Al Jazeera

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For other meanings of Al Jazeera, see Al Jazira.
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Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة al-Ǧazīrä), meaning "The Island" or "The (Arabian) Peninsula" is an Arabic-language television channel based in Qatar. The station gained worldwide attention following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when it began broadcasting numerous video messages featuring Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders (see Videos of Osama bin Laden).

Al Jazeera operates several specialized television channels in addition to its primary news channel. These include Al Jazeera Sports, a popular Arabic-language sports channel, Al Jazeera Live, which broadcasts conferences in real time without editing or commentary, and the Al Jazeera Children's Channel. Future announced products include an English-language channel, Al Jazeera International, and a channel specializing in documentaries, and possible music channels or an international newspaper.

In 2004, Al Jazeera was voted, by brandchannel.com, the fifth most influential global brand behind Apple computer, Google, Ikea and Starbucks. [1]

Contents

History

Al Jazeera claims to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. Now rivaling the BBC in worldwide audiences (approx. 50 million viewers) Al Jazeera was started with a $150 million grant from the emir of Qatar; it aimed to become self-sufficient through advertising by 2001, but when this failed to occur the emir agreed to continue subsidizing it on a year-by-year basis ($30 million in 2004[2], according to Arnaud de Borchgrave). Other major sources of income include advertising, cable subscription fees, broadcasting deals with other companies, and sale of footage (according to Pravda[3], "Al-Jazeera received $20,000 per minute for Bin Laden's speech".) In 2000, advertising accounted for 40% of the station's revenue[4].

The channel began broadcasting in late 1996. In April of that year, the BBC World Service's Arabic language TV station, faced with censorship demands by the Saudi Arabian government, had shut down after two years of operation. Many of the former BBC staff members joined Al Jazeera.

Image:Aljazeerainternational.gif

Al Jazeera outside the Middle East

On July 4, 2005 Al Jazeera officially announced plans to launch a new English-language satellite service called Al Jazeera International[5]. Al Jazeera has announced this long-expected move in an attempt to provide news about the Arab world, especially Israel from the Middle Eastern perspective. The new channel will have broadcast centers Doha (current Al Jazeera headquarters and broadcast center), London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington D.C. when the station launches in March 2006. The channel will be a 24-hours 7-days a week news channel with 12 hours broadcasted from Doha and 4 hours broadcasted from each London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington D.C.

Viewership

It is widely believed internationally that inhabitants of the Arab world are given limited information by their governments and media, and that what is conveyed is biased. Many people see Al Jazeera as a more trustworthy source of information than government and foreign channels. Some scholars and commentators use the notion of contextual objectivity1 to describe the station's controversial yet popular news approach [6]. As a result, it is probably the most watched news channel in the Middle East.

Increasingly, Al Jazeera's exclusive interviews and other footage are being rebroadcast in American, British, and other western media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. In January 2003, the BBC announced that it had signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities and information, including news footage. Al Jazeera is now considered a fairly mainstream media network, though more controversial than most. In the United States video footage from the network is largely limited to showing the mercy pleas of hostages. Its English language webpage, however, appears very mainstream, but does not appear to mirror in content what is on the Arabic language oriented webpage.

Al Jazeera can be freely viewed with a DVB-S receiver as it is broadcast on the Astra and Hotbird satellites.

Staff

The Chairman of Al Jazeera is Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, a distant cousin of Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.

The current Managing Director of the Arabic channel is Waddah Khanfar, who is supported by Ahmed Sheikh, Editor-in-Chief, and Amen Jaballah.

The managing director for the yet-to-be-launched Al Jazeera International is Nigel Parsons.

The latest in a string of managing editors of the English-language site is Omar Bec - who is currently caretaking the site after the departures of Joanne Tucker, Ahmed Sheikh and Alison Balharry.

The Editor-in-Chief of the Arabic website is Abdel Aziz Al Mahmoud, and the editorial head is Muhammad Dawud. It has more than a hundred editorial staff.

Criticism and harassment

From Algeria

The Algerian government froze the activities of Al Jazeera's Algerian correspondent on July 4, 2004. The official reason given was that a reorganisation of the work of foreign correspondents was in progress. The international pressure group, Reporters Without Borders says, however, that the measure was really taken in reprisal for a broadcast the previous week of a debate on the political situation in Algeria. Also, it is alleged that several Algerian cities lost power simultaneously to keep residents from watching a program that implicated the Algerian military in a series of massacres.

From Bahrain

Bahrain Information Minister Nabil al-Hamr banned correspondents from the station from reporting from inside the country on 10 May, 2002 because the station was biased towards Israel and against Bahrain. [7] After improvements in relations between Bahrain and Qatar in 2004 Al Jazeera correspondents returned to Bahrain.

From Spain

Reporter Taysir Allouni was arrested in Spain on 5 September, 2003, on a charge of having provided support for members of Al-Qaida. Judge Baltasar Garzón, who had issued the arrest warrant, ordered Allouni held indefinitely without bail. He was nevertheless released several weeks later for health concerns, but was prohibited from leaving the country.

On the 19th of September Spanish court warranted an arrest order to al Jazeera correspondent Taysir Alony, before the expected verdict. Alony asked the court for permission to visit his Family in Syria to attend the funeral of his mother, but authorities denied his request and ordered him back to jail.

Although he pleaded not guilty of all the charges against him, Alony was sentenced on the on 26th of September to seven years in prison for merely interviewing bin Laden before September 11th attack on the United States. [8].

Many international and private organizations condemned the arrest and called on the Spanish court to free Taysir Alony. Websites such as Free Taysir Alony Alony Solidarity was created to support Alony.

From the United States

In 1999, New York Times reporter Thomas L. Friedman called Al-Jazeera "the freest, most widely watched TV network in the Arab world."2 The station first gained widespread attention in the west following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, when it broadcast videos in which Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith defended and justified the attacks. This led to criticism by the United States government that Al Jazeera was engaging in propaganda on behalf of terrorists. Al Jazeera countered that it was merely making information available without comment, and indeed several western television channels later followed suit in broadcasting portions of the tapes. Nevertheless, CNN cut its ties with Al Jazeera for several months over this controversy.

On 25 March, 2003, two of its reporters covering the New York Stock Exchange had their credentials revoked. NYSE spokesman Ray Pellechia claimed "security reasons" and that the exchange had decided to give access only to networks that focus "on responsible business coverage". He denied the revocation has anything to do with the network's Iraq war coverage. [9]

On January 30, 2005 Steven R. Weisman of the New York Times reported that the Qatar government, under pressure from the George W. Bush administration, was speeding up plans to sell the station. [10]

From Muslim viewers

Al Jazeera has been criticized by many of its Muslim viewers for giving air time to Israeli officials. Some have accused Al Jazeera of being too pro-American or pro-Western in its coverage, and have mockingly taken to calling it "Al-Khinzeera," which means "The Pig."

A Saudi columnist has said Jihadism is worse than Nazism and should be similary rejected by the world. The columnist complained: "Everybody knows that this channel [al-Jazeera] in particular has had the greatest media impact on the shaping, spreading and strengthening of this dangerous trend, and that it provides it with wide space to express its 'acts of heroism,' its statements and its videotaped operations, to the point where it [al-Jazeera] has become the primary platform of [Al-Salafiyya Al-Jihadiyya], as is happening today in Iraq." [11]

Al Jazeera and Iraq

On March 4, 2003, during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, the New York Stock Exchange banned Al Jazeera (as well as several other news organizations whose identities were not revealed) from its trading floor indefinitely, citing "security concerns" as the official reason. The move was quickly mirrored by Nasdaq stock market officials. Critics have drawn the conclusion that the Bush administration's distaste for the station's reporting of the invasion of Iraq was the underlying motivation. The administration has voiced such criticisms of Al Jazeera. For example, on April 27, 2004, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, said, "On Iraq they have established a pattern of false reporting." (WSVN)

During the Iraq war, Al Jazeera faced the same reporting and movement restrictions as other news gathering organizations. In addition, one of its reporters, Tayseer Allouni, was banned from the country by the Iraqi Information Ministry, while another one, Diyar Al-Omari, was banned from reporting in Iraq (both decisions were later retracted). Also, at one stage it withdrew from the country, citing unreasonable interference from Iraqi officials.

On April 8, 2003 Al Jazeera's office in Baghdad was attacked by US forces, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub and wounding another, despite the US being informed of the office's precise coordinates prior to the incident. Similarily, on November 13, 2001 the US launched a missile attack on Al Jazeera's office in Kabul, Afghanistan during the US invasion of that country, also after being informed of its location. Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al-Haj, a Sudanese national, has also been held by US forces since the start of 2002 at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The reasons for his detention remain unknown, although the US official statements on detainees is that they are security threats.

In May 2003, the CIA, through the Iraqi National Congress, a group of Iraqis opposed to Saddam Hussein, released documents purportedly showing that Al Jazeera had been infiltrated by Iraqi spies, and was regarded by Iraqi officials as part of their propaganda effort. As reported by the Sunday Times, the alleged "spies" were described by an Al Jazeera executive as having minor roles with no input on editorial decisions.

On the 23rd of September, 2003, Iraq suspended Al Jazeera (and Al-Arabiya) from reporting on official government activities for two weeks for what the Council stated as supporting recent attacks on council members and Coalition occupational forces. The move came after allegations by Iraqis who stated that the channel had incited anti-occupation violence (by airing statements from Iraqi resistance leaders), increasing ethnic and sectarian tensions, and being supportive of the resistance.

During 2004, Al Jazeera broadcast several video tapes of various kidnapping victims which had been sent to the network. The videos were filmed by the groups after kidnapping a hostage. The hostages are shown, often blindfolded, pleading for their release. They often appear to be forced to read out prepared statements of their kidnappers. Al Jazeera has assisted authorities from the home countries of the victims in an attempt to secure the release of kidnapping victims. This included broadcasting pleas from family members and government officials. Contrary to some allegations, however, Al Jazeera has never shown beheadings which often appear on internet websites.

On August 7 2004, the Iraqi Allawi government shut down the Iraq office of Al Jazeera, claiming that it was responsible for presenting a negative image of Iraq, and charging the network with fueling anti-Coalition hostilities. Al Jazeera vowed to continue its reporting from inside Iraq. News photographs showed United States and Iraqi military personnel working together to close the office.[12] Initially closed by a one-month ban, the shutdown was extended indefinitely in September 2004, and the offices sealed.

On the Internet

The Arabic version of the site was brought offline for about 10 hours by an FBI raid on its ISP, InfoCom Corporation, on September 5, 2001. InfoCom was later convicted of exporting to Libya and Syria, of knowingly being invested in by a Hamas member (both of which are illegal in the United States), and of underpaying customs duties.[13]

The station launched an English-language edition of its online content in March of 2003, and the website was immediately attacked by hackers, who launched denial-of-service attacks and redirected visitors to a site featuring an American flag. In November 2003, John William Racine II, aka John Buffo, was sentenced to 1000 hours of community service and a $2000 US fine for the online disruption. Racine posed as an Al Jazeera employee to get a password to the network's site, then redirected visitors to a page he created that showed an American flag shaped like a U.S. map and a patriotic motto, court documents said. In June 2003, Racine pleaded guilty to wire fraud and unlawful interception of an electronic communication.

The site was forced to change providers several times, due in its opinion to political pressure. Initially its English-language site was provided by the US-based DataPipe, which gave it notice, soon followed by Akamai Technologies.[14] They later shifted to the French branch of NavLink, and then to AT&T WorldNet Services.

Documentaries

Al Jazeera's coverage of the invasion of Iraq was the focus of an award-winning 2004 documentary film, Control Room by Egyptian-American director Jehane Noujaim. In July of 2003, PBS broadcast a documentary, called Exclusive to al-Jazeera on its program Wide Angle. Another documentary, Al-Jazeera, An Arab Voice for Freedom or Demagoguery? The UNC Tour [15] was filmed two months after the September 11, 2001 Terrorist Attack.

Notes

Note 1: El-Nawawy and Iskandar, Al-Jazeera: How the free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East Westview.

Note 2: Thomas L. Friedman, "Fathers and Sons," New York Times (12 February 1999) A27.

Further reading

  • Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar (2003), Al Jazeera: The story of the network that is rattling governments and redefining modern journalism, Basic
  • Hugh Miles (2004), Al Jazeera: how Arab TV news challenged the world, Abacus

External links

Official

Note that the websites at aljazeera.com and aljazeerah.info are not at all affiliated with Al Jazeera.

Information and archives

Demographics

News

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