CAIRO, 7 April 2008 — In the latest news from Tel Aviv, it seems the Ehud Olmert government has decided Al Jazeera favors Hamas over Israel in the Gaza conflict and will now refuse to deal with its reporters.
You have to admit, Israel and Al Jazeera were unlikely bedfellows. But the fact that we are even discussing banning Al Jazeera reporters from the Knesset speaks volumes about what had previously been a very pragmatic relationship.
Israelis understood from the start what the Bush administration has only lately come to realize — that it was better for Israeli officials to use Al Jazeera to explain the country’s policies to the Arab world in their own words than to demonize the station and let its presenters put their own spin on Israeli policy. Not only does Al Jazeera have a bureau in Israel, but Israelis can watch both the Arabic channel and Al Jazeera English, neither of which is readily accessible in the United States.
It’s not that Israelis are naive. They know the Qatar-based channel’s policy of presenting “the opinion, and the other opinion” does not change the fact that it is — according to its own mission statement — an “Arab media service”. And that means it reports events in the occupied territories through an Arab camera lens, just as it reported the Afghan and Iraq invasions from an Arab perspective, incensing the Bush administration.
The new boycott was apparently sparked by the fact that, in the latest round of Israeli attacks on Hamas in Gaza, Al Jazeera focused heavily on Palestinian casualties — zooming in on the dead and wounded for close-ups.
All this naturally raises the question, “What is balance?”
Various studies have found that US media give substantially more coverage to Israeli deaths than those of Palestinians, even though the Palestinian death rates are much higher. Shouldn’t we then expect that Arab journalists, reporting for an Arab audience, are going to focus on Arab casualties?
Granted, Al Jazeera is far from perfect. It can be sensational, opinionated and irresponsible. But, the same can be said about many Western channels.
The irony of this tempest is that Israel’s ally in its attempt to control Al Jazeera’s message is none other than the Arab League. Arab information ministers recently adopted a new Arab Satellite Charter that gives them the right to pull the plug on channels that “jeopardize social peace, national unity, public order and general propriety,” and those “broadcasting any materials that would incite violence and terrorism (or) imply that (a) crime or its predators are heroes or justify their motives.” The Qatari government, which funds Al Jazeera, abstained from the vote. It knows the channel is about as popular in the Arab world as in the halls of the Knesset. Which is precisely why it is so influential among the Arab public, and why non-Arab governments — whether Israeli or American — seeking to influence Arabs ignore the channel at their own peril.
— Lawrence Pintak is director of the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism Training and Research at the American University in Cairo. This article was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).
