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Tuesday, Feb 08, 2005

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THE NEWS ABOUT AL JAZEERA

FOR A SATELLITE channel that broadcasts only in Arabic, Al Jazeera's reach and influence extend far beyond its immediate audience. Since September 11, 2001, when the United States launched its "war on terror," the network has established itself worldwide as a credible counter to Western, especially American, news channels, some of which functioned as willing accomplices of the Bush administration in `manufacturing consent' for its international policies. During the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Al Jazeera, which had just then launched its English language website, was among the most searched for terms on the Internet search engine Google. It not merely refused to toe the Pentagon line on the war; it often set a news agenda that media organisations worldwide scrambled to follow. So the report that acting under U.S. pressure, the Qatar Government, which funds Al Jazeera, has fast-tracked plans to sell the channel comes as no surprise. The network has denied any hidden U.S. hand in the proposed sale. Senior Bush administration officials have publicly accused Al Jazeera of airing "vitriolic, irresponsible kinds of statements," of "inciting violence," and of "endangering the lives of American troops" in Iraq. In August 2004, the network's Baghdad bureau was shut down to "protect the Iraqi people." For all its boast of building democracies in West Asia, the U.S. has desperately attempted to stifle the sole independent news network in the region.

The real surprise is that the Emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani — who, in 1996, did the people of the region the signal service of founding Al Jazeera with Arabic broadcasting professionals from the BBC — resisted the U.S. all this while to keep the network functioning. The channel is based in Doha, the capital of Qatar, and the Emir has been the ideal, non-interfering owner. Much before Al Jazeera fell foul of the Bush administration, it antagonised virtually every ruler in West Asia with its inquisitiveness, its factuality, and its exposure of opaque and autocratic ways of governance. Alone among media organisations in the region, it continues to perform this role. The Emir, who abolished Qatar's Ministry of Information and dismantled censorship soon after taking power from his father in 1995, gave $140 million to finance the network for five years, after which it was supposed to start funding itself. In spite of its massive following in the Arab world, the channel has failed to acquire commercial viability as advertisers, anxious not to rub the region's ruling elites the wrong way, kept away. Al Jazeera has survived thanks to the Emir, to its spirited stable of journalists, and to their resourcefulness and cultivation of unusual sources. Unprofitability might be a cause for the proposed sale but it does appear that the Emir is no longer in a position to rebuff the U.S. for the sake of freedom of expression.

The move to sell Al Jazeera raises worrying questions about its future. Will it be able to continue presenting the news and views with the same freedom it has so far enjoyed? A name recently voted by marketing professionals as the fifth most influential brand in the world should have no dearth of potential buyers. It is at least a long shot that privatisation could turn out to be a positive development for the network. That of course will depend on who the buyer is. All those interested in the welfare of the peoples of the Arab world will hope that Al Jazeera's next owner will not trade its independence for profit, and will maintain its reputation as a free and fearless challenger to the domination of the world's airwaves by Western media organisations.

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