Al Jazeera: More Powerful Than Ever

[RandomGuy]

The most-watched television channel in the Arab world still stirs controversy
May 27th 2010 | DOHA | From The Economist print edition


The voice of the Arab streetTHE influence and reach of Al Jazeera continue to astound. It is certainly the most powerful news-and-current-affairs channel in the Arab world, well ahead of Al Arabiya, its Saudi-owned, more pro-Western rival. Al Jazeera claims to beam its main Arabic-language channel into around half of all Arab homes. Its English-language channel is said to reach 200m elsewhere, making waves in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Quite a lot of Europeans watch it, too.

This year, thanks to the munificence of the emir of Qatar, who is said to put at least $400m a year into its coffers, Al Jazeera’s clout may yet strengthen. The English-language channel and the Arabic one between them have at least 60 bureaus, with 12 in Africa alone, a number unthinkable for their shrinking Western rivals. Ten more, beyond Al Jazeera’s hubs in Doha, London, Washington, DC, and Kuala Lumpur, are expected to open by the end of next year. Coverage of events such as Sudan’s recent election, to which seven staff reporters and a score of technicians were assigned, put Western media in the shade.

The two language services are editorially separate. The English one’s choice of topics reflects the third-world interests of its viewers, concentrating more than its Western counterparts do on global poverty and the anger often felt towards America and the West. But it offers a wide range of opinion and covers Western politics well too. Both language services have bureaus in Jerusalem, Gaza and Ramallah (the Palestinian Authority’s seat), regularly giving Israelis a voice.

The Arabic service is a lot more controversial. Pro-Western Arab governments, particularly those of Egypt and Saudi Arabia, which denies Al Jazeera a bureau, repeatedly accuse it of bias. In particular they say it favours the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s chief opposition, and Hamas, the Islamist movement that runs Gaza and refuses to recognise Israel. The Arabic service’s head, Waddah Khanfur, and his news editor, Ahmed Sheikh, are both West Bank Palestinians said to enjoy cosy relations with Hamas. Many of the station’s Egyptian staff are deemed sympathetic to the Brotherhood, of which Hamas is a branch.

Al Jazeera’s bosses deny bias but explain that Palestine and especially the plight of Gaza are bound to top the agenda for Arabs. The sometimes emotional lexicon of struggle is, they say, inevitable. Shaheed, or martyr, is deemed a fair term for a suicide-bomber. The phenomenon of political Islam, they have argued, badly needs friendly illumination.

Al Jazeera’s anti-Western populism was strongly echoed at its recent forum on “the Arab and Muslim world: alternative visions”. Many speakers, denoting piety or loyalty to political Islam, prefaced their remarks with incantations of reverence for the Prophet Muhammad. On Palestine, not a single one of 200-odd invited participants spoke up for a two-state solution, apart from a clutch of doveish Americans; Hamas’s official one-state preference for the Jewish state’s abolition easily prevailed. A senior Hamas man waxed eloquent. If a representative of the Palestinian Authority, now in “proximity talks” with Israel, was present, his voice was unheard.

On Iraq, not a single speaker, apart from a forlorn parliamentarian from the Iraqi prime minister’s party who made a desultory comment by video-conference, expressed a flicker of sympathy for the new Shia-led order, which several voices denounced as wholly illegitimate. The Gazan who edits al-Quds al-Arabi, a populist London-based newspaper that resonates in the Arab world, drew the loudest applause with a ringing call to back the continuing Iraqi “resistance”, even though the fight is now almost entirely between Arabs. No wonder Al Jazeera makes pro-Western Arab leaders, excoriated as puppets, feel queasy—Qatar’s, of course, excepted.

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I predict comments that generally bemoan this, but don't deal with this reality in any practical way. All emotion, no logic, at the expense of workable solutions.

[panic giraffe]

and in the US/UK FOX/SKY news has the highest demographic, so what's new?

fear mongering and anger generate ratings, big ing deal.