'Raising eyebrows in the Middle East' - the Arab answer to CNN

Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East

book by Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar

Cambridge, Massachusetts: Westview Press, 2002

Reviewed by Sally Bland

Until a few years ago, Arab viewers often tuned in to foreign channels to get breaking news, even if it was happening right next door to them. The launch of Al Jazeera in 1996 changed all that. Not only did the Qatar-based, 24-hour satellite news network bring live coverage of what Arab audiences wanted to see, it also made its name internationally, with global media taking their stories from Jazeera scoops.

Evaluating the network in terms of professionalism, objectivity, appeal to Arab audiences, relation to Arab governments, including Qatar, and impact in the West, this book presents Al Jazeera as the Arab answer to CNN, although the network modelled itself more on the BBC, where many of its founding staff previously worked.

Nawawy and Iskandar, both of Egyptian origin and university teachers of journalism and communications in North America, depict Al Jazeera as a sort of double-edged sword. On the one hand, it slices through the silence and distortions of Western reporting on the Middle East; on the other, it gatecrashes the censorship and rigidity of regional media, "raising eyebrows in the Middle East and elsewhere for its provocative approach to news analysis". (p. 22)

Al Jazeera is "nothing short of a second Desert Storm, a war fought on the airwaves instead of battlefields". (p. 24)

It also has a galvanising socio-political function. In the authors' view, Al Jazeera is "a major stakeholder" in "the Arab people's experience of globalisation, migration, and emigration", in a sense binding together "300 million Arabs in twenty-two countries", as well as immigrant communities around the globe. (pp. 19-20)

Five years after its 1996 launch, Al Jazeera could claim 35 million viewers. The authors credit this meteoric rise to fame to the network's coverage of three major events at the start of the new millennium. Its international breakthrough came in the wake of Sept. 11, with its exclusive broadcast of the first video footage of Osama Ben Laden, which was immediately picked up by CNN and other global media. It then scored with exclusive footage of the US war on Afghanistan. However, the network had already won hearts and minds across the Arab world with its extensive, live coverage of the second Palestinian Intifada.

Covering such events inevitably involved Al Jazeera in controversy, as did its policy of showing all angles and airing oppositional opinions within the Arab world, thus promoting open discussion of issues formerly debated "privately - among family and friends". (p. 50)

This put Al Jazeera on the cutting edge of international dialogue about democracy, and exposed the hypocrisy of the Bush administration's self-proclaimed drive for democratic reform in Arab countries.

While US officials began watching Al Jazeera and sometimes praised its free expression, the White House team repeatedly complained that Al Jazeera served as a "mouthpiece for terrorists" and gave too much airtime to "inflammatory" images, such as civilian casualties in Afghanistan or anti-war protests. (Ironically, the Voice of America had similar problems with the US State Department over its broadcast of an interview with Taleban leader Mohammed Omar in 2001.)

A strong point of the book lies in how it addresses these issues, for the authors are clearly concerned with freedom of expression, and how media can contribute to East-West understanding. They see Al Jazeera as "an unofficial two-way communications channel between the Arab and Western worlds. The Arab world tunes in for information, and foreign networks tune in for material and footage". (p. 156)

Nawawy and Iskandar have numerous suggestions for how the network could enhance its communicative role, from having English language broadcasts to avoiding sensationalism and seeking out more guests for their programmes who "reflect the prevailing public opinion, which in the Arab world - contrary to popular belief in the States and elsewhere - is truly moderate". (p. 200)

They also look beyond the present situation to a time when Ben Laden and other issues on which Al Jazeera has made its name will have become old news. In the long-term, Al Jazeera must develop its ability to "uncover meaningful stories, conduct investigative journalism, and provide cutting-edge news" in order to confirm its integrity and popularity. (p. 174)

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This article was published in the Monday, September 27, 2004 edition of the Jordan Times. It was used here with permission.