A Major Image Problem
It says it'll play fair, but al Jazeera's new network gets a cold reception
Angling for laughs at the recent Emmy Awards, host Conan O'Brien noted that some big-screen actors had been seduced by television: "Alec Baldwin has a new show on NBC. James Woods has a new show on CBS," he said. "And Mel Gibson has a new show on al Jazeera."
The Hollywood crowd roared at the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that Gibson, who'd just unleashed an anti-Semitic rant during his arrest for drunk driving, might have a deal with the Arab network that is seen by many Americans as Osama bin Laden's favorite news outlet.
But they weren't laughing in the Qatar-based network's well-staffed Washington bureau, which is part of an effort to launch a global English-language sibling to the all-Arabic news channel. Al Jazeera International has CNN-like ambitions and hubs in Washington; London; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; and Doha-but its rollout timetable remains uncertain. Though 500 staffers have been hired worldwide, including about 100 in Washington, the launch has fallen victim to enormous technical difficulties and the herculean task of selling an al Jazeera product in a post-9/11 America that's at war in the Arab world and suspects-rightly or wrongly-that the network favors the bad guys.
Delayed. The kickoff for the new channel was originally expected in early 2006; then a spokesman predicted a September date, later amending that in favor of "the end of the year." Now, says Lindsey Oliver, the channel's commercial director, "We won't confirm a specific launch date, other than to say we are very close." Al Jazeera wants the new channel to reach up to 40 million households worldwide, but it's unclear who the target audience is, and the firm has found some U.S. cable and satellite companies reluctant to carry the al Jazeera brand. Several U.S. companies declined to comment.
Ironically, in its quest to convince U.S. broadcast and advertising muckety-mucks that the new channel, led by a British-dominated management team, will be independent from its Arabic sister, al Jazeera has also managed to anger many in the Arab community.
"This is an Arab network from the Arab world-if people are going to watch a western point of view, they already have CNN, Fox, and the rest," says Mohammud el-Nawawy, a professor at Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) and coauthor of Al Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East.
A decade ago, when al Jazeera's Arabic channel was founded with a grant from the emir of Qatar, it was the first network in the Arab world not directly government operated. It quickly won huge audiences and plaudits here and abroad for bringing a more open press to the Middle East, reporting on government corruption and at times angering Arab viewers for giving Israelis an on-air voice. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was among top officials who appeared on the network.
But after 9/11, when the network began airing gruesome images of Arab casualties and became the conduit through which bin Laden released his statements,the al Jazeera brand became poison in the United States. Just last week, al Jazeera broadcast excerpts of a new video showing bin Laden meeting with some of the 9/11 hijackers. And Rumsfeld has denounced the network for anti-U.S. propaganda, including reports that American troops in Fallujah were terrorizing civilians. "They are simply lying," he said.
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