The impact of Al-Jazeera

What's so special about Al-Jazeera?

Known as "the CNN of the Arab world," it is the only Arabic TV station that covers the region's governments and public controversies with the irreverence of Western-style media. Al-Jazeera has a strongly pro-Arab, populist slant, but disdains the crazy conspiracy theories and sniveling praise for dictatorial regimes that is standard on Arab state-controlled networks. It is also the only Arab TV station regularly to interview Western and Israeli officials. Launched just seven years ago, Al-Jazeera now reaches about 35 million viewers in the Arab world via satellite, and has become a major influence on Arab public opinion. About 4 million Europeans also tune in, most of them immigrants from Arab nations. In the U.S., Al-Jazeera's audience has climbed to about 150,000, and it recently launched an English-language Web site.

Why has it attracted so much attention in the West?

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Partly because, since Sept. 11, Al-Jazeera has become an important forum for Western officials wanting to talk directly to large Arab and Muslim audiences. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld have all appeared on the network to make their case. Al-Jazeera has also been a vital source of information about al Qaida. Its reporters have had access to al Qaida leaders, and tapes of Osama bin Laden periodically find their way to its offices. "Al-Jazeera is not only the biggest media phenomenon to hit the Arab world since the advent of TV," says The New York Times' Thomas Friedman, "it's also the biggest political phenomenon."

How did it originate?

Al-Jazeera ("the Peninsula") was launched by Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the emir of Saudi Arabia's small neighbor Qatar. The emir wanted to fund an unbiased Arabic channel to "promote a dialogue between civilizations." He put $150 million of his money into the venture and gave the station complete editorial freedom. On its popular flagship program, The Opposite Direction, guest protagonists tackle the Arab world's most sensitive political, religious, cultural, and economic issues. They shout, gesticulate, drown each other out, and even storm off, as viewers join in with phone calls and e-mails. It's all live, anything can happen—and it usually does.

Such as?

Such as mocking Jordan's King Abdullah II's claim that he is a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. A political science professor named Asad Abukhalil did just that on an Al-Jazeera talk show a few months ago. After the talk show aired, The Wall Street Journal reports, Jordan shut down Al-Jazeera's Amman office, and the Jordanian media denounced Abukhalil, noting he'd once been married to a Jewish woman.

Does this happen often?

Yes. The network's bureaus around the Middle East are periodically closed because of its insistence on airing stories on corruption among the ruling elites. Kuwait refused visas to its correspondents; Libya and Tunisia have both complained that Al-Jazeera gives too much air time to opposition leaders, and have withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar's capital, Doha, in protest. Bahrain banned Al-Jazeera for what it called its pro-Israeli bias. Algeria cut off the electricity to prevent residents from watching a show about the country's brutal civil war. Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority temporarily closed Al-Jazeera's Ramallah bureau because the network aired an unflattering image of the Palestinian leader.

Isn't Al-Jazeera biased against the West?

The network is openly critical of how the West treats the Arab world, and generally sides with what it portrays as the oppressed Arab masses. After Sept. 11, it repeatedly broadcast al Qaida denunciations of the West and a series of bin Laden tapes. In covering the Iraqi war, Al-Jazeera does televise briefings by allied forces and carries statements from U.S. and British officials. But the network's anchors and correspondents call the current war in Iraq the war on Iraq, and refer to allied troops as "invaders." Its news reports focus on wounded, killed, and terrified Iraqi civilians, with graphic footage from the battlefield and Iraqi hospitals. The problem with Al-Jazeera's coverage, U.S. officials say, is that it has no context. They complain that the network fails to point out to its viewers that the allies have taken great pains to avoid hurting civilians, while Saddam Hussein's forces deliberately use women and children as shields.

How does Al-Jazeera respond?

It contends its coverage is no more one-sided than the patriotic, pro-American reports from CNN, Fox, and MSNBC. "We present the news, obviously taking into account our Arab audience, just the way CNN presents the news catering to its audience," says Stephanie Thomas of Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau. On American networks, Al-Jazeera officials say, images of Iraqi civilian casualties are few and far between. Instead, the coverage is dominated by scenes of U.S. troops charging into battle, sometimes to a background of stirring, martial music. If civilians are shown at all, they're embracing American and British troops. That, too, is a one-sided view of the war, Al-Jazeera says. "The fact of the matter is that war kills," says a spokesman for the network. "It's not an image everyone wants to see."

An American competitor?

To give the Arab world a more pro-American alternative to Al-Jazeera, the U.S. government is planning to spend more than $30 million to start a new satellite news network called the Middle East Television Network. President Bush asked for funding for METN as part of his request for nearly $80 billion to fund the war in Iraq, and Congress has responded enthusiastically. The new network could be on the air in six months. "Whether we're going to change hearts and minds, I don't know," says Norman Pattiz, a broadcasting executive who sits on the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors. "But it's a heck of a lot better for us to have our policies and our people and our culture explained from our own lips than depend on having the indigenous media doing it." Skeptics question how many viewers METN will be able to lure away from Al-Jazeera. That network is so enormously popular, says Middle East expert Robert Satloff in The Washington Post, precisely because of its anti-American, anti-Israeli slant, and its sensationalized, screaming debates. A sedate, pro-American network, Satloff says, might please taxpayers back home, but it's not likely to generate big ratings among its target audience of young, angry Arabs.