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Thursday, September 22, 2011
What Wikileaks Tells About Al Jazeera
Is the rapidly expanding Middle East satellite television network and voice of the Arab Spring as independent as it claims?
Doha, Qatar capital
But after the last dump of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks, on Aug. 30, articles have begun to circulate -- especially in Iranian and Syrian media outlets -- about Al Jazeera's close relationship with a surprising interlocutor: the U.S. government.
There have been longstanding accusations that Al Jazeera serves as an arm of its host nation's foreign policy, and earlier leaked documents referred to the news organization as "one of Qatar's most valuable political and diplomatic tools," which could be used as "a bargaining tool to repair relationships with other countries." Another document urges Sen. John Kerry to engage the Qatari government on Al Jazeera during a visit to the Gulf country, saying, "there are ample precedents for a bilateral dialogue on Al Jazeera as part of improving bilateral relations."
Al Jazeera station
Despite those assertions by U.S. diplomatic sources, both the network and the Qatari government fiercely insist that it is editorially independent and free from interference.
Skeptics take the latest leak as proof, though, that Al Jazeera is susceptible to external pressures, not least in part due to the document's summary:
PAO [Public affairs officer] met 10/19 with Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar to discuss the latest DIA [U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency] report on Al Jazeera and disturbing Al Jazeera website content.... Khanfar said the most recent website piece of concern to the USG [U.S. government] has been toned down and that he would have it removed over the subsequent two or three days. End summary.
On a semantic level, [Khanfar] objected to the use of the word "agreement" as used in the August report on the first page, under the heading "Violence in Iraq", where a sentence reads: "In violation of the station's agreement several months ago with US officials etc". "The agreement was that it was a non-paper," said Khanfar. [A non-paper is diplomatic jargon for a proposal that is unofficial and has not been committed to.] "As a news organization, we cannot sign agreements of this nature, and to have it here like this in writing is of concern to us."
Khanfar could not be reached for comment, and Al Jazeera has made no official response to the latest claims, but a source at the channel told Foreign Policy that these sorts of meeting between high-level Al Jazeera management and U.S. officials are standard practice, and continue today. Elaborating, he said that representatives of numerous diplomatic missions regularly bring lists of complaints to Al Jazeera, but that doesn't mean they are heeded or given undue weight.
The controversial cable actually backs up this comment to a certain extent, detailing Khanfar arguing with some points made in the U.S. government report presented to him by the embassy representative. "Some are simple mistakes which we accept and address," he said. Other points, such as airing views not favorable to the United States, are taken out of context, given that the contrasting opinion would have its due in a later report, he said.
Khanfar also tells the representative that some grievances can't be addressed, including the use of "terrorist tapes" on air, which he insists is the network's policy so long as they are edited for newsworthiness. And obviously, he states, he can't very well prevent guests or interviewees from using language deemed by the U.S. government as "inflammatory."
Reviewing the "troublesome website material" Khanfar agreed to tone down, the U.S. public affairs officer cites a sensationalistic report carried by Al Jazeera's Arabic website:
The site opens to an image of bloody sheets of paper riddled with bullet holes. Viewers click on the bullet holes to access testimony from ten alleged "eye witnesses"...The unnamed U.S. officer tells Khanfar that the report "came across as inflammatory and journalistically questionable." It then says, "Khanfar appeared to repress a sigh but said he would have the piece
"According to Abbas, the effort to professionalize Al Jazeera is an uphill one," the cable reads, indicating the biggest problem he faced was that "old habits die hard." It continues:
"[My] academic research shows influence is not something that comes on a top-down level -- you have to look at the individuals working there," said Mohamed Zayani, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and co-author of the book The Culture of Al Jazeera: Inside an Arab Media Giant.
"What we got time and again was that there was a big margin of freedom... and journalists were empowered by it," he told me. But that also makes Al Jazeera more susceptible to the subjective views of individual employees, he said.
Al Jazeera has, if anything, become even more of a household name in recent years, and has been recognized in the West by no less than U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for offering "real news." The organization has aggressively covered the "Arab Spring" uprisings across the Middle East, even dropping popular programming to air around-the-clock coverage as revolts have climaxed in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Justifiably or not, though, critics accuse the broadcaster of ignoring the unrest in its own backyard, the Gulf.
In the case of Syria, Al Jazeera has faced backlash for covering the brutal crackdown on opposition protesters by the government there. Syrians have accused Al Jazeera of seeking to foment unrest in the country, and at least one media outlet even accused the Qatar-based broadcaster of setting up film studios to stage some of the uprising. It comes as no surprise, then, that some might seize on the latest leaked cables as a way to discredit the news organization as simply being a mouthpiece for the U.S. government.
At least one expert who has studied the network in depth says Al Jazeera's culture may be the very thing behind the mixed standards in output.While AJ started out with a significant number of ex-BBC reporters, this cadre has shrunk over the years, attracted to other channels such as Al Arabiyya, Abbas said. He added that only a handful remains.
A majority of the remaining journalism staff are therefore ex-state TV reporters. They may be brilliant, but the journalistic culture they have absorbed is different from the one AJ is trying to cultivate, Abbas explained.
"[My] academic research shows influence is not something that comes on a top-down level -- you have to look at the individuals working there," said Mohamed Zayani, a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and co-author of the book The Culture of Al Jazeera: Inside an Arab Media Giant.
"What we got time and again was that there was a big margin of freedom... and journalists were empowered by it," he told me. But that also makes Al Jazeera more susceptible to the subjective views of individual employees, he said.
Al Jazeera has, if anything, become even more of a household name in recent years, and has been recognized in the West by no less than U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for offering "real news." The organization has aggressively covered the "Arab Spring" uprisings across the Middle East, even dropping popular programming to air around-the-clock coverage as revolts have climaxed in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.
Justifiably or not, though, critics accuse the broadcaster of ignoring the unrest in its own backyard, the Gulf.
In the case of Syria, Al Jazeera has faced backlash for covering the brutal crackdown on opposition protesters by the government there. Syrians have accused Al Jazeera of seeking to foment unrest in the country, and at least one media outlet even accused the Qatar-based broadcaster of setting up film studios to stage some of the uprising. It comes as no surprise, then, that some might seize on the latest leaked cables as a way to discredit the news organization as simply being a mouthpiece for the U.S. government.
Source New York Times by Omar Chatriwala, September 19, 2011
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