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The Handbook of Media and Mass Communication Theory, First Edition.

Edited by Robert S. Fortner and P. Mark Fackler.

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows

Catherine Cassara

Introduction

Al Jazeera has fundamentally changed the news topography of the Middle East

and North Africa (MENA), and in the process it has fundamentally altered the

dimensions of public discussion and debate in the region. It has been credited

with teaching the region what it knows about freedom of the press and democracy.

Not a few analysts have attributed the origins of the Arab uprising to Al Jazeera’s

impact on a region that learned other ways of thinking about power and governance

from this defiant alternative to state broadcasting operations controlled by the

region’s monarchies, dictatorships, and hereditary presidencies (Conte, 2007;

Gizbert, 2011; Hasan, 2011; Seib, 2005, p. 612). Al Jazeera changed what

people in the MENA saw and learned of their own countries and what people

in the world beyond learned about the region. In changing the pictures and

stories people had access to, the channel changed the questions they asked, their

approaches to telling their own stories, and their expectations. Through Al Jazeera

English (AJE), the channel opened the MENA to the world, but not without

opening the global South to its residents and to the world beyond.

Al Jazeera’s emergence as a global news powerhouse has been marked by a

mountain of accolades. In 2012 Al Jazeera received the International Four

Freedoms Award for “its steadfast commitment to freedom of the press and its

longstanding efforts to provide independent, impartial news for an international

audience” (Roosevelt Stichting, 2012). The Royal Television Society gave AJE its

2012 award for best news station instead of awarding it to BBC and Sky News. AJE’s

overall coverage of the Arab Awakening won a 2012 Peabody Award (Associated

Press, 2012). AJE’s documentary about the Bahraini uprising – “abandoned by the

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 421

Arabs, forsaken by the West and forgotten by the world” – won the 2012 Foreign

Press Association Documentary of the Year Award in London, the 2012 George

Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism, and the Scripps Howard Jack R. Howard

Award for Television Reporting. In 2011 AJE won a 2011 duPont-Columbia

award for a documentary on the slow pace of recovery in Haiti (Long Island

University, 2012). The Columbia Journalism School gave AJE the 2011 Columbia

Journalism Award for “great service in bringing the English speaking world

in-depth coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East” (Stanglin, 2011).

In a recognition of a more practical sort, between February and October 2011

the Americans sent more than 70, 000 emails to cable and satellite providers asking

for AJE, in large part because US news media were late to the story of the Arab

uprising and their coverage, with some notable exceptions, was fleeting and

shallow (Tharoor, 2011; WTTW, 2011). Perhaps as a result, four more US markets

picked up AJE programming, more than doubling the network’s US reach

(Villareal, 2011). One of Al Jazeera’s most outspoken critics lauded the channel’s

performance. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told David Frost in

October 2011 that AJE “can be an important means of communication in the

world and I am delighted you are doing what you are doing” (Shaw, 2011). In

December of the same year AJE announced that it had reached 250 million homes –

5 million of those in the US (Villareal, 2011).

When the new emir of Qatar bankrolled Al Jazeera in 1996, he hoped a television

news network might increase the standing of his country in the Gulf (Rinnawi,

2006), but it is not so clear that he understood that he was setting in motion a

process that would bring about what Rami Khouri described as “the single most

important challenge to Western colonial political domination in the modern Arab

World” (Gizbert, 2011). This chapter considers the impact Al Jazeera has had on

journalism and public life within the Arab world, as well as its impact beyond the

region. In particular, it addresses the role the network has played in upsetting Western

dominance over global news flows (Figenschou, 2010; Seib, 2005) – a phenomenon

overlooked by those still caught up in tired stereotypes of Al Jazeera as a “terrorists’

mouthpiece.” Given the recent exponential expansion of AJE, the network’s

long-term impact is hard to assess completely and accurately; still, it cannot be over-

looked. Any chapter concerned with global news flows would have to consider AJE

because – while it is headquartered in the US – its operations are overwhelmingly

based in the global South, it gives primacy to coverage of the developing world, and

it deliberately “gives voice to disenfranchised and neglected peoples” (Hasan, 2011).

Myriad scholars have written about Al Jazeera, and this chapter draws on their

work rather than reinventing it; also, where possible, the reflections of the

Al Jazeera journalists themselves are privileged. These choices arise from the

author’s own background: the study of international news – particularly news flow

research; the study of media history – including media developments beyond the

US shores; a fascination with the progress and development of Al Jazeera dating

back more than a decade; and, finally, years of work with colleagues in Tunisia and

Algeria for whom Al Jazeera has always been serious business.

422 Catherine Cassara

The chapter reviews the development of the Al Jazeera network, addresses

the channel’s impact on the news dynamics in the Arab world, and examines

Al Jazeera’s influence beyond the MENA – particularly what these changes say to

theories of international news flow and contra-flow. The chapter ends with an

examination of some of the confounding issues that complicate discussions about

the Al Jazeera and get in the way of an honest assessment of the network’s impacts.

From Lone Channel to Global Network

Al Jazeera was established as a state-owned, independent satellite news channel in

1996, by edict of Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al Thani, the British-educated emir who

had taken control of the emirate from his father in a palace coup in 1994 (Rinnawi,

2006, p. 98). Even as he was underwriting the station, the emir was eliminating the

ministry of information and making a commitment to the free flow of information

rather than to its control (Brugmans, Toeset, Wiering, & Films for the Humanities,

2000; Schleifer, 2003). Al Jazeera started off with well-trained Arabic language

television news broadcasters, because it started up just as BBC Arabic – the joint

venture of the BBC and Saudi Orbit T – collapsed (Rinnawi, 2006).

The new channel’s staff built something completely foreign to the region: news

with “Anglo-Saxon style,” yet with an Arab point of view and sensitivity to Arab

culture (Fontana, 2010). These people developed codes of conduct, ethics, and a

commitment to independence that would be the hallmark of their work (Ghosh,

2011; Schleifer & Sullivan, 2001). As managers set up their bureaus, they looked

first for offices in Arab and Islamic countries where news was happening – starting

with Palestine and Iraq; and Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan followed. These

decisions made sense in light of the channel’s audience demographics; but

Al Jazeera journalists were also placed in key locations as events in the Middle East

heated up (Schleifer & Sullivan, 2001).

Operation Desert Fox in 1998 started catapulting the network to global

prominence because, with staff on the ground in Baghdad and the technology for

24-hour real-time coverage, Al Jazeera had exclusive footage that the world media

were hungry to buy (Anthony, 2003). In 1999 the station began 24-hour

broadcasting, and in 2000 it added an Arabic website to its lineup. In 2003 an

English-language website began to provide news to a global audience. At the end

of 2003 the network added Al Jazeera Sports, to make way for more news and

public affairs programming on the original channel. By now it had upwards of

1,400 employees, 23 bureaus around the globe, and 450 journalists – 70 of them

foreign correspondents (Abt, 2004); and it made it on to Brandchannel’s 2004 list

of brands with most global impact, coming in fourth place behind Apple, Google,

IKEA, and Starbucks (Rusch, 2005).

In 2006 there were 35 million viewers and 30 bureaus worldwide. That year

the network pioneered Al Jazeera Mubasher, the first 24-hour live public service

news and events channel in the MENA, comparable to the C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 423

Public Affairs Network) channels in the US (Al Jazeera Mubasher Stream, n.d.).

Later in 2006 the network launced Al Jazeera English, which was based in

Washington, DC but had broadcast centers in Doha and London. As American

networks cut foreign staff and closed bureaus, AJE hired hundreds of veteran US

and British correspondents (Manly, 2006).

In November 2011 Al Jazeera added a Balkan station and began to lay the ground-

work for expansion into Turkey. By the start of 2012, the whole network (AJE, AJA,

and now AJAM) was employing more than 3,000 staff members across the world

in 65 bureaus – most of them “rooted in the global South.” More than 400 of

those employees were journalists from more than 60 countries, and 1,000 of them,

from 50 nationalities, were working for AJE – making its newsroom “among the most

diverse in the world” (Al Jazeera, 2012). The report set AJE’s audience at 220 million

households in more than 100 countries. Additionally, Al Jazeera had become the

most watched news channel on YouTube, with 2.5 million views per month.

Impacts in the MENA

Before Al Jazeera, what locally produced news there was in the MENA originated

from media organizations owned or controlled by the region’s regimes, and what

independent news there was came from the West or Israel. Thus the new channel’s

most immediate impact was due to the fact that it opened a new world. Al Jazeera

was the first Arabic language satellite news station. It was the first solely Arab-

owned station based in the Middle East. It had Arab reporters. It had the intent to

provide independent news and public affairs programming to pan-Arab audiences.

And this was deliberate (Schleifer, 2000). Al Jazeera’s general manager was addressing

a gap in an Arab media market crowded with entertainment, but missing talk shows

and news. No one had developed news, because the news in the region was assumed

to be censored and government-controlled – which the leaders of Qatar wanted

to change (Schleifer, 2000).

Arab regimes hated the new channel because “it broke their stranglehold on

freedom of information” (Fenton, 2011, para. 3). What is more, in a region where

the government ran, owned, or censored the media (Lank, 2003), the Al Jazeera

management recognized early something that eluded other players in the field:

Arab audiences were not passive.

Even when it comes to local news, especially in Jordan, Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria –

people don’t want to rely on their domestic media for the local news. They get it from

Israel, because they trust them more; they’re a more reliable source. (Schleifer, 2000,

para. 15)

Audience data for Tunisian state television were 80 percent in 1999 but 50 percent

by 2003, while viewership for official Saudi TV slipped to 40 percent when there

were alternatives (Hammond, 2007, pp. 58–62).

424 Catherine Cassara

Al Jazeera’s graphic Desert Fox footage from Baghdad in 1998 mesmerized

Arab viewers and helped trigger anti-American protest across the region. In 2000

the channel’s intense coverage of the second Palestinian Intifada and its talk shows,

which gave voice to audience angst, secured Al Jazeera’s position at the center

of Arab political life in the MENA and the diaspora (Lynch, 2005). No longer

were MENA audiences reduced to news reports from a “culturally tone deaf”

Western media or to coverage from state controlled television (Carney, 2006, p. 6).

Because the channels staff came from across the region and from across its

spectrum of cultural, ideological, and religious perspectives, it developed a working

style that respected difference and included extensive discussion about problematic

stories (Brugmans et al., 2000; Ghosh, 2011; Zayani & Sahraoui, 2007). Most

complaints about station content arose from the channel’s philosophy – its

openness to many sides of a debate, expressed in its motto: “The opinion and the

other opinion” (Brugmans et al., 2000). The exemplar of the philosophy is the

controversial talk show The Opposite Opinion, which brings representatives from

widely divergent positions to debate highly controversial issues, such as divorce,

homosexuality, women’s rights, and whether Islam condones suicide bombing.

Guests frequently raise their voices and/or walk off the set. Host Faissal Qassim

argues that his show is important exactly because it challenges unhealthy power

hierarchies that dominate life in the MENA (Hakem et al., 2002). But he had no

illusions about how welcome the exercise was: “The program is creating a hell of

a lot of troubles for the Qatari government. I know most Arab governments have

protested against the program … but … I don’t think we are going to be

deterred” (Brugmans et al., 2000).

While his show is criticized for being vulgar and alleged to sharpen divisions

within the MENA (Ayish, 2005, p. 124; Fanning et al., 2007), Qassim, a lawyer by

training, is not deterred. He suggests that heated public discussion of existing

disagreements is better than pretending that such divisions do not exist. If

shouting is a respected tradition in the British Parliament, he sees no reason to

pretend that political discussion in the Middle East is always polite (UAE students,

2008). Qassim’s show is popular with viewers in part because the audience can

call in and participate. The network staff supports it but may not like it. “I think it

is good, though I don’t think it is a good program. …What they say is not worthy,

but the fact they can say it is a major statement” (Brugmans et al., 2000).

Analysts suggest that Al Jazeera should be commended for having supported

both the work of former London bureau chief Yousri Fouda and the work of its

news staff, because their “daily reporting … has done far more for developing an

informed public opinion than most talk shows put together” (Schleifer, 2001,

para. 18). Fouda said his monthly investigative documentary Top Secret was a

challenge because it introduced a new kind of journalism to the MENA – one that

used a new way of evaluating evidence. Since Arab culture is poetic and linguistic,

while investigative reporting relies on objectivity and on a scientific approach to

evaluating information, Fouda said he had to write the program to make his case

on the basis of science, but in the language that would speak to his audience

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 425

(Hakem et al., 2002). Fouda’s show was part of “the emergence of a unique trend

in investigative journalism,” which brought it home to MENA audiences that

some journalists had begun to act as unfettered professionals, pushing open the

“doors of public discourse” (Iskandar, 2007).

Al Jazeera journalists frequently encountered conflict with Middle Eastern

regimes, used as these were to domestic journalists who could be controlled

(Ghosh, 2011). They were regularly harassed, their credentials were withdrawn,

sometimes they were arrested, and/or their offices in one country or another were

closed. Sometimes, when a particular program was coming, a country went out

of its way to block access. On January 27, 1999 several Algerian cities, including

the capital Algiers, lost power simultaneously, reportedly to keep residents from

watching an Al Jazeera program in which Algerian dissidents implicated the

Algerian military in a series of massacres (Rugh, 2004, p. 233). In 2003 the network

was being praised by the London-based Index on Censorship for circumventing

censorship and contributing to the free exchange of information in the Arab world

(Zap2It, 2003). Countries leaders pressured the emir to rein in the channel’s

staff. Their grievances with Al Jazeera had to do not only with what the channel

carried and with how far it could reach, but also the fact that it reached literate and

illiterate alike, including rural residents and women (Sakr, 2001). Less educated

and less well-off viewers tended to watch the channel more, “despite the fact

that Al Jazeera and other pan-Arab station center on complex political issues

communicated in an elevated style” (Mellor, 2007).

Al Jazeera correspondents have stuck to their independent journalism and they

work through all the difficulties, because they considered it their mission (Hakem

et al., 2002; Shihata, 2011). If network news policy angers and antagonizes, it may

be exactly because its coverage is balanced (Abt, 2004). Al Jazeera talk shows were

the only place in the Middle East where Ariel Sharon, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin

Powell, and Condoleezza Rice all found outlets for their points of view and had a

chance to sit and talk at length about their policies and plans (Brugmans et al.,

2000; Fanning et al., 2007; Hakem et al., 2002). It was also the only place where

Arab audiences “saw and heard Israelis – speaking freely, frequently, live and

unedited” (Burman, 2011).

The Al Jazeera staff reported a firewall between the ministry, the palace, and the

network, which has not been breached no matter how stiff the outside pressure on

the royal family; and, for their part, Qatari officials say that, when diplomats

complain about the Al Jazeera, they throw up their hands and point out that the

network is independent of their control (Brugmans et al., 2000; Hakem et al.,

2002; Noujaim et al., 2004). The first member of the royal family appointed to

head the network took over in September 2011. Three months into the job,

Ahmed Bin Jassim Al Thani announced extensive efforts to streamline the

network’s corporate structure and sought to sharpen strategic planning, increase

efficiency, and decrease bureaucracy (Al Jazeera network announces corporate

restructuring, n.d.). Less than two years later, as Al Thani resigned to take the post

of minister of economy and trade under the new emir, his email to network staff

426 Catherine Cassara

noted that the network had the largest news gathering network globally, that its

programs had expanded into innovative formats, and that its content was recognized

as world class (Weprin, 2013). He was replaced as director general of the Al Jazeera

Media Network by Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani, who had served on the network’s

board. Whether these leadership changes mark a change in attitude toward the

content is hard to tell. Members of staff in Egypt and at the AJE offices reported

not only a bias in their network’s coverage of the Muslim Brotherhood interference,

but also interference as they were doing their jobs (Al Jazeera employees complain

of editorial bias with Egypt coverage, n.d.). The outgoing director general, Wadah

Khanfar, said that his replacement has the managerial skills the growing operation

needs and is too smart to interfere with the network’s legendary independence

(Ghosh, 2011).

Without question, one of Al Jazeera’s most significant contributions was the

space it created in the MENA for other Arab-language broadcasting operations,

what Zayani calls “the clones,” and with it a hyper-competitive news market,

independent web sites, and loosened restrictions on print media (Zayani, 2006).

“The clones” were underwritten by political interests who “hated” Al Jazeera,

and – having given up their efforts to silence the channel – opted instead for creat-

ing completion, which they hoped would compete with the Qatari station without

actually being so independent (Shihata, 2011). In the process, Fouda said, they let

out of the bottle a media genius that would not be recaptured (Shihata, 2011).

The largest clone, Al Arabiya, was launched in 2003 by the MBC (Middle East

Broadcasting Center), a Saudi-backed conglomerate based in Lebanon. While the

announced intention for Al Arabiya was to compete head to head with Al Jazeera,

observers doubted that its staff would ever feel independent, given its Saudi owners

(Feuilherade, 2003). Four years later, Al Arabiya’s general manager was convinced

that his channel was winning the pitched battle with Al Jazeera, demonstrating that

journalism “without Bin Laden” could win; but Gallup poll results in Saudi Arabia

had Al Arabiya second to Al Jazeera (Fanning et al., 2007; Rheault, 2007). Similar

preferences are borne out by other studies. During the 2006 war in Lebanon,

when many organizations were competing to cover the conflict, researchers found

that Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya were the most popular sources of news – always in

that order (Kalb & Saivetz, 2007).

Pintak argues that what Al Jazeera offered the MENA was not just an

introduction to freedom of ideas and thought, but also a shared imagined public

space or community. Like Zayani, he contends that Arab satellite television has had

a revolutionizing effect on the media and that combining television, Internet, and

other digital forms of communication “is fueling the rise of a new common Arab

consciousness” (Pintak, 2009a, pp. 191–192; Zayani, 2006), although not all

analysts and observers accept this idea. Perhaps more importantly, much of the

audience that now makes up the “Arab street” turns to Al Jazeera as its touchstone,

whether academics recognize it or not (Hakem et al., 2002; Lynch, 2012; Pintak,

2009b). In a prescient observation before the Arab uprising, Qassim noted that,

if the region did not have democracy, it might have to start with free media.

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 427

“Let us say democracy will come to the Arab world through the media and not vice

versa” (Fanning et al., 2007).

All Tunisians knew of a six-month uprising in 2008 that went nowhere because

it got no coverage. Thus, on that December afternoon in Sidi Bouzid, after

Mohamed Boazizi set himself on fire, when his mother went to the municipal

building to protest, friends and family went along with cellphone cameras rolling.

Later that evening the video was up on Facebook and out to the world. Al Jazeera

was scanning Facebook that night; it picked up the video and ran it immediately on

the Mubasher channel (Ryan, 2011). From then on, as the Tunisian hinterland

stood up to Ben Ali, the rest of the country kept track either via computer or via

Al Jazeera TV. When the story got to Al Jazeera, the network sent it back to

Tunisian viewers, who were hungry for news (El Bour, personal email from 2011).

When the uprising started, Facebook penetration in Tunisia is estimated to

have been between 16 and 19 percent (Blachere, 2011). It was not enough to have

social media, it was also necessary to have the people in the streets and the

traditional media was needed to magnify the story (Simmons, 2011).

Khanfar insists that Al Jazeera did not cause the Arab uprising but simply

covered it (Hasan, 2011). He is probably both right and wrong. In the immedi-

ate temporal proximity to the revolutions and uprisings, Al Jazeera was only one

of many players, and not sufficient to have brought about the changes that caused

the uprisings. However, when analysts have the time, distance, data, and perspec-

tive to assess causation with some semblance of certainty, it is hard not to expect

that Al Jazeera’s introduction of information, news, and public affairs program-

ming was one of the fundamental causes of the geopolitical shifts in the MENA

that produced a new generation – a generation with ideas about life that

went beyond autocracy and with a willingness to act toward those goals. Combine

the contribution of regional re-education with the network’s contribution of a

thorough and thoughtful coverage of the protest and contest of the legitimacy

of oligarchy and autocracy across the region, and the answer may be more

complicated than Khanfar’s response.

Almost as the Jasmine Revolution happened, Western journalists and analysts

dismissed the importance of the Tunisian events and moved on to Egypt, as if there

were little of interest to be learned from such a small country like Tunisia. What

Westerners missed was that the contagion ignited in Tunisia was not about the use

of social media for revolution, but rather about the giving up fear and deciding to

stand up to dictatorship and declare “Enough!” This message was communicated

by videos carried across the Arab world by Al Jazeera from one uprising to the next;

and with each uprising one found protestors crediting Tunisians as their inspira-

tion. Lynch provides a perfect description of

an Al Jazeera broadcast where they would show a split screen, six different

Arab capitals and every single one of them you would have huge numbers of

people holding up the identical posters, chanting the same slogans, all in real time.

(Simon, 2012)

428 Catherine Cassara

The value of Al Jazeera’s coverage was demonstrated in again Egypt. The government

closed its offices, pulled its correspondents’ credentials, arrested and harassed

them. Finally, NileSat broke its contractual agreement and stopped carrying

Al Jazeera satellite transmission back into Egypt; but the ban was irrelevant. Ten

of the other Arabic broadcasters stepped forward and volunteered to carry

Al Jazeera’s signal, which was suddenly available everywhere (Miles, 2011).

Predictably, perhaps, not everyone in the MENA believes in Al Jazeera as the

great purveyor of democracy and freedom. In the 1990s regimes threatened by

Al Jazeera’s unrestricted coverage of affairs in their countries appealed to the emir

to rein in his creation. Those appeals were met with shrugs and with the explana-

tion that the station was an independent operation (Shihata, 2011). In the months

of the awakening the regimes were said to have been back pressuring the Qatari

royal family to rein in the Al Jazeera journalists (Gizbert, 2011). Resistance came

from the other end of the spectrum as well. Pockets of people believe that

Al Jazeera served US and Western interests in the region because it provides an

outlet for the expression of rampant anti-Americanism, in a manner that pro-

longs Arab weakness and upholds the status quo (Sakr, 2007, p. 124). One has

only to watch a YouTube video from January 2012 showing students on the

Manouba University campus outside Tunis kicking out a reporter who represented

what they considered “the imperialist mouthpiece Al Jazeera” and to follow it up

on the web to find out that the sentiment is still alive (ImomineX, 2011).

Impacts Beyond the MENA

From the beginning, Al Jazeera changed the dynamics of global journalism by

making accessible images from international hotspots that might otherwise have

been unavailable; and it privileged in its news the images and stories of the histori-

cally marginalized people, as it covered international news stories with the interests

of its own audiences in mind. Al Jazeera has challenged the CNN and other Western

news operations’ monopoly on global news coverage, specifically in the Middle

East, Africa, and other places where audiences and broadcasters seek an alternative

view of world events; but it has also become a routine source for Western news

organizations – a source of both information and images from parts of the world

where those organizations either never had reporting staff or closed their bureaus

(Cassara & Lengel, 2004). Particularly with the advent of AJE, the network has

been expanding as others cut back (Burman, 2011).

The Taliban offered CNN, Reuters, and APTN (Aboriginal Peoples’ Television

Network) bureaus in Afghanistan, but none of the Western organizations thought

the country was newsworthy, so in October 2001 Al Jazeera was the only news

network with people on the ground in Kabul and Kandahar (Schleifer & Sullivan,

2001; Shihata, 2011). Thus Al Jazeera’s Teyssir Allouni became the only channel

of access to news from Afghanistan, and the network’s footage secured coverage of

the bombing campaign and of the actions of the Taliban for the whole world

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 429

(Hakem et al., 2002). Most significantly, while the United States claimed that no

civilians were being killed in the bombings, Al Jazeera’s graphic footage showing

the human cost of the war, including the results of allied bombing, contradicted

those claims (Burman, 2011). When Al Jazeera’s coverage showed the widespread

civilian casualties of the initially indiscriminate bombing of Kandahar, it was clear

the US military was watching, because the impact was immediate: by the next day

the bombing was much more carefully targeted (Hakem et al., 2002).

The channel’s scoop with its Afghanistan coverage was followed by

Osama Bin Laden’s choice of Al Jazeera as the outlet for his videotaped messages

to world. From that moment Al Jazeera had become the “Arab CNN” (Reaves,

2001). The network aired only carefully selected, newsworthy segments of the

tapes and argued that it did only what any other 24-hour news channel that received

such tapes would have done (Al Jazeera, 2011). When Al Jazeera ran the tapes, a

former US assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs was always brought in to

comment; and so was a Muslim cleric, who made the point that Islam did not con-

done the killing of innocent people but also emphasized that, while Bin Laden

condemned American bombings, he ordered the killing of innocent Americans.

“To air the statements without any comments, without any opposing statements or

viewpoints or analysis’s [sic] then it’s propaganda” (Schleifer & Sullivan, 2001).

Fouda was contacted with the offer of a chance to interview Bin Laden. He said he

considered all the professional ramifications of this offer and decided to go ahead

with the story. Several Westerners – Peter Berg, Robert Fisk – had in the past inter-

viewed Bid Laden, and Fouda contends that any of the networks would have leapt

at the chance to interview him (Shihata, 2011).

Before the start of the Afghan bombing, Al Jazeera had been regarded by the

West – and also by the US – as a role model for Arab democracy (Burman, 2011).

Al Jazeera came in for heated criticism from the Bush administration for using the

tapes, even though the administration was not open about the fact the network

had shared the tapes with the US authorities well before it aired any part of the

material. The Bush administration’s response to Al Jazeera’s challenging Afghan

War coverage came as a shock to the Arab community and to others; the adminis-

tration found itself “faced with ‘a battle for hearts and minds’ and the need to tell

moderate Muslims it is not pursuing a ‘war against Islam’” (Miladi, 2006, p. 957).

As a part of its public diplomacy campaign, as noted above, the administration

began sending high-level officials to appear on the channel’s interview shows,

and Miladi (2006) reports that it even considered buying advertising time on

Al Jazeera. In secret, however, the White House targeted the channel as a threat to

all its strategic efforts in the Middle East and beyond, and in 2002 it hired a secret

operative to coordinate a campaign against the organization and its journalists

(Bamford, 2005). In 2003, when the US began bombing Baghdad, Al Jazeera had

offices and staff ready to cover the offensive. Again, this stirred the ire of the Bush

administration, which had warned all journalists that they should either agree to be

embedded with coalition forces or get out of Iraq before the attack against Saddam

Hussein’s regime began. However, neither CNN nor Al Jazeera withdrew

430 Catherine Cassara

completely, and Al Jazeera was careful to provide the US military with an exact

description of its facilities in Baghdad (Fanning et al., 2007).

It was only from Al Jazeera that Western news organizations were able to get

footage of what was happening in Baghdad as the bombs fell. The channel came

under fire from the Bush administration for providing a video of Iraqi civilian

casualties and of alliance casualties and prisoners. It is worth noting that, at the

very time when American journalists and commentators were loudly criticizing

Al Jazeera for its casualty and prisoner footage, they were using it – and also using

their own images of dead Iraqi soldiers and displays of captured Iraqi prisoners.

Al Jazeera Washington bureau chief Hafez al Mirazi suggested to Charlie Rose

that, because Al Jazeera made a point of covering casualties and prisoners on both

sides, it told a more balanced story of the war (Rose, 2003).

Initially the Bush administration’s attacks against Al Jazeera appeared to be

rhetorical. However, the more the US or alliance troops hit the network’s offices

in a war zone, the more questions were raised. The level of distrust increased

exponentially after the April 1, 2003 attack, in which a US plane fired on

Al Jazeera’s bureau in Baghdad, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub and seriously

wounding others. The administration immediately declared that there had been

firing and troops had been targeted by snipers in the vicinity of the bureau – an

account contradicted by Al Jazeera staff (Fanning et al., 2007). A memo that

leaked later reports that Bush suggested “taking military action” against Al Jazeera

during a meeting with Tony Blair in April 2004.

A frequent critique of Al Jazeera has to do with objectivity. In a scene in the

documentary Control Room, an unidentified American journalist questioned

Joanne Tucker, the ALAZEERA.NET manager, about possible reactions to

pictures of injured and dead American soldiers that the channel had used. Tucker

said she understood that the Americans would be upset by the pictures; but she

explained that it was “not a clean war, it was a very messy war,” and perhaps exactly

for this reason the American public needed to see pictures of what is really

happening (Noujaim et al., 2004). The journalist argued that Al Jazeera reporters

did take a position on the war, and she asked whether they “are even capable

of being objective” (Noujaim et al., 2004). Tucker asked whether there were any

US journalists who were not taking a position on the war. Having watched all the

Western networks’ coverage of the Iraq war, she suggested that objectivity was a

“mirage” and turned the question back on the American: “Your journalists have

a position on the war. Are they capable of being objective?” (Noujaim et al., 2004).

The journalist in Control Room missed the point, as Americans journalists and

scholars do when they hold Al Jazeera to the same standard they as CNN or ABC.

Al Jazeera understands the cultural context of its MENA audiences and presents

news that “appeals to the Arab street that is not offered by western media

outlets.” Western media outlets “can also be painted with the same brush, as most

corporations select and broadcast programs based on accepted perspectives in

Western culture” (Carney, 2006, p. 7). An Al Jazeera correspondent put it succinctly:

“To be objective in this area is not easy because we live here. We are part of the

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 431

people here. And this situation belongs to us also, and we have our opinions”

(El-Nawawy & Iskander, 2002). If Al Jazeera reporters are sympathetic to the

people they cover, this does not mean that AJE news is not professional, said the

AJE general manager: “Sure Al Jazeera is sympathetic to the Palestinians but they

do balance the story, they do let the Israelis give their side and that never happened

before” (Fanning et al., 2007). Standard Western media coverage has tended to

report Middle Eastern conflict through an Israeli lens. While content analysis

suggested that both of the major Arab broadcasting channels tended to assign blame

for aggression in the 2006 war in Lebanon to Israel, Al Jazeera was no more likely to

do so than were news organizations in Germany (Kalb & Saivetz, 2007, p. 51).

Related to the issue of objectivity is the issue of language. For years, in journalism

classrooms, teachers have used the maxim “One man’s terrorist is another man’s

freedom fighter” to illustrate a point. However, this appears to be a lesson they

all forget when they get on with their work, because Western scholars, journalists,

and even comedians have critiqued AJE’s use of words like “martyr,” which would

not be used on American news. On the other hand, the AJE staff suggests that it

takes great care to avoid the linguistic or rhetorical stereotypes found in the

news routinely circulated.

In Algeria, for example, always the Algerian government is talking about any attack –

it’s by “Islamist group.” We don’t say so. We say by “armed groups,” because we don’t

know exactly who have [sic] committed this attack. Is it an Islamist party or another

party? There is a controversy there. (Brugmans et al., 2000)

Al Jazeera has been repeatedly criticized for beginning its independent journalism

at the Qatari border and for overlooking issues of concern within the emirate

(Brugmans et al., 2000; El-Nawawy & Iskander, 2002). Under the circumstances,

Al Jazeera is being held to a double standard and criticized for adhering to a

longstanding journalistic tradition. Under President Moi, more than 100 Western

journalists lived in Nairobi and reported about the rest of Africa but overlooked

Kenya, and thus they kept comfortable bureaus to return to (Rule, 1987). Reporters

in Buenos Aires researched the Dirty War but waited until they were leaving the

country to file their stories (Rosenblum, 1981). During the protests in Tahrir

Square Western reporters based in bureaus in Cairo began reporting extensively

about conditions of life under Mubarak, which they omitted to do before the

protests started. None of this makes it right, but rather it is a reality of journalistic

life in a complicated world.

More than a decade after most of the events that triggered their antipathy, the

Americans remain caught up in their well-worn (and generally unfounded) myths

about Al Jazeera – that it favors terrorism, is anti-Semitic or anti-American, or airs

videos of beheadings of Western hostages (Al Jazeera, 2011). One of the contin-

ued criticisms of Al Jazeera is that it has Islamist leanings, a criticism perhaps fed by

the fact that most of those who make it are exposed to Al Jazeera’s English website

and suspect that what they find there is different from what they would find in its

432 Catherine Cassara

Arabic counterpart, if they could read it. A content analysis of the English and

Arabic sites found local differences between the two sites, but no differences in

how the stories were framed or treated, and it found “Al Qaeda agents portrayed

more negatively than any other agent involved in the conflict” (Fahmy & Al Emad,

2011).

In 2006 a handful of conservative groups worked to prevent US cable

companies from carrying Al Jazeera English (Austin, 2010). In 2011 the con-

servative Accuracy in Media resurrected lobbying efforts by suggesting that, if

Americans were to have ready access to AJE, this “could incite people to kill

Americans” (Kincaid, 2011; Wood, 2009). Still, seven US markets – New York,

NY; Los Angeles, CA; Washington, DC; Burlington, VT; Chicago, IL; Bristol, RI;

and Toledo, OH – now carry AJE. Toledo Buckeye Cable owner Allan Block said

that the effort to dissuade him from carrying AJE made him take a second look,

and he decided that his viewers had the right to the channel (Wood, 2009).

CENTCOM officers whose job it was to liaise with Arab media suggested that

the 2006 campaign designed to keep AJE off cable was “ludicrous” – a disservice

to Americans, who were becoming insular and might gain from being exposed

to news about the rest of the world: “I have no fear [of] any ideas brought through

journalism to the United States” (Fanning et al., 2007).

While Al Jazeera brings in revenue from a mix of sources, including sales of

footage, subscriptions, and advertising, pressure from the Gulf interests squelched

early advertising after the channel’s independent approach to news became

clear (Miles, 2006, p. 172; Rinnawi, 2006, p. 87). While some critics push the

point that the emir still underwrites the operation periodically, it is not clear what

might have been gained from having Saudi or UAE advertisers bankrolling the

network instead. Given its funding model, the former head of the CBC, who ran

AJE at its start, compared Al Jazeera to a public broadcasting operation (Burman,

2011). The emir’s support is no less transparent than media ownership in the

Western countries where media and the scholars criticizing Al Jazeera operate and

where a handful of owners – Disney, Berlusconi, Bertelsmann, or Murdoch – run

the media (Bagdikian, 2004, pp. 27–54).

Disagreements arise over the extent to which the original Arabic channel alone

represented a serious contra-flow to challenge the news flowing from the dominant

Western media organizations. In one of the seminal works that pulled together the

scholarship that was tackling the issue of contra-flow generally, Thussu suggested

that Al Jazeera was a “subaltern,” regional presence with limited contra-flow

impact (Thussu, 2007, p. 24). Perhaps what one finds may have to do with how

one defines presence. Thussu’s focus on advertising, market presence, and content

“glocalization” would not be an effective measure for Al Jazeera (pp. 18–20).

A case less concerned with the emerging channel’s business and more interested in

its geopolitical impact on the world would have to take into account its distinctive

images sent from the Palestinian territories, Baghdad, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and

Baghdad again. In addition to those images, from 2001 on Al Jazeera became a

routine source of information for Western news organizations, covering stories

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 433

about war zones that they could not reach (Cassara & Lengel, 2004). Since Thussu

wrote, AJE has spread across the globe, and during the 2011 Arab uprising it

became the most regular and reliable source of information for audiences

worldwide (Lynch, 2012). Thussu’s suggestion that the public sphere that

Al Jazeera pried open “had an Islamist agenda” because the channel had aired Bid

Laden tapes would appear out of sync with the studies cited above (p. 24).

The emir’s deep pockets have allowed AJE to claim the mission of reversing

global media flows, an endeavor at which less viable organizations have proven

unsuccessful. Research documents that AJE has more correspondents present on

the ground in the global South than in the global North, airs more news from and

about the global South than the global North, and covers that news via in-depth

news formats (Figenschou, 2010, p. 98). The findings suggest AJE “represents the

first potentially viable and competitive contra-flow of news,” which revives interest

in the news flow debate (p. 108). One of the grounds for the Four Freedoms award

was the network’s commitment “to offer a voice to a diversity of perspectives

from under-reported regions” (Roosevelt Stichting, 2012).

Conclusion

There can be little question that Al Jazeera changed the world of news in the

Middle East and North Africa and beyond. The original channel brought news,

pictures, and a sense of public belonging to audiences from the hot hinterlands of

Tunisia to the sands of the Gulf and the cold suburbs of London. The journalists

of Al Jazeera invented a new kind of journalism and public affairs programming,

borrowing from the models of Western journalism and then adapting them to the

needs of their audience and their cultural surroundings. With lonely journalists in

the war zones, the channel fed the rest of world the independent images and

information about wars that would otherwise have been covered at one remove.

With the arrival of AJE the rest of the world welcomed access to news that had

more depth and focus and a different lens, though it took the Arab uprising for

American audiences to recognize what they had been missing. AJE’s numbers suggest

that AJE is gaining on CNN, and, given its opening up to countries that until

now have been covered only when they had “coups and earthquakes,” AJE will

change global news consumption in ways that can only be a challenge to the

Western domination of the news and the public sphere.

Like the over-used “CNN effect,” the “Al Jazeera effect” has come to

encompass as many meanings as there are proponents. But Fouda suggests that

perhaps the most important one is missing – Al Jazeera proved that “Arabs” could

not only handle cameras and do journalism, but also “make a positive contribution”

(Shihata, 2011). After his years of working with the BBC, when he was making

the move to Al Jazeera, he says that very good friends – whom he nevertheless likes

and trusts – actually expressed doubts that Arabs would be able to get a satellite

news channel up and running. It is uncomfortable that this idea – that one might

434 Catherine Cassara

like individual Arabs, but as a whole they might not quite be equal to “us” – was

still professionally conceivable, even years after Said exposed the problems posed

by the stance of Western journalists in his Covering Islam (Said, 1981). One has to

wonder whether some of those perceptions may not persist.

An underlying theme can be found in many of the critiques of Al Jazeera

explored in this chapter – critiques that confounded efforts simply to address the

network’s impact alone. For instance, American critics are stridently outspoken

in their belief that Al Jazeera is anti-American. Those same critics appear to be

unaware that, while research shows that most US TV news coverage of Islam is

sharply negative – an overwhelming majority of the representatives of Islam

presented to American TV audiences are violent extremists – only 7 percent of

Muslims around the world believe that violence against civilians is ever justified

(Esposito & Mogahed, 2008).

In Afghanistan and Iraq, Al Jazeera has come up against a traditional point of

contention about the role of media as witness in war (Braestrup & Twentieth

Century Fund, 1985), but what none of the US actors seems to remember is

that they are expecting Al Jazeera to play by rules that were developed over years

of difficult negotiation between the US military and the US press. Why would an

external media actor be bound by the same rules, or expected to play along?

Ironically, when an Al Jazeera reporter tried to – when he embedded with US

troops – he was actually excluded from the pre-embed experience given the rest

of the journalists.

Suspicion has fallen on members of Al Jazeera staff who covered the

Taliban or Al Qaeda as a part of their professional work, even though Western

journalists in the same position are never questioned (Shihata, 2011). In 2005,

Teyssir Allouni – a Syrian-born, naturalized Spaniard – was found guilty by a

Spanish court of collaborating with al Qaeda. Allouni insisted on his innocence

throughout; and in 2012 a European Court of Human Rights overturned his

sentence, calling the trial unfair and illegal (Chatriwala, 2012).

US media are often quick to criticize Al Jazeera’s coverage of civilian stories,

whether from the Intifada, Afghanistan, Iraq, or Gaza, contending that the net-

work is too sensationalist and inclined to render images of human suffering. Such

response is “hypocritical,” because images of bodies show up on US network news

when this suits the narrative (Austin, 2010). It is usually in times of crisis that Arab

coverage is contrasted with European or American media – and misinterpreted,

because it is being viewed through a Western lens (Mellor, 2007, p. 118).

Al Jazeera does not need apologists, even network managers admit that errors

are made in the fast-paced world of 24-hour news coverage; and the channel has

procedures and committees in place for considering serious news-based complaints

(Ghosh, 2011). What would benefit everyone would be a suspension of too ready

criticism for the opportunity to gain exposure to the serious work the station has

done and to the serious news AJE is engaged in. Media critics and practitioners

asking Al Jazeera to be more self-critical should follow their own advice.

Al Jazeera Remaps Global News Flows 435

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