Al-Jazeera, a media revolution

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Al-Jazeera, a media revolution

Ten years on, al-Jazeera is the indisputed voice of the free in an Arab world that remains in shackles.

Azzam Tamimi

 

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About Webfeeds October 25, 2006 06:18 PM | Printable version

As al-Jazeera International, which will be predominantly in English, prepares for its launch this coming November, its older Arabic service al-Jazeera celebrates its 10th anniversary. The first of November 1996 witnessed a media revolution not just in the Arab world but across the globe. Al-Jazeera, which was born out of the abortion of a joint venture between the BBC and Saudi Arabia, soon attracted the attention of Arab viewers worldwide to an exciting style in broadcasting never ever before adopted by an Arab sponsored media outlet.

 

A year or so earlier, the Saudi Orbit Satellite bouquet sought to provide Arab satellite viewers with a reasonably "respectable" Arabic TV news service by means of contracting the news and current affairs segment to the BBC, well-respected in the Arab world for its Arabic radio service that is listened to by millions from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Peninsula.

 

For several months London-based Arab experts and commentators were hosted by the service in its BBC TV Centre studios at White City. At times guests would be warned not to be too harsh on Saudi Arabia if the news they were commenting on or the issues they were discussing had anything to do with it or its royals. A mild indirect critique of Arab governments was acceptable but not a direct blunt criticism of the Gulf states. Yet, the BBC kept receiving complaints from the Saudis objecting to the appearance of certain guests or to the way in which certain issues were addressed. They were particularly annoyed at the appearance on the news bulletins or the talk shows of members of the Saudi opposition. Riyadh authorities preferred to pretend they never existed. Guest commentators could not help but perceive the growing tension that eventually ended in an abrupt divorce between the BBC and Orbit.

 

Certain influential players within the ruling family in Saudi Arabia's much smaller neighbour Qatar had apparently been following the deterioration of the BBC-ORBIT marriage upon whose collapse they moved in, contracted the bulk of the BBC Arabic TV service staff and flew them to Doha. The Qataris, who suffered no shortage of money, seized the opportunity to acquire an entire team of highly professional and experienced TV producers and presenters. Anyone looking to launch a near perfect satellite service would not have been luckier. To guarantee the success of the project, the Qataris added to the professionalism of the team and the generous budget they allocated for the operation another essential element: editorial freedom.

 

Unlike the Saudis, the Qataris did not suffer internal problems that might be considered threatening or even news worthy. With a small population sitting on an ocean of oil and natural gas, governor-governed relations have been at their best since the current Amir seized power from his father. Since then, poverty in Qatar has been, literally, nonexistent and political dissent is considered an internal family affair that is usually resolved in a traditional fatherly fashion that leaves all those concerned happy and content. Each Qatari citizen is guaranteed a job and a minimum standard of living - including all essential services such as housing, health, education and even recreation - that is well above anything a western liberal society may dream of. In a nutshell, Qatari citizens have little to complain from.

 

One of the earliest decisions taken by the current Amir upon coming to power was to cancel the Information ministry and end all forms of government control over the media. It was in this climate that al-Jazeera was born with the declared objective of giving platform to "the opinion and the other opinion". Indeed, all kinds of ideas and personalities from the extreme right to the extreme left and from among the Islamists and the secular nationalists have regularly been debating issues on al-Jazeera. Hundreds of Arab activists and thinkers, whose own national media would never give them platform, rose to fame because al-Jazeera hosted them. In many instances, other media outlets, who otherwise would not have been bothered, were soon forced to pay attention to these rising stars.

 

The liberal west initially welcomed al-Jazeera seeing it as a tool of greatly needed and long-aspired-for liberalisation of the Arab region. Indeed, the channel's news bulletins and talk shows seemed to leave no stone unturned in the Arab political and social terrain. However, Arab regimes that are usually identified as close friends and strategic allies of the leading power in the west, the USA, could not conceal their anger and frustration at what Qatar's al-Jazeera was doing to them. The suppressed voices of political activists, opposition leaders and spokespersons for NGOs - particularly in the field of human rights and civil liberties - struggling for reform across the Arab region found in al-Jazeera a powerful agency to communicate their ideas, concerns and hopes to the millions of viewers who had free uncontrolled access to the channel via the satellite dish. The al-Jazeera TV debates about some of the most taboo issues in Arab politics encouraged members of the public to think loud and discuss freely. News and current affairs programs produced by national television stations, which were tightly controlled and severely censored, became deserted. Pressure was building within these institutions in order to ease the restrictions so that viewers could be won back.

 

Technology, money and political will combined together to provide al-Jazeera with an edge that was almost impossible to surpass. The United Arab Emirates tried to pull the rug from underneath al-Jazeera by liberalising its Abu Dhabi satellite channel. Initially, Abu Dhabi seemed to compete well; some of al-Jazeera's staff were lured by extremely generous packages that were, at times, more than double the salary they had been earning. With such irresistible offers some of them resigned their jobs at al-Jazeera and joined Abu Dhabi. However, soon most of them regretted the decision; some of them jumped re-applied to al-Jazeera and asked for their jobs to be given back to them. The authorities in the UAE could not maintain the open platform for long; their channel could compete in many ways except in the ability to maintain such a wide margin of freedom; only al-Jazeera was prepared to guarantee its staff and viewers alike such freedom.

 

In another bid to outdo al-Jazeera the Saudis opened their al-Arabiya satellite channel and the Americans their al-Hurra. The Saudi owned al-Arabiya did quite well in the beginning and managed to take away a chunk of viewers from al-Jazeera but that too was short-lived. It became clear soon that the purpose of al-Arabiya was not to compete with al-Jazeera but rather to settle scores with the critics of the Saudi Royal family. It is widely believed the US created al-Hurra Arabic satellite TV channel for the purpose of providing Arab viewers with the US side of the story in contrast to what al-Jazeera offers. The project has anything but succeeded.

 

The US contentment with al-Jazeera started fading away soon after 9/11 with the launch of the war on terrorism that started with the invasion of Afghanistan followed by the invasion of Iraq. Al-Jazeera's coverage of events in both arenas annoyed the US and prompted several US senior officials in the George W. Bush administration to openly criticise the channel. Sensing the US unease with al-Jazeera, an Arab leader, who al-Jazeera had also apparently annoyed, was reported to have suggested during the US invasion of Afghanistan that the US president should spare one of his Tomahawk missiles for al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha. Several Arab governments, including Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had at different occasions expressed anger that at times manifested itself in the closure of al-Jazeera offices or the brief detention of its correspondents and at times took the form of calling back their own ambassadors in Doha.

 

Soon, the US frustration with al-Jazeera manifested itself in more than verbal condemnation of the channel; its offices in Kabul and then in Baghdad were shelled by US occupation troops. In the latter instance al-Jazeera correspondent in Baghdad Tariq Ayoub was killed. Two of al-Jazeera's staff members have been accused of terrorism as a result of their coverage of events in Afghanistan: correspondent Taysir Allouni, who was arrested, charged, tried and imprisoned in Spain for interviewing Osama bin Laden; and cameraman Sami Al-Hajj, who was kidnapped while still in Afghanistan and has been held in Guantanamo Bay detention centre for the past five years.

 

The US administration considered further drastic action. Citing a Downing Street memo marked top secret, the British Daily Mirror reported in November 2005, that the US President, George Bush, planned to bomb al-Jazeera operation in Doha. According to a five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and the British prime minister, Tony Blair, during Blair's 16 April 2004 visit to Washington, Blair talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station.

 

Now we know this was not just an American concern. In an interview for Channel 4's Dispatches the former British home secretary, David Blunkett, indicated that he thought the bombing of al-Jazeera's Baghdad TV transmitter was, in his opinion, justified. When I visited al-Jazeera in Doha for a talk show in 1997, it occupied a very small compound consisting of a few administrative offices, a newsroom and a studio. Today al-Jazeera is an empire with a huge operation in Doha and scores of offices around the world. Ten years on, al-Jazeera is the undisputed voice of the free in an Arab world that remains in shackles.