Al-Jazeera: One channel could make a world of difference

On the jump: Rejected by every major cable company in America, Al Jazeera English is an ambitious attempt to redefine television news. There's absolutely no reason we shouldn't be watching it.

Related story: "BBC World" plans an American version. Also, a look at other new attempts to bring the world into American viewers' homes.

Podcast: Former "Nightline" correspondent Dave Marash explains why he's bullish on his new employer, Al Jazeera English.

Earlier: CNN's honcho says his viewers get enough world news.

      After 9/11 — after the shock and the fear and the sadness and the anger — do you remember feeling just a pang of regret that you knew so little about what was going on in the rest of the world?    

    If so, you weren’t alone. In the weeks and months after that terrible day, the American news media’s gaze turned beyond our borders in a way it hadn’t since World War II. The shift was especially noticeable on television. The summer of 2001 had been a low point for TV news, what with wall-to-wall coverage of a missing Washington, D.C., intern and shark attacks. And then, in an instant, what one critic called the “fake, breathless hysteria” of pre-9/11 news coverage vanished. Responsible journalism took its place. What's even more remarkable, ratings grew, at least for a time.

Since then, of course, American cable news — like Robert De Niro’s character in “Awakenings” — has reverted to its pre-9/11 state. But the need for serious, globally-minded television news didn’t go away. Around the world, in fact, a new wave of international news channels are dedicated to expanding their viewers’ horizons.    

    Too bad we can’t watch any of them here. 

One of these upstarts has a familiar-sounding name: Al Jazeera English. Launched last fall by the same oil-rich emirate of Qatar that runs the Arabic al-Jazeera, it was offered for free to cable companies across America. Exactly one took up the offer — a tiny carrier in Vermont serving less than 2,000 households.  

    Even at no charge, it seemed, adding Al Jazeera English wasn’t worth the potential backlash from customers who consider al-Jazeera to be the official network of Osama bin Laden and every nut job with a jihad to declare against the West.  

    That charge is baseless. I’ve been monitoring the new channel for several months over the Internet, paying $6 a month to watch a video stream supplied by Real Networks. And I am convinced it is the most important English-language cable channel to come along since Fox News.  

    It’s everything our cable news isn’t: global, meaty, consequential and compelling in the best sense of the word. And I’m not the only one who thinks so.  

    “I’m sitting in the Ambassador Hotel in Arab East Jerusalem glued to the TV,” the veteran Chicago City Hall reporter Ray Hanania wrote on his blog during a recent trip. “I’m watching the Al Jazeera English-language satellite news station report things about the world that we never hear about in America. It’s amazing.”  

    I called Reese Schonfeld, the first president of CNN. Still going strong after 50 years in the business, the ageless Schonfeld is active as a consultant and writer. He’s also an occasional guest on Fox News Channel and an Iraq War supporter. He had sampled Al Jazeera English online and I wanted to know what he thought.  

    “It’s a legitimate news service,” he said. “They’ve told me things I never knew before, which surprised me. Their reports are much longer than American news reports. They pick their stories carefully. They’re as straight and narrow as Fox is.”  

    You may cock an eyebrow at that last statement of Schonfeld’s, but this much is undeniable: Fox News Channel's critics haven’t done a thing to dent that channel's growth. By contrast, the miniscule opposition to Al Jazeera English has effectively kept it off American cable and satellite systems, even as our allies scoop it up. (It’s in about 80 million homes worldwide and already a success in Israel, Pakistan and Germany.)  

    Since the launch, only a handful of U.S. cable operators have signed up, the largest being Block Communications, which serves Toledo, Ohio, and its large Arab-American population. “After our announcement, 50 to 100 people called to express their displeasure,” said Tom Dawson, a spokesman for Block. “But we’ve always told them, it’s not on yet. Don’t criticize it until you see it.”  

    That’s what Tim Nulty said, too. He runs the Vermont system that was the first to offer Al Jazeera English on cable, and he got an earful from people who had their minds made up about it, sight unseen. So he turned it on in his lobby and invited people to come down and check it out. End of controversy.  

    “The channel sells itself,” said Nulty.  

    As far as interest here in Kansas City, there isn’t any, according to representatives at Time Warner Cable and Comcast. However, both said that may have more to do with the fact that Al Jazeera English is brand new. Fox News Channel got a tremendous amount of buzz after it launched in late 1996, yet it wasn’t added to all local cable systems until 1999.  

    It’s not impossible to see Al Jazeera English on TV in our town. Walk into the Jerusalem Bakery on Westport Road most days and the flat screen in the dining area will likely be tuned to the channel. Owner Farid Azzeh pulls it in from Globecast, a specialty satellite-TV maker. It’s free once you buy the Globecast dish (about $200).

    So what will you see on Al Jazeera English? A well-produced, straightforward, mostly British-accented mix of live news and documentaries from literally around the world. The channel’s high-tech studios, graphics and theme music will remind some viewers of the BBC newscasts that air locally on public TV and BBC America. Indeed, many of the reporters hired for the new channel have BBC on their resumés.  

    Here was the story list on a recent AJE midday update: News of the Fatah party pulling out of the ruling Palestinian coalition; early results from the Labor Party vote in Israel; video supplied to Al Jazeera by the Muslim Brotherhood, purporting to show ballot stuffing going on in Egypt; and three non-Middle East stories about a ceasefire by a Kurdish separatist group, UN peacekeepers in Turkey and the deadly heat wave sweeping India and Pakistan.  

    Nothing else I heard or watched that afternoon came close to the variety of Al Jazeera English. Most American news outlets limited their foreign news to stories of destruction: fighting in Gaza and bombings in Baghdad.  

    Nigel Parsons, the general manager of Al Jazeera English, hired reporters who have local roots and speak the language. He’s as devoted to covering Latin America and Africa as he is the Middle East and the G-8.  

    “I think there is the perception in the developing world that finally, here is an alternative, if you like, to the Western-dominated news agenda,” Parsons said in a phone interview from Doha, Qatar. “Perceptions are very important.”  

    Others who have watched Al Jazeera English see something less virtuous.  

    Louis Wittig, who writes for The Weekly Standard, said he noted “a distinctly pro-Arab bias” when he watched the channel. “It was quite a slanted perspective, but it was delivered with the tone of a BBC program. It wasn’t the over-the-top language that you might have expected. It’s a little creepy because it looks and sounds so familiar,” he said.  

    “Al Jazeera English really is presenting another perspective. The question is whether it’s a fair perspective.” Wittig added, however, “I was surprised how little time they actually spend on the Middle East.”  

    Indeed, the channel’s newsday is divided among four different news hubs, only one of them, Doha, Qatar, is in the Middle East. The other three anchor desks are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (home to 20 million English-speaking Muslims), London and Washington, D.C.  

    In Washington, co-anchor Dave Marash — who for years was Ted Koppel’s go-to guy, parachuting into countless hotspots for “Nightline” — has his own twist on his current employer’s approach to news. “Before Al Jazeera English, all English language television news was ‘direct current,’ with a single flow from the authorities in North America and Western Europe to the rest of the world,” Marash told me recently. “What Al Jazeera English does is introduce the concept of ‘alternating current.’ My role obviously is to be a First World guy reporting a Washington perspective, but the majority of our time is spent getting the opposite perspective from Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa.”  

    Marash is proud of the scoops his network gets and the time it devotes to major stories. On the day we talked, a member of the U.S. joint chiefs had come into the studio. Under questioning from Marash, the official confirmed that American gunships were giving cover to Ethiopian troops and private contractors as they drove the radical Islamist government out of the Somalian capital of Mogadishu. I searched the news wires and found no earlier verification of America’s role in the coup. He knows people inside the Pentagon and the State Department watch, because Al Jazeera English is carried inside those buildings. But editors at the wire services don’t watch as much. It frustrates Marash when they don’t pick up his exclusives.  

    “But I gotta tell you, Aaron, I don’t think it’s going to last,” he said. “We have had more than enough hits on the Web site to demonstrate to any cable system operator that there is a market for this news channel.”  

    It’s true, you can get a good helping of Al Jazeera English online these days. The network struck a deal with YouTube and now has a substantial presence on that video-sharing site. Mostly what you see there are its longform programs, including “Listening Post,” which might be the best media-critique program in English anywhere.  

    But until everyday Americans can sit down, turn on their TV sets and watch Al Jazeera English, most of them will have no clue that one channel can make a world of difference.  

    Where to see Al Jazeera English  

   Aljazeera.net/English is the official Web site of Al Jazeera English. You can read its stories there and sample the video stream. Real.com sells a streaming subscription for $5.95/month. Watching on TV requires a dish from GlobecastWorldTV.com, a division of France Telecom, for about $200 (no additional charge for Al Jazeera English).  AJE has an official presence on YouTube as well.

***

Related story: "BBC World" plans an American version. Also, a look at other new attempts to bring the world into American viewers' homes.

Podcast: Former "Nightline" correspondent Dave Marash explains why he's bullish on his new employer, Al Jazeera English.

Earlier: CNN's honcho says his viewers get enough world news.

Comments

[Zulfiqar Malik]

Thank you for a great article. Al-Jazeera will definitely broaden the thoughts horizon of the American viewers.

[Todd Elkins]

For those of us bloggers who think we are the alternative media, it reminds us of how diverse the world really is. Great story, Aaron.

[Ross]

Al Jazeera English is very good. I used to watch it via RealNetworks. I eventually swapped it for BBC World which has a similar $5.95 per month subscription via Real. I had to choose one but it was a tough choice because they are both good.

A disappointing event this weekend is the loss of ability to watch CNN International online via CNN Pipeline which cost $25 per year. I was quite impressed with CNN International. Its a totally different service to CNN US.

Ross

[Aaron]

I didn't realize Pipeline, when it went free, dropped CNNi. That's unfortunate.

[Jim McKenna]

Al Jazeera English is also carried on one other cable company, Buckeye Cablevision in Toledo Ohio.

[Aaron]

Gotta read the WHOLE story, Jim. And trust me - this one's the short version!

[Tom from Weston]

Posting #1 - Al Jazeera

Sorry to repeat Zulfigar's comment above but this was a very, very good story. When I logged on I expected to see 50 nasty messages. Happily surprised that doesn't seem to be the case.

I tend to vote conservative. I was and still am a supporter of the war. If you haven't heard from the right at least know that I, for one, think international news channels are long overdue. It's not that we don't get all the big news items from overseas it's that we don't understand all of it. The average viewer has so little exposure to foreign culture it should terrify us. And we elect the leader of the Free World? Developments like this can only change that.

Not that I'll like Al Jazeera. Heck, I can't stand Fox News half the time. But I'd protest like mad if either of them were yanked from the line-up.

[Tom from Weston]

Posting #2 - Aaron

I continue to be pleasantly surprised by the quality & breadth of this critic's subject matter (not to mention the sheer quantity). I hope other readers realize what we've here.

I'm a transplant. I was a citizen and a loyal reader of local news in the Twin Cities and Chicago. There are other good writers out there, but the standard process of critics in this business seems to be touching-up press releases from the studios & networks. The Star's critic has traveled outside the bounds of normal coverage and still covers the weekly best bets. This topic (al Jazeera) is so far outside the boundary it leaves him open to a lot of criticism.

He must be confident in what he writes. I think I am.

[tc]

Aaron-thanks for including this article. We really should not be afraid of information. The words of the writer for the Weekly Standard (what kind of standard?) writer really, well, re-affirmed how biased their writing is when he was shocked that essentially this is a fairly low-key, no-fuss, just the facts ma'am, news channel. What he didn't say is also telling-it was clear he was shocked and had just expected that if there was a news channel originating from the Middle East that it would simply consist of people flying on magic carpets and squealing in some sort of grotesquely stereotype-reinforcing manner. Yes, Mr. Weekly Bad Standard, folks in the Middle East like news. Go figure!!

[Aaron]

I was actually relieved to find Louis Wittig's piece in the Weekly Standard because it meant I didn't have to quote the alleged media watchdog group that usually gets quoted in stories about AJE. I wanted someone in my story whose criticism actually made some sense, as opposed to a group that has no impact on the blogosophere and whose ravings, as Dave Marash noted, could be refuted simply by watching the channel for five minutes.

[Paris Parfait]

I'm an American living in Paris and we've had Al Jazeera English news since last November. I've watched it on a regular basis, along with BBC and CNN and have been impressed at Al Jazeera's broad coverage of the world, its in-depth reporting on hot issues and providing a voice to people from whom the West rarely hears. For the most part, it seems objective and unbiased. The only hiccup I noticed was during the London and Glasgow car bomb incidents this past weekend, Al Jazeera buried that coverage in the middle of its newcast. Yes, obviously floods in Pakistan were important, but the UK incidents were THE hot topic of news in the West at the time; Al Jazeera didn't treat it as such, even though you would think - since its viewers are English speakers - this would be of primary interest. I would recommend Al Jazeera English news to everyone and I did, some months ago, on my blog.

[Ross]

An update or correction to my earlier post. I'm pleased to say that CNN International is available again this morning streaming free from the new cnn.com site. There is a blog at CNN which suggests it wasn't going to be available. Perhaps it was all a misunderstanding.

http://behindthescenes.blogs.cnn.com/2007/06/25/a-special-note-for-our-cnn-pipeline-subscribers/

[peter]

Your article is ludicrous and illogical. We don't accept al jazeera broadcasts for the same reason we don't broadcast neo-nazi's stations-they are perverted "information and facts" that are blatant lies and meant to solicit support for their racist views. There is no point to listen to their racist and anti-semitic viewpoints any more than to listen to Hitler's speeches to get a different world view.

[Annie]

Ross, have you ever actually SEEN the channel? Wouldn't you want to know what they are saying about us, why the whole world seems to hate America? At least if the cable companies carried it people could have the choice to watch it or not! I am startng a campaign to Time-Warner...

[Aaron]

She meant Peter, I think.

Who, like the dude over at Paul Harris' blog, seems not to have watched a lick of AJE but is absolutely certain a reference to Die Führer is in order.

[Kyle]

The "whole world" doesn't hate America - what hysterical, left-wing nonsense (and I was in Europe just a few weeks ago). I've seen some of the Al Jazeera content, and it is slanted. But because it has a less exploitational tone than Fox, it lulls the less perceptive among us into thinking that it is balanced. However, I agree that people should have the opportunity to see this channel. I just wish you liberals would stick up for Fox News the same way you're rushing to the defense of Al Jazeera. But I forgot - anything that's anti-American is worth cheerleading. It's the pro-American content that's worthy of disdain.

[Aaron]

Talk to the whole room, Kyle.

[Carol Mariane]

Personally, having listened to Zain Verjee, a CNN anchor and reporter, discussing the new Al Jazeera English station, I'm reticent to say the least about any network originating from Qatar considering what's going in the Middle East right now. I'm thinking of the recent London bombings then in Glasgow and one of the doctors being traced to Australia. This is a network of people with links to Al Qaeda and to tune into Al Jazeera English, indeed, would make me nervous. These people are super sophisticated and even though CNN shows its world viewers, what's going on around the world in terms of terrorism, those with access to CNN...in the Middle East, not exactly American-loving people, still know the effects of what's been happening and can plan future attacks on the U.K. as well as American soil.

[venkatesh]

check www.cnnibn.com, India's English channel in partnership with CNN, it has a wide range of stories as well.

[Aaron]

So what you're saying, Carol, is that a free press is OK in the United States but not in other countries (like Australia)?

Or are you saying that a free press just isn't a good idea anywhere these days?

[Elba]

I'm surprised anyone still pumps the old propaganda about Al Jazeera being anti semitic, anti Israel or anti American.

Let's be clear, they havediscussion programmes. On those programmes, people are allowed to state their opinions. On those programmes there have been interviews with American administration officials, Israeli diplomats and politicans and those who have severely criticised Arab governments.

The Al Jazeera English coverage is fair and balanced and they have some excellent reporters.

They accept that perhaps a car bomb in Baghdad which kills twenty is more important than a suicde attack onan airport which doesn't kill anyone. They don't fall into the Western mindset that dead Arabs/Bangladeshis/Indians/Chinese/Indoensians merit only atwo lines in the bulletin.

The anti Al Jazeera campaign has long been shown up for what it really is - an attempt to stifle criticsm and the truth.

[Amir]

Last I checked jump tv was offering al jazeera stream for free (real good quality stream too -- much better than real player stream that is on al jazeera site). http://www.jumptv.com/en/channel/aljazeerainternational/

[Amir]

If the direct link that I posted above doesn't work, first go to jumptv.com. Scroll down to the list of free channels. From there you can go to al jazeera stream. But it's still free.

[Joe]

Here's how to watch AlJazeera, Press TV, France 24 and Russia Today in the United States and Canada via Satellite for Free.

tyros.leb.net/satellite

[AmirK]

I just learnt that al jazeera is free on jumptv only for anyone in the US. Everyone else has to pay $9.95 -- also, it's probably marketing ploy by jumptv. They probably will change it back (not sure when).