JEDDAH, 16 November 2006 — BBC and CNN beware. Here comes Al Jazeera. The long-awaited English version of Al Jazeera’s television channel went on air yesterday amid high hopes and equally great skepticism.
Al Jazeera English, a free-to-air channel, the launch of which was repeatedly delayed from its 2005 startup, began broadcasting from the network’s studios in the Qatari capital Doha with Shiulie Ghosh and Sami Zeidan as the first news anchors.
Employing some of the biggest names in global broadcasting — such as Riz Khan, Sir David Frost, Rageh Omar, Veronica Pedrosa, Darren Jordan, Dave Marash, Josh Rushing and Ghida Fakhry — the channel hopes to reach a potential audience of 80 million viewers by cable and satellite, mostly in Asia, Africa and Europe.
Al Jazeera Arabic channel, which celebrated its 10th anniversary on Nov. 1, has revolutionized news media in the Arab world, but it has also provoked controversy. Al Jazeera English will have four regional broadcast centers in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington, in addition to 20 bureaus worldwide. It will also benefit from access to the facilities of its Arabic mother channel.
“Launching the English channel offers the chance to reach out to a new audience that is used to hearing the name of Al Jazeera without being able to watch it or to understand its language,” Wadah Khanfar, the network’s managing director, told news agencies in Doha. He pledged impartial and balanced coverage by the new channel.
“In the same way Edward Gibbon wrote ‘The Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire’ thus breaking the back of the Church’s hegemony in Europe, likewise Al Jazeera English is soon set to break the back of Western media hegemony,” said a Saudi academic. “Al Jazeera Arabic has shifted public opinion in the Middle East; it is only a matter of time that Western public opinion changes, and the right-wing and pro-Zionist propaganda machine loses ground. The next few years are going to be interesting. Let the media battle for hearts and minds begin.”
“The media is indisputably one of the most powerful and effective ways of shaping people’s views and opinions. Hence, media is being manipulated more and more every day for political reasons,” said Saudi writer and columnist Mody Al-Khalaf. “I, for one, am happy that the West will have an opportunity to see things from a different perspective via Al Jazeera English. It is about time media in the Middle East reached out to people all over the world on a large, international scale.”
“The new English channel will certainly attract viewers in Asia and Europe, who are already curious about Al Jazeera’s brand name, and such audiences will be more receptive to its message and a Middle East viewpoint of events,” said Mohamed Ramady, visiting associate professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals (KFUPM). “However, given that there will be no unified managing editor for both the English and Arabic channels, there will be tension between the two channels as to the limit of expressing their independent Middle East viewpoints, since the Arabic channel has made a reputation for outspoken and forthright commentaries and discussion, while the English channel might opt for a more soft-spoken approach to suit the English-speaking market and audiences.”
Ahmed Al-Sheikh, the mother channel’s editor in chief, acknowledged that challenge earlier. “Al Jazeera English’s audience will be different than ours, but we will coordinate our editorial policy through daily meetings in order to agree on, among others, controversial terms such as ‘martyrs’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘resistance’ in the coverage of regional conflicts,” he said.
The channel is expected to be accessible through satellite receivers and on the Internet. But Al Jazeera said on Tuesday it will be unavailable on cable in the US for at least a year due to a lack of free space. In Europe, however, it will be accessible on cable.
Many observers hope that Al Jazeera English will not follow in its sister’s footsteps as a tool for spreading propaganda against Arab states that don’t share the Qatari government’s point of view.
“Al Jazeera operated in a vacuum and became very popular. What started as a good source of information soon degenerated into a tool of disinformation,” said a leading Saudi media personality. “It brought to fore the long-buried sectarian divide in the Muslim world and became a propaganda tool for certain regimes. Al-Arabiya has done wonders in calling its bluff, and I think an English version of Al-Arabiya is required to check Al Jazeera’s campaign of disinformation.”
The Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur is the regional headquarters for the channel’s Asian operations, a market of three billion people of which about one-third are Muslims. Al Jazeera vows to provide an alternative perspective, which has been welcomed by Asian commentators and governments.
“Diversity in the source of news and information is vital for press freedom,” said Roby Alampay, executive director of the Bangkok-based Southeast Asia Press Alliance. “Al Jazeera is known to provide a perspective that is quite independent and different from CNN and BBC. We welcome this diversity,” he told AFP.
In Pakistan, Ahsan Rashid, the Punjab president of Imran Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party, said: “It is a welcome development. Such a channel was required for a long time. The non-Arabic population had nothing but to bank on BBC and CNN. Now they will have an alternative. I hope the channel will focus on Pakistan and the entire Muslim world.”
