Al Jazeera: Hits, misses and ricochets
By Ian Urbina

Few could have predicted that a satellite television station would cause so much trouble. But once again, Qatari-based Al Jazeera has become a lightening rod for controversy.

On December 18, Saudi Arabia’s main national newspaper announced that Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz would not be attending the gathering of Gulf leaders held in Qatar the weekend of December 21-22. The Gulf Cooperation Council meeting is a political and economic summit held annually which brings together the heads of state from Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. This was the first year that Prince Abdullah missed the function since its inception in 1996.

As the House of Saud goes, so follows the rest of the Gulf. After the Saudi announcement, Bahrain’s King Hamad quickly followed suit, stating that he too would stay away from the Qatar conference. Bahrain sent its foreign minister instead. For a while, Oman looked to be falling in line as well; i ts Sultan, Qaboos bin Said, expressed doubt that he would make the trip (he did in the end), and as for Kuwait and the Arab Emirate republics, their leaders are too frail for travel, so they had ready-made excuses.

In the end, if it hadn't been for Oman's bin Said, Qatari Emir Hamad ben Khalifa Al-Thani would have been left on his own to convene discussions with a coterie of the neighborhood’s lower minions.

The diplomatic snub was only the most recent move in growing tensions between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, whose relationship was made worse in past months as the US took Doha up on the offer to use Qatar’s bases as alternatives to those in Saudi Arabia. But the larger bone of contention between Saudi Arabia and Qatar is the controversial satellite news channel Al Jazeera. In September, Riyadh yanked its ambassador from Qatar, demanding an apology from Doha for Al Jazeera’s allegedly disrespectful coverage of the Saudi royal family.

The so-called CNN of the Arab world, Al Jazeera wouldn’t exist if it were not for Qatar’s knack at taking advantage of Saudi shortcomings. The station, whose name means "peninsula" or "island" in reference to its home in Qatar, was launched in 1996 a few months after the BBC's Arabic television service closed down due to the editorial meddling of Orbit Communications, a Saudi company and partial owner. When the company sought to censor a documentary about executions in Saudi Arabia, the staff walked out and the station pulled the plug.

Qatar’s crown prince, who had come to power in a bloodless coup one year before, was eager to forge an identity for his small nation that was distinct from Saudi Arabia’s. A hard-hitting Arabic satellite news channel seemed like the perfect ticket.

With a firm commitment to editorial independence, and pledging $140 million to finance the channel for five years, the Qatari prince courted virtually the entire staff let go by the BBC to get the station on its feet.

In five short years the station seems to have hit its stride. Having grown from six to 24 hours worth of daily programming, Al Jazeera reaches more than 35 million Arabs around the world, including 150,000 in the United States. With offices in all the Arab capitals (apart from the ones where they are banned) plus London, Paris, Washington and New York, the station employs over 600 journalists.

But aside from its rapid growth, Al Jazeera’s editorial edginess is its mark of distinction. In the world of straitjacketed Arab media, Al Jazeera has one of the only free hands. Its talk shows can legitimately claim to showcase the full range of Arab opinion - the good, the bad and the ugly - on global affairs, and their featured debates put the sleep-inducing talking heads on American cable shows to shame.

Above all, the station has capitalized on controversy. Much of investigative journalism is necessarily adversarial, and if the measure of success is the number of enemies, not friends, made, then Al Jazeera seems to be doing a good job.

More than its news coverage, it is the station’s commentary talk shows which open the phones for viewers to call in and offer their candid opinions that have drawn most attention. And it is not just the Gulf states that are getting angry. In November, Jordan closed Al Jazeera's news bureau in Amman after a Syrian commentator criticized Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, describing Jordan as "an artificial entity" populated by "a bunch of Bedouins living in an arid desert". Kuwait also ordered Al Jazeera's bureau closed after an Islamic militant calling an Al Jazeera phone-in program from Europe suggested that Kuwait's ruler, Sheik Jaber al-Jaber al-Sabah, should be ousted for agreeing to extend the vote in Kuwaiti elections to women.

Indeed, Al Jazeera gets hit from all sides. The Israelis have complained about the station's alleged pro-Palestinian bias, mostly because its reporters refer to Palestinian fighters as "martyrs". But hard-line Palestinians say the station is a bastion of Zionism for having invited Israeli officials, including Ehud Barak and Shimon Peres, on the air. Iraq yanked the credentials of Al Jazeera's Baghdad correspondent for stories considered too pro-Western, while Kuwait recently blocked the station from using its satellite link because it considered the channel's coverage too pro-Iraq.

And these enemies don’t come free. Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem bin Jabr Al-Thani told French reporters last week that an unnamed Gulf state had even offered him US$5 billion to close down the station. Despite its popular success, Al Jazeera still struggles for advertisement revenue mostly because it has been shunned by most big multinational companies, which instead opt to advertise on the Middle East's tamer satellite channels. Many companies steer clear of Al Jazeera for fear of a backlash from powerful countries like Saudi Arabia.

One of its staunchest critics has been the US. When Al Jazeera ran bin Laden interviews soon after September 11, Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced the station for having aired "vitriolic, irresponsible kinds of statements". Subsequently, Al Jazeera had Powell on the show, as well as Tony Blair, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and a slate of other British and American officials. Though most of the Western officials used the interviews to criticize Al Jazeera, their appearance helped lend the station a certain international credibility.

But US allegations of bias have not subsided in the slightest. Part of the reason is that they are true. Al Jazeera is indeed biased, but this does not distinguish it from CNN. The difference is that Al Jazeera carries an Arab not an American bias. The right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, the immorality of Palestinian suicide bombing, the evil of Osama bin Laden’s 9-11 act - these are unstated assumptions for American networks. But for much of the Arab world they are examples of pure bias.

Al Jazeera is surely not without significant flaws. Its talk shows veer toward the tabloid in featuring more arguments from the far ends of the spectrum than conversation among differing shades of moderates. The station often slants the playing field of discussion with two or three representatives from a certain view and only one from the other. Most of all, it soft-peddles its domestic critique. Al Jazeera has been dogged in its coverage of financial and political deals cut between Arab governments and Israel, but when allegations came out that Qatar had opened a trade office in Tel Aviv, the station did not go after the story. A couple of years ago, when Al Jazeera criticized Egypt for election irregularities an Egyptian representative fired back: "Why don't you put on a five to ten-minute program telling us in Egypt about elections in Qatar, so we can benefit?” The representative made a good point since at the time Qatar did not have elections. More recently, Al Jazeera has been quite gentle on the Qatari government in its decision to offer its Al-Udeid air base for the US invasion of Iraq. The topic is particularly sensitive for the Qatari government, which doesn't want to be seen as supporting an attack against another Arab nation.

But for all of Al Jazeera’s shortcomings, there is a certain duplicity in the US criticism of the station.

The recent scene at Doha, where the US was conducting military exercises, gets to the heart of the matter. As hundreds of Western journalists swarmed on the Qatari capital, they found themselves sitting next to Al Jazeera’s headquarters but not next to many Al Jazeera correspondents. The reason: most Al Jazeera reporters were actually out in the field doing their job. They recognize that the real story is not to be found at the Pentagon press briefings or escorted base tours being offered in the capital. Meanwhile, the bulk of the American press corps operates like 12-year-olds playing soccer. All of them run at the ball simultaneously, leaving the rest of the field completely open.

Whereas CNN made a name for itself during the 1991 Gulf War, mostly with broadcasts from hotel rooftops in Baghdad, Al Jazeera made a name for itself during the US invasion of Afghanistan with footage from far-flung mountain enclaves and bombed-out villages.

And after American networks stumbled over each other in bidding for the rights to re-broadcast the front-line Al Jazeera footage that none of their own correspondents were willing to get, they then broadcast the borrowed goods with a scoffing proviso: "This footage cannot be independently verified."

It is certainly true that callers and guest commentators on Al Jazeera are free to say inflammatory things. But the same is true when Jerry Falwell calls the Prophet Muhammad a terrorist on 60 Minutes, one of the most respected news shows in the US. Clearly, journalists have a responsibility not to sink to the lowest common denominator. Their responsibility is to provide coverage which strikes a balance between leading the people and following the people. Like it or not, Al Jazeera indeed reflects widespread sentiments in the Arab world.

But at the same time, the station also takes risks in pushing the envelope on sensitive issues of domestic culture in the Arab world. Take for example "The Opposite Direction", one of the station’s more popular talk shows which recently featured two women debating polygamy among Muslim men. One participant, a leftist member of the Jordanian parliament, opened the discussion by claiming that the practice, authorized by the Prophet Mohammed in the seventh century when many Arab women had been widowed in war, had outlived its validity. "Why should we put up with this rubbish now?" she asked.

Her adversary on the show, an Egyptian woman with strongly conservative views on matters of Islamic doctrine, stood up, tore off her microphone and stormed to the exit. When the startled host attempted to dissuade her, noting that the program was "on air" across the Arab world, she shot back: "I don't care if we're on the planet Mars, I'm not going to tolerate this blasphemy."

Without a doubt, Al Jazeera takes every opportunity it gets to showcase US and Israeli misdeeds. But it also doesn’t miss a chance to offend Islamist conservatives. One of its most popular programs is "Sharia [Islamic law] and Life", in which a sheikh dares to reassure women that, among other freedoms allowed by the Koran, they should not be forced to marry suitors designated by their parents.

For some, such discussion is beyond the pale. And as the recent Saudi boycott indicates, the controversial coverage of some of region’s leaders is taking its toll.

Still, for all the US brow-beating and Arab leaders' calls for commercial boycotts against Al Jazeera, the station financially broke even for the first time last year. Having failed to muzzle the broadcast market, the Saudis may just try to corner it. In the coming months, they will launch their own 24-hour news program.

But once again, their Qatari competitor may prove one step ahead of the game. Right around the time that the US is planning for a possible invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera will be launch an English-language version of its broadcasts.

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