 hours of the US President, it was clear al-Jazeera was seen as being in the enemy camp.

During the US invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, al-Jazeera was the only station with a round-the-clock satellite link from Kabul to the outside world - until, that is, two American "smart" bombs hit its office. Something similar happened in 2003 in Iraq when the station's office in Baghdad was attacked by US forces, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub, after the US had been given the office's precise co-ordinates.

During the war al-Jazeera riled the American and British coalition further by broadcasting a 30-second film of the bodies of two dead British soldiers in a "flagrant breach" of the Geneva convention. Those who knew Arab culture pointed out that it did not share Western taboos on pictures of the dead, with graphic footage of dead Palestinians and Israelis alike commonplace on Arab TV screens. But the outrage was undiminished.

The differences were not merely cultural but propagandistic. Al-Jazeera had equipped ordinary people around Iraq with phones and cameras as the invasion got under way, anticipating that communications in Baghdad would deteriorate as the US forces closed in. As a result the station was broadcasting pictures from hotspots such as Fallujah, which openly contradicted the claims the US military was putting out.

"The contradictions were much in evidence in Fallujah where the Americans one day announced there was a truce that was beginning at 12 noon," said one al-Jazeera journalist. "Then we would transmit images of American jet fighters bombing the city and breaking the truce."

Even so there was much debate in the station about how its reporters should remain even-handed. At one point editors banned journalists from describing American troops' presence as an "occupation" and those attacking them as a "resistance" movement. And although throughout last year al-Jazeera broadcast several video tapes of kidnapping victims - with hostages often blindfolded, pleading for their release and reading out their kidnappers' prepared statements - the station assisted Western governments in attempts to secure the hostages' release. And it always refused to show the beheadings posted by terrorists on internet websites.

None of that impressed Washington. It put pressure on the Emir to sell the station, which he still subsidises to the tune of$30m a year (because almost all Arab governments boycott al-Jazeera's advertising - a fact which one wag said was "about the only thing the Arab information ministers can all agree on"). Ernst and Young were hired to look into possible privatisation models earlier this year, but the idea seems to have been shelved, possibly because al-Jazeera means the little emirate now punches above its political weight.

But the political pressure on the station is unrelenting. Since the start of 2002 one of its cameramen has been held at Guantanamo Bay. The same year Bahrain banned al-Jazeera reporters - because the station was "biased towards Israel and against Bahrain". Then two of its financial journalists had their credentials to cover the New York Stock Exchange revoked. In 2003 its reporter in Spain was arrested and accused of being an al-Qa'ida agent. In 2004 the Algerian government froze the activities of al-Jazeera's correspondent there and later in the year the provisional Iraqi government shut down its offices in Baghdad. Problems have been created for the station in Canada, Jordan, Kuwait, Iran, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia where it has even been banned from covering the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. Its website has been attacked by hackers, who redirected users to - a revealing combination - US patriot or porn sites.

Despite all that - or perhaps because of it - subscriptions to al-Jazeera doubled in a single week after the war on Iraq began. It now has 50 million viewers and is in the middle of a major expansion. In addition to its news network it has al-Jazeera Sports, the al-Jazeera Children's Channel and al-Jazeera Live, which broadcasts conferences in real time without editing or commentary. The English-language service, al-Jazeera International, will launch in March. It will broadcast from its Qatar headquarters and bureaux in London, Kuala Lumpur and Washington DC. Unsurprisingly it has yet to find a US cable outlet prepared to carry its broadcasts. But the likelihood is that it will find a ready audience.

"The brief is emphatically not an English translation of the Arabic channel," says Nigel Parsons, al-Jazeera International's managing director, who was previously a senior executive with Associated Press Television News and the BBC. "It will have international appeal and fill a lot of gaps in existing output."

The English-language website drew a huge number of hits during the July bombings in London. "One of the aims will be to try and bring better understanding of each other's positions," Parsons said. "We'll aim for balance ... It's not going to be anti-Western or anti-American." Indeed some staff fear it could end up being too Western and unpopular with English-speaking Muslims.

The gap in the market comes, Parsons believes, from the fact that CNN has been dragged to the right by Rupert Murdoch's outrageously partisan Fox News Channel. CNN's coverage of the Iraq war cost them a lot of credibility. And the BBC's international coverage, particularly of the developing world, he says, "are 40 per cent of what they were when Michael Buerk first did the Ethiopian famine".

He has convinced many in the industry. Behind the big name of Sir David Frost lie a raft of seasoned professionals. They include: John Pullman, former editor of News At Ten; a Paul Gibbs, a former editor of BBC Breakfast; Steve Clarke, an executive producer from Sky; and Al Anstey, who has just quit as ITN's head of foreign news. On-camera will be Susan Phillips, previously the London bureau chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and Mark Seddon, the former editor of Tribune, who will be the New York and UN correspondent. Parsons has had 4,000 applications for the 40 jobs in the Washington bureau from staff at CNN, Fox, Sky, the BBC and Australian television.

Will the BBC Arabic service make a dent in al-Jazeera? Washington has already launched its own rival, al-Hurra. It has made little impact. So has the Saudi-backed al-Arabiya, though it has made inroads in Iraq and Bahrain. "Al-Jazeera," sighs Mouafac Harb, the director of al-Hurra, "has hijacked the role of the mosque as the primary source of information and views. Al-Jazeera is the only political process in the Middle East."

Even some Americans have been forced to agree. Kenton Keith, a former US ambassador to Qatar, says: "For the long- range importance of press freedom in the Middle East and the advantages that will ultimately have for the West you have to be a supporter of al-Jazeera, even if you have to hold your nose sometimes."