By Alia Malek
The fighting in Lebanon and its aftermath — the complex interplay of internal, regional, and global interests — is a story Al-Jazeera International was born to tell. Or rather, conceived to tell. The new English-language channel says it is on the eve of launching, but at press time it was still waiting to clear technical and distribution hurdles. For now, its journalists must stand by and watch others do the job. It is precisely that coverage, which they say is incomplete, that inspired them to sign on to Al-Jazeera’s vision.
Al-Jazeera International wants nothing less than to break the Western monopoly on the telling of history, by expanding the spectrum of perspectives participating in English-language discussion of world issues. To do so, the channel will broadcast from four coequal centers around the globe — Kuala Lumpur; Doha, Qatar; London; and Washington, D.C. Each will share the on-air day by following, literally, the path of the sun, offering world news — the same event even — as experienced specifically and differently by Asia, the Middle East and Africa, Europe, and the Americas. As the day progresses, the perspective will shift, a marked difference from CNN and BBC, which filter the news through Atlanta and London.
Al-Jazeera is aware that the expansion of perspective may be unsettling to those in the West who have been used to defining what is newsworthy and what passes for objectivity. A common accusation against Al-Jazeera’s Arabic channel is that it has an anti-Western tilt.
Will Stebbins, the international channel’s Washington bureau chief, brushes objectivity concerns aside, emphasizing that Al-Jazeera has hired people based on their journalistic credentials, including people with strong track records such as David Frost, Dave Marash, and Felicity Barr. And Riz Khan, formerly of CNN International and BBC World Service, who will host a news interview show, believes that the new international channel will force other networks to bolster their coverage by letting viewers see just how incomplete their global news is. According to Stebbins, the new channel will have more bureaus in Africa, for example, than any other English-language news outlet, and it will employ staff from more than thirty countries.
Al-Jazeera sees the international channel as a natural expansion of the Arabic channel, which first started broadcasting ten years ago, in November of 1996. While the network has fierce critics, including Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, the fact remains that Al-Jazeera was not only willing to challenge the Arab dictatorships who had enjoyed years of state-owned programming and powers of censorship, but was also able to do so. With the emir of Qatar bankrolling the operation, Al-Jazeera filled the need for an independent Arab Fourth Estate. And until Al-Jazeera turned its cameras on U.S. operations in Afghanistan and exposed the human face of collateral damage, the U.S. government applauded the role that the maverick network was playing in democratization. The relationship bottomed out in November 2001, when the U.S. bombed Al-Jazeera’s Kabul offices, killing a correspondent.
Like the Arabic channel, Al-Jazeera International will also be funded by the emir of Qatar, and, again, the channel will have no specific national context or audience, unlike the American CNN International or the British BBC World. Al-Jazeera aspires instead to create a global channel with a target audience of the planet’s English speakers. The language choice might imply that it will reach only the elites in countries where English is not the native tongue, but Al-Jazeera officials contend that those who choose to learn English transcend class lines, and that what they do share is an international-minded awareness. Such viewers would join those in English-speaking countries as well as English-speaking expatriates in other countries. Stebbins is quick to point out that most hits to Al-Jazeera’s existing English-language Web site come from the U.S.
For now, all this remains hypothetical. Al-Jazeera International has yet to go on air, despite several planned launch dates that have come and gone. The channel says the delays are rooted in its complex technological setup, which will link all four broadcast centers by fiber and allow the network to broadcast in high-definition mode, in real time, 24/7. The channel also wants to make itself available every way technology allows — including by Internet streaming and mobile phone podcasts — at the time of its launch. The critical issue of who will carry the new channel, however, apparently remains unresolved. Despite what Al-Jazeera says has been a “tremendous response worldwide,” as cjr went to press, the network would not say whether it has a deal in hand with any cable or satellite company either in the U.S. or elsewhere.
So while Stebbins admits to an atmosphere of “impatient anticipation” around the office in Washington, especially as the new history of the Middle East unfolds, he remains patient. “The story won’t be ending here, that’s for sure,” he says. “We’ll get our shot.”
Alia Malek is an assistant editor at CJR.
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