Al-Jazeera's Role
This is an important article by Tuvia Tenenbom on the role played by Al-Jazeera in fomenting these uprisings.
Al-Jazeera understands the power of pictures. It was a marvel to watch how it used this power after Ben Ali fled Tunisia. Al-Jazeera got its hands on a couple of soldiers who kissed demonstrators, plus two policemen who were seen crying -- or almost crying -- during the same demonstration. This video was shown again and again and again and again, creating the feeling that the "Army and Police are with you. Keep on going, Tunisians!" Once Al-Jazeera decided a situation was so, it could be made a reality. No one could argue: it was Democracy in the Making!
But in all the tumult, no one remembered to ask: "Why is Al-Jazeera not championing democracy in Qatar?" -- where Al-Jazeera is owned by the rulers there.
I don't entirely agree with her analysis: These events have paradoxically been contingent (in the sense that they were triggered by a series of coincidental events) and overdetermined (in the sense that the pressures on these regimes have been so enormous, for so long, that in conjunction with the growth of access to new media they were at some point bound to collapse.) Al-Jazeera is just one part of the story--demography, Twitter, Facebook, Wikileaks, the spread of the ideal of democracy (for which we can take much credit, for good or ill), the age of the dictators in question and the youth of the populations of the countries in question; rising global food prices--these and many other factors are all part of the story. But yes, Al-Jazeera has been playing a very key role, and not necessarily a salubrious one.
Al-Jazeera should not be excoriated: It's a superb, highly professional news gathering organization without which we'd have almost no in-depth television news coverage of the Middle East. The problem is not that they exist, it's that they're the only ones who exist. No one else is offering an equally compelling, in-depth counter-narrative. American broadcasters have simply given up on covering the region in a serious way.
I've written about this with alarm before:
The disappearance of international news is a long-term trend in the U.S., dating back at least to the late 1960s and particularly marked since the end of the Cold War. A number of studies suggest a roughly 80 percent drop in foreign coverage in print and television media since then. But the trend seems to be accelerating, a fact that should alarm citizens of any country that aspires to global influence—or to survival, for that matter.
Received wisdom holds that covering international news costs too much in a recession. But it shouldn’t. The cost of living is generally lower overseas. What do you need to cover the news besides a journalist, a pen, a notebook, and a computer with an Internet connection? The explanation that professional foreign correspondents have been displaced by amateurs is likewise incomplete. Bloggers, it’s true, now report some domestic stories better than the mainstream media do. But in Turkey, most bloggers insist perversely on writing in Turkish, and consequently almost none of what they write enters American consciousness. So American news consumers haven’t substituted their consumption of professional reporting from Turkey with a better, cheaper product. The results of a recent Pew survey suggest what’s really putting foreign correspondents out of business: isolationism among Americans, the survey found, has reached its highest level in 40 years. Foreign coverage doesn’t sell because there’s no demand.
I don't have any good solutions to this problem. I believe in a free press and free markets, and if there's no market for foreign news coverage, I certainly don't think the government should step in to finance it--although I do note that if it doesn't, and if the government of Qatar does, it will be the Qatari government who decides how the world will perceive this region, not ours.
The media mediates, and right now everything Americans know about the rest of the world is being mediated through sources that simply don't have the best interests of Americans at heart, nor do they cherish the values Americans most hold dear. I watch Al-Jazeera because no other broadcaster comes close to providing this kind of coverage, but I'd be delighted to have a real alternative.
By the way, anyone understand Arabic? It would be very interesting to know exactly how Al-Jazeera's Arabic coverage differs from its English coverage.
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Jul '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
The problem is not that they exist, it's that they're the only ones who exist.
Claire, perhaps you forget U.S. taxpayer-funded Arabic broadcast channel Alhurra, where Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) recently explained to the Arab world that Republicans won the 2010 election because of racism.
Jul '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Claire Berlinski, Ed.:
...
The media mediates, and right now everything Americans know about the rest of the world is being mediated through sources that simply don't have the best interests of Americans at heart, nor do they cherish the values Americans most hold dear. ...
There is not much of our media I would trust with that mission today, any more than I would trust Oliver Stone or Michael Moore with it. I read articles from the 30s, 40s, and 50s, and from those same brands today, and I am reminded that it is the fire fuel, bird dropping catcher, store coupon, and obituary service that draws the revenue for the dailies and weeklies.
CNN under Saddam was revealed to be a hostage news organization, and a quick review showed that Western news organizations in the 3rd world are toothless but expensive. If networks bought the kind of security required to nullify that effect, there would not be much budget left for anything else.
A handful of bloggers incognito could do a better job at a fraction of the price while eluding the local intelligence boys, if not those wily Brothers Muslim.
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
AJ-E's Western veneer is fascinating The plummy-voiced grey-haired gravitas-soaked Brit anchor tosses the story to a toothsome blonde whose exposed legs and relatively low-cut blouse contradict the Western conceptions of the culture behind the network. It's all very reassuring - and then they cut to a promo for a show castigating Barack Obama as a disappointment for the region, and how everyone had such high hopes, and you catch a whiff of the aromas you suspect saturate the non-English products.
May '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
All weekend long we streamed video from Egypt on... Al Jazeera. I've never consumed their product before but it was about the only broadcast (is that term still operative in the internet age?) carrying fresh coverage. All the other news sites like the NY, LA Times, etc. seemed to present pretty stale news; their stuff seemed pretty old hat compared to the unfolding events. I couldn't get a live stream from Al Arabiya but that's because I'm always shy to download new media players and such. CNN's coverage seemed a very distant second compared to Al Jazeera's.
May '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Not that there's anything wrong with toothsome blondes; it's that BBC-English that's so annoying!
Jan '11
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
I am an Arabic student and I've been switching off between Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English. There is not much difference in coverage; only the Arabic channel seems to get news faster (though not that much faster... maybe about 10-15 more), and everyone, including the anchors, seems to get more emotional. The protesters calling in in Arabic are really letting out their feelings. Islam is intertwined with the Arabic language, so there were more references to Islam, but it wasn't Islamist per say. There was palpable anger towards American support of Mubarak, though, that didn't always come through in the English version.
Sep '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Actually, to my Canadian ears, Al Jazeera sounded like a calmer, more reasoned version of our own state broadcaster the CBC. Think I'm being funny? The new head of Al Jazeera Canada used to be the CBC news chief. I should point out that my inner, bitter clinger is in mild conflict. When our own nanny CRTC (the equivalent of your FCC but with even less humour and more metamucil) was deciding on new channels to approve Al Jazeera made the first cut, but FOX news was deemed a little too racy.
Jan '11
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Aren't there two levels here? The first level is what the American public knows about the region. The second level is what the government knows. Whereas the lack of a foreign press is inconvenient, the lack of foreign intelligence is disaster.
Gee, if only we had some government agency ... specifically designed to gather and analyze intelligence ... perhaps in one central place ... we'd have confidence that our government has the information it needs to enact a coherent strategy.
__________
I'm fascinated when Claire says, "No one else is offering an equally compelling, in-depth counter-narrative." You win a war by capturing hearts and minds. A story will capture minds and hearts, but will only hold them if the story is true.
Is Al-Jazeera's narrative true, or just conveniently unchallenged?
Even if we had a huge foreign press presence, would our press offer a counter-narrative? I seriously doubt it.
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Hey, keep us posted about what they're saying in Arabic, if you have the time, would you? That's incredibly important--and someone who sets up a blog right now and just translates anything interesting that comes his way would be doing a huge service to our understanding of what's going on.
Oct '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Presumably they'd offer whatever narrative they came up with sitting around the bar of the press hotel in Cairo watching Al Jazeera - until it was cut off. 'Scoop' was a documentary, wasn't it?
Sep '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
genferei
Presumably they'd offer whatever narrative they came up with sitting around the bar of the press hotel in Cairo watching Al Jazeera - until it was cut off. 'Scoop' was a documentary, wasn't it? · Jan 31 at 3:01am
Another Evelyn Waugh fan?
May '10
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Pseudodionysius
genferei
Presumably they'd offer whatever narrative they came up with sitting around the bar of the press hotel in Cairo watching Al Jazeera - until it was cut off. 'Scoop' was a documentary, wasn't it? · Jan 31 at 3:01am
Another Evelyn Waugh fan? · Jan 31 at 12:43pm
Is that a reference to Waugh's "When the Going Was Good?"
Jan '11
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
Claire Berlinski, Ed.
Hey, keep us posted about what they're saying in Arabic, if you have the time, would you? That's incredibly important--and someone who sets up a blog right now and just translates anything interesting that comes his way would be doing a huge service to our understanding of what's going on. · Jan 31 at 1:20am
I will try-- I am busy with school, and most of my energy is focused on the Tweets coming out of Egypt. You can read what audio recordings people are capturing and then translating here:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/lv?hl=en&key=tVDU006Wt97P_GkYYBmPOKQ&toomany=true#gid=0
People are continuing to translate live and add to it as the day goes on. A blog is too clunky right now-- a lot of my translations are up on Facebook or Twitter.
Jan '11
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
OK, smallish update... The million man march is happening in Cairo. AJ Arabic and many of the tweets coming in from Egypt have started to call this an intifada, and on AJ there was also an interview from a girl who supported Mubarak, and a small group of protesters below the AJ bureau saying they supported Mubarak-- they were called "protesters for rent" by those walking by. Also, there is growing anger at the Obama administration's neutral stance; people keep saying that today is the end for Mubarak and they will not forget that Obama was silent; Obama was weak.
EDIT: Also, al-Arabiya is now the channel carrying more news out of Eygpt. AJ reporters have said that they're equipment has been taken from them by Egyptian security officials.
Edited on Feb 1, 2011 at 12:25amJan '11
Re: Al-Jazeera's Role
I recently finished my career as an Arabic linguist with the Army, and like xSerenityx, I watched a lot of Al-Jazeera in my language school days. I was surprised to learn that AJ is not quite the terrorist-sympathizing Al-Qaeda propaganda arm I -- as many Americans -- suspected it is. Then upon following the rollout of AJ-English, I was amazed to see that AJ-Arabic is less anti-Western and even less anti-Israel in some ways than AJ-E with their BBC-standard worldview. With AJ-A, there are obvious editorial biases (at the time, Israel was still in Gaza, and I don't think an IDF soldier could sneeze without the story making the news), but there's also a remarkable willingness to give airtime to voices that challenge their audience's deepest convictions. They also generally cover Israel in neutral language ("Israel" instead of "Zionist Entity", "West Bank and Gaza" rather than "Occupied Territories"), which alone sets them apart from most Arabic media. They have their problems, but I found myself spending less time criticizing their coverage than I did wishing that the American news networks could match their journalistic drive and idealism.