No one is indifferent to al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab satellite television station. You can practically see the blood of US officials boil when they discuss it. To be sure, in the context of the dream of all Arabs being united and independent of foreign control, al-Jazeera is undeniably partial to Arab aspirations. But that does not make its news reporting untruthful. In fact, al-Jazeera, which US Secretary of State Colin Powell calls "horrible" and "slanted," is a pivotal vehicle for reform and change, which genuinely democratic Arab activists and the international community alike have been calling for.
So incensed has the US been, however, that it created its own Arabic language mouthpiece in the form of satellite station al-Hurra. Yet al-Hurra is forbidden from broadcasting within the
US, because it is state controlled. Arabs don't trust it, either. It demonstrated its lapdog status by never broadcasting images of
prisoners being abused inside Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison. In this respect, at least, al-Hurra fits perfectly within the tame tradition of Arab state broadcasters. The US, however, is not alone in challenging al-Jazeera head on. The BBC, which briefly ran its own Arabic language news station in the mid-1990s -- before closing it down because its Saudi funders were unhappy with its reporting -- recently announced that it will re-launch an Arabic language news satellite station. But instead of bashing or seeking to undermine al-Jazeera, politicians should encourage this bastion of free expression, recognizing that Arabs will need to endure a messy
process on the way to democracy. Along that tortuous route, the world's major powers are bound to be offended, probably quite regularly.
Television in the Arab world has for years been the mouthpiece used by ruling presidents, kings, and emirs to propagate their official opinions and nothing else. Elite military units usually protect radio and television stations, because they have often been
the first targets in military coups. Given this history, and the storm of calls for reform in the Arab world, it is a tragic irony that the US and the West have paid so little attention to the terrestrial Arab monopoly television channels. Indeed,
US criticism of al-Jazeera sounds more like special pleading because of the US' inept bumbling in Iraq than a genuine desire for free, open, and critical Arab media. If democracy means giving people a free choice, then there is no doubt that the choice of most Arabs is
for a television broadcaster that reflects their aspirations. In this sense, al-Jazeera is clearly biased, because it is run by Arab patriots and reflects Arab sentiment. But this is no more a crime than the fact that the US' media reflects American aspirations, and in times of war behaves like a cheerleader for US forces.
The key issue here is whether al-Jazeera, as well as American TV stations, are truthful in what they say. Al-Jazeera is certainly professional. Its leading journalists are Western-trained, many having worked for years at the BBC. In fact, al-Jazeera was founded only after the BBC closed its Arabic language station under Saudi pressure. Al-Jazeera's motto, "opinion and opposing opinion," has galvanized Arab viewers, because clashing opinions are rarely heard on terrestrial Arab television stations. Of course, when covering the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the US-led war on Iraq, al-Jazeera has not been objective. How could it be? But it did not make up facts; it merely reflected majority Arab opinion. On such fundamental issues of Arab consensus, it is simply illogical to expect an Arab broadcaster to be even-handed. Moreover, al-Jazeera has not been dumb to complaints about it. In July, al-Jazeera became the first Arab TV station to create a professional code of ethics. According to the BBC, the code defines with absolute clarity and transparency how al-Jazeera journalists are to behave, and sets clear divisions between news, analysis, and commentary.
As for al-Jazeera's journalistic performance, it is past time that the station be judged by respected professional journalists, not by US or other officials with a policy axe to grind.
A major university department of journalism working with Arab media critics, for example, could provide a much more honest analysis of the station's work.
If American, British, and other
Western officials are serious about reform in the Arab world, they must support reform-minded Arab individuals and organizations, even if those organizations make them uncomfortable at times. If that
becomes the West's standard,
al-Jazeera will rightly be seen as part of the solution, not part of the problem.
Daoud Kuttab is director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al Quds University in Ramallah, and of AmmanNet, the Arab world's first independent Internet radio station. Copyright: Project Syndicate
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