Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
The Al-Jazeera television network has upset people in the West and in Arab countries, a sign that it is living up to its motto: "The opinion . . . and the other opinion.''
By JEANNE MALMGREN, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published February 17, 2002
Then came Sept. 11.
Immediately subscriptions tripled for the $23-a-month satellite cable package that includes the all-news, all-Arabic channel. Now an estimated 150,000 people in the United States tune in to Al-Jazeera, many of them transplanted Arabs hungry for news from their part of the world.
Mohammed el-Nawawy is one of them.
An assistant professor of journalism at the University of West Florida in Pensacola, el-Nawawy is more than a casual watcher of Al-Jazeera, though. For two years before Sept. 11, he was already doing research for a book on the Arabic news channel.
That book, Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East, is due out in March from Westview Press. El-Nawawy co-wrote it with a University of Kentucky graduate student, Adel Iskandar.
"We wanted to put it in perspective for the American audience," el-Nawawy said. "To put American readers into Arab shoes and give them a context for understanding this channel."
El-Nawawy, 33 and Egyptian-born, is also author of The Israeli-Egyptian Peace Process in the Reporting of Western Journalists (Greenwood Press, 2002). He worked as a journalist for the Associated Press in Cairo and for the Middle East News Agency, and he spent a month last summer at the Baltimore Sun. He holds a doctorate in journalism from Southern Illinois University.
Just as the Gulf War made CNN a major network, the war in Afghanistan has rocketed Al-Jazeera to international fame, el-Nawawy said. A lot of the attention, at least from the West, has been negative.
Al-Jazeera has aired numerous statements from Osama bin Laden and Taliban leaders, prompting the ire of U.S. observers. The latest Osama bin Laden video prompted a spat between CNN and Al-Jazeera when CNN aired it first, saying the Arab network sat on it for months.
Even before the war on terrorism began, Al-Jazeera took heat for its reporting of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, in which it called Palestinian suicide-bombers "martyrs" and the Israeli army an "occupying force."
Still -- and this might surprise many Americans -- most Arab leaders aren't happy with the network either, said el-Nawawy.
In almost all Arab nations, the media are state-controlled. Television consists of propaganda speeches and boring coverage of leaders' daily comings and goings. Women almost never appear on screen.
In contrast, Al-Jazeera features male and female anchors wearing Western clothes. Talk shows invite viewers to call in and express their opinions. Lively debates break out. Taboo topics -- sex, polygamy, extremist regimes -- are discussed freely.
In November, Al-Jazeera aired a report on the trial of 23 men accused of homosexuality in Egypt, interviewing theologians and human rights activists for their opinions. For the first time ever, Arab viewers heard the word "gay" on television.
"This channel is not orthodox in any way," el-Nawawy said. "And Arabs have been longing for this kind of television for a long time."
Even the network's motto is a hymn to free expression: "The opinion . . . and the other opinion."
Its flagship program, The Opposite Direction, is a weekly hourlong talk show hosted by a commentator named Faisal al-Kasim.
"He's very provocative," said el-Nawawy. "He doesn't take sides himself, but he tries to provoke the guests to open up and express their opinions."
The show often gets spirited, el-Nawawy added, with people shouting and shaking fingers at each other. One politician, who was trying to appear incognito, wore a fake mustache. He got so excited that it fell off, revealing his identity. After a commercial break, he had it back on.
"Then, finally, after he got all worked up again, he just tore the mustache off," said el-Nawawy, laughing.
Although some Americans might think Al-Jazeera is merely a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden and Muslim hard-liners, several U.S. leaders have appeared on the Arab network.
Christopher Ross, a former U.S. ambassador to Syria who speaks fluent Arabic, debated an Arab scholar. Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld and British Prime Minister Tony Blair also have appeared as talk-show guests.
"I think that's a good sign," said el-Nawawy. "We hope the channel will continue to be an instigator for mutual understanding between the West and the Middle East and setting the basis for this kind of dialogue."
The very fact that Al-Jazeera angers people on both sides of the fence shows that the network successfully carries out its motto of free expression, el-Nawawy said.
"It has been called pro-Israel, pro-Zionist, pro-America, pro-Taliban, pro-bin Laden. This shows you they represent all sides."
Based in Qatar and financed by that country's reformist leader, Al-Jazeera operates somewhat like the British Broadcasting Corporation, where many of its journalists trained: It is supported by the government but enjoys editorial freedom. Still, some people debate how much freedom it enjoys.
"One of our criticisms of the channel is that it has not really delved into Qatar issues as much as it should," said el-Nawawy.
Al-Jazeera employs more than 50 correspondents in 30 countries, including the United States. El-Nawawy and his co-author visited the Washington, D.C., bureau of Al-Jazeera. It's housed in a tiny office about the size of an apartment, he reported.
In many Arab countries, governments try to block Al-Jazeera from gathering news, el-Nawawy said. Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have, on occasion, banned Al-Jazeera reporters from their countries. Bureaus in other nations have been shut down temporarily. Algeria has been known to disconnect electricity to the entire country when Al-Jazeera was about to air a report critical of the Algerian government.
Although some Arab leaders feel threatened by the network, it is popular among viewers. During his research for the book, el-Nawawy heard of Arab women who sold all their jewelry to be able to buy a satellite dish so they could receive the channel.
"What it has done is offer them a free venue for expressing their opinions. I hope the Western audience can understand the value of that. It's promoting freedom of speech in the Arab world."
Like some of the Arab viewers profiled in his book, el-Nawawy flips back and forth between Al-Jazeera and CNN when watching the news.
"It's interesting to compare the priorities, especially if there is a hot issue going on," he said.
But el-Nawawy and his wife also are typical TV viewers -- a little of everything.
"We like to watch Jay Leno, too."
From Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East, by Mohammed el-Nawawy and Adel Iskandar. The book is due out in March from Westview Press.
Before the anti-Taliban forces' takeover of Kabul . . . Al-Jazeera was the only channel to have a 24-hour satellite link to the Afghan capital. (Other stations started to report from Kabul around mid-November 2001, after the fall of the Taliban regime.) Al-Jazeera's Afghan outpost was little more than a small, ramshackle building where guests had to be filmed outside or, more likely, on the roof. The rudimentary set occasionally produced its own breaking news, as on the first night of U.S. strikes when Mohammed Halimi, a member of the Taliban foreign ministry staff, was being interviewed live on the roof.
"While Halimi was speaking, we heard a big noise, like a bomb," says Mohammed Kicham, the Qatar-based anchorman of Al-Jazeera. "Suddenly we had no picture and no sound at all. After about five minutes, the sound came back and Tayseer Allouni (Al-Jazeera's Kabul reporter) reported that a bomb had fallen nearby. "I'm sorry," he told the studio in Doha, "but the cameraman has disappeared and I've no idea where he is." The cameraman, it turned out, had fallen off the roof. "Fortunately, it's not a high building," Kicham adds. "So he climbed back and finished the interview."