Doha, Qatar, February 1: Doha is the capital of the country pronounced Cutter. It is a Gulf state run by a modernizing Emir not unlike the fictional wannabe killed in the movie Syriana.
The ruler, His Highness (HH) Sheikh Hamad Bib Khalifa Al Thani, presides over the country on a Peninsula. He rules an incredibly wealthy desert nation, with just 743, 000 people, that sits on top of one of the world’s largest reserves of natural gas. He has two American bases in one corner of the country and US universities building medical schools and other institutions of higher learning in another. He’s launched an airline that is already one of the best in the world, and has turned this city into a giant construction site with a humongous airport and new skyscrapers in the works.
Yet, Qatar is not really known globally for these audacious and expensive accomplishments. It’s known for an Arabic language satellite channel - that until recently was squeezed into a building one Arab leader called a “matchbox” - Al Jazeera.
Many Americans think of Al Jazeera as tied to terrorism because they occasionally air tapes recorded by Osama bin Laden. In the West it has inspired fear, been denounced on Fox News as “terror TV” and “culturally Arab” in pejorative putdowns, and reportedly President Bush once discussed bombing its headquarters, as in “taking it out.” (Channel executives say they have still not had any official explanations from Washington for these "documented threats.”)
Al Jazeera turns ten this year. It was a child of a failed BBC-Saudi partnership. When that relationship self-destructed, its journalists found a patron in the State of Qatar that invested over a hundred million dollars to turn an idea into a global brand - some say the 5th best known in the world - and force in broadcasting news that has won the confidence of nearly 40 million Arab people worldwide.
Al Jazeera has been embattled. Two of its offices were bombed by the US military. Two reporters have been killed and another is in Guantanamo. Another was accused of supporting terrorism in a trial that most press freedom groups found deeply flawed. Several governments, including Iraq, have closed their offices.
That’s why it is sponsoring a forum this week to discuss "Defending Freedom, Defining Responsibility.”
MediaChannel.org is here along with a wide international gathering of journalists, media scholars, press freedom groups and intellectuals. U.S. Independent media is well represented with Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman, Stephen Marshall of Guerilla News Network, and Iraq reporter Dahr Jamail among others. There are delegates from England, France, South Africa, Turkey and all over the Arab World.
Managing Director Wadah Khanfar, the channel’s Managing Director explains the reason for the assembly. “The duty of the journalist is to keep citizens informed is more critically needed than ever before,” he says. “At the same time, journalists are being faced with political pressures, news security laws and a field of operations that is more politically charged and dangerous.”
In many ways, the presence here of so many diverse voices represents the spirit of the global vision that led to us to form our company 18 years ago, and in that sense it is gratifying to be recognized by our colleagues who share our commitment of informing the world and using media to illuminate issues, not trivialize them.
Al Jazeera is not standing still or resting on its laurels. When you tour their facilities, you see an expanded and technically sophisticated infrastructure. The control room shown in the documentary by that name is gone and been replaced by a modern open studio newsroom.
It is creating a new research center and is setting up kiosks to give viewers a chance to record their comments. They will translate their feed into more languages, create a trust for the families of journalists killed or wounded in their work, and upgrade the website to make it more interactive. They also announced a new partnership with the Venezuela- based channel Tele-Sur which aspires to become an Al Jazeera in Latin America. Al Jazeera already has its own correspondents there.
The bigger news involves the new Al Jazeera International Channel which is expected to launch this Spring — no date was given. They had a separate press conference underscoring that this global network will be separately managed by British journalist Nigel Parsons, a British journalist who used to be with the Associated Press in London from their own brand new building.
The International Channel’s programming will be decentralized with news centers in Washington, London and Kula Lumpur, Malaysia. It is announcing its international team and presenters slowly. Among the “names” are Riz Kahn, formerly of CNN International, Dave Marash, formerly of Nightline and Sir David Frost, the famous British interviewer. They have announced a woman’s show with a former BBC personality. More announcements are expected. Top journalists have BBC and even Sky News backgrounds. They plan to add 200-250 journalists. They say 30% of their staffers are of Arab background but many are also from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
There were many questions raised by the tone and direction of the news channel. Even though there is coordination with the Arabic language channel there is a separation as well which evokes suspicion among Al Jazeera veterans. One South African journalist quipped, 'there was an apartheid-like separate but equal vibe between the two channels' as in “you do your thing, we’ll do ours.” Al Jazeera’s strengths could be dissipated with a lack of unity and cross promotion.
A question was raised about whether the new channel fears harassment from the Bush Administration. They say that they don’t. What they do have to worry about are the difficulties of securing carriage from the giant commercial media cartels who don’t want the competition and hate the spirit that Al Jazeera represents in a world where so many TV networks no longer even pretend to tell the truth or report real news.
“Judge us on our merits,” stated Riz Kahn.
And I am sure the world will be, beginning with the army of media practitioners, scholars, and activists assembled here in Doha.
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