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.
Access. Arab media scholars like Marwan Kraidy of American University argue that al Jazeera, which now faces aggressive competition in the Arab market, is simply reporting the news. Bin Laden videos are news, he says, "and he is a news actor. He changed world politics. We can't ignore him." Though many in the cable and satellite world may agree, few so far seem willing to deal with the negative baggage of airing the network's new English-language news channel. "I think it's shortsighted not to carry it here, but then again, I don't have to carry it," says Paul Maxwell, the founder of CableFAX, considered the industry's bible. "With the climate in the U.S. and the way the government behaves toward the network, who needs the bother?" (Al Jazeera'sArabic channel is available in the United States on Dish Network's premium Arabic-language packages.)
The new channel has assembled some high-profile talent, including British interviewer David Frost and a number of journalists who worked on ABC's Nightline. Dave Marash, a longtime Nightline correspondent, is set to coanchor the news broadcasts out of the Washington bureau, and Joanne Levine, a former Nightline producer, runs programming for the Americas. A blunt Washington Post opinion piece written by Levine in June pulled back the curtain on difficulties she and others in her bureau have encountered: Headlined "Al Jazeera, as American as Apple Pie," Levine said the network has been isolated and journalists have encountered "resistance, rejection, and racism." She told of how reporters, all U.S. citizens, sent to North Dakota for a story on the depopulation of the Great Plains were questioned by federal border agents the local sheriff had contacted. In Washington, the conservative watchdog group Accuracy in Media has mounted an effort to stop the network and released a video titled Terror Television: The Rise of Al-Jazeera and the Hate America Media.
Marash, who has been promoting al Jazeera International as a rare outlet that will provide in-depth, analytical coverage, acknowledges that those involved have "faced periodic incidents of fear and loathing," but he remains optimistic. "Do I think there are serious impediments to either newsgathering, source finding, or production? Nah," he said. "[The hostility] is a real phenomenon, and whenever you're confronted with it, it's unsettling. But it's not a showstopper."
Others are not so sure. The internal struggle over how "Arab" the channel should be remains; does al Jazeera International's western team call the shots, or will that fall to network bosses in Qatar? The new channel's programming director, a key player, was recently let go. And just where the channel will be carried in the United States remains a mystery. Some insiders predict it may initially be available here only on the Internet, though Oliver promises a presence on satellite, cable, and broadband. "Everything about al Jazeera International is theoretical at this point," says veteran Middle East commentator Gordon Robison, who wonders at what point the financial plug might be pulled. "The fact that the emir has unlimited resources does not imply that he wants to spend them all."
Most insiders give the channel a fifty-fifty shot of getting off the ground in the United States. "I don't think they can launch here in the current atmosphere just because people are scared," says Evie Haskell, editor-in-chief of Media Business Corp., with publications covering the satellite, cable, and telecommunications world. "And it's a damn shame." It's an opinion not everyone shares.
For more of the interview with Dave Marash: www.usnews.com/marash
This story appears in the September 18, 2006 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.