Al Jazeera International Must Stay True to Arabic-Language Flagship

Today's launch of Al Jazeera International (AJI), the English-language news service of flagship Al Jazeera, highlights the importance of news sources more than ever, particularly as it arrives on the threshold of a growing global divide.

Western Media Rules

Since World War II, English-language media has dichotomized the world into the unfortunate and dismal "us" and "them" rendition, the industrialized power-brokers often setting the rules for how events in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia are covered.

Because of the industrial and technological prowess of the West, the aforementioned nations were forced to hear of the outside world — and most time their own backyards — through foreign media.

During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, for example, most in the Middle East tuned in to Radio Monte Carlo, the BBC World Service, or Voice of America for their news.

Arab television networks were bound by excruciatingly repressive government regulations that would have shamed the Iron Curtain. The concept of Big Brother, in all its infamous Orwellian manifestations, was very much alive in our part of the world, and, in some countries, is still rearing its contorted, dictatorial head.

Into this, of course, came Cable News Network — CNN, Ted Turner's total news package 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for all the homely-news junkies. Slowly taking the American market by storm, CNN exploded ("Baghdad is lit up like a Christmas tree") into a worldwide phenomenon as the first cruise missile tore through residential areas of the Iraqi capital.

What's the media without a nice war, eh? Heat the popcorn, please.

CNN became the opiate of the politically morose and the world tuned in — and never really tuned out since.

Remember the ad they ran? Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's "I saw it on the CNN" indicated that Turner's brainchild had become the bible of journalism, the holy revelation of reporting.

If you did not watch CNN, you were out of touch and behind the times.

One global network influencing policy-makers, giving the audience sanctioned news from "the most trusted source for news."

Into the fray, and with equally "inspiring" slogans, came BBC's World news network, followed by MSNBC, and in the past few years, the ever-irritating FOX news network.

Usually, for the non-North American viewer, the news emanating from all of the above was just so yawn … just so … packaged … again, irritating.

No wonder Arabs claimed Western media was fashioned in Tel Aviv. There is an argument to be made that the "big" networks usually overlooked the Arab perspective in favor of the Israeli point of view.

Israeli victims of Arab terrorism were named, their lives were told, and their friends were interviewed. Palestinian and Lebanese victims of Israeli terrorism were numbers; if lucky, their names were revealed.

The Exodus

And then came the exodus.

Arab viewers tuned out of the usual dish of Western-packaged coverage of Arab affairs and events and switched over to a young maverick satellite broadcaster — Al Jazeera.

We all know the history of how this Arabic-language network took off. We also know that Al Jazeera — like its rival CNN — made its name in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

So much so that our friend Donald Rumsfeld fantasized about bombing Al Jazeera buildings in both the above countries. And actually did, killing Al Jazeera's field reporter Tarek Ayoub in Iraq.

And then, the advocate of freedom ("freedom is messy," he once said) and a free press got his buddies in the Iraqi government to toss Al Jazeera out.

But Rummy aside, Al Jazeera's impact on Arab society and the media in the region has been profound. Within a few years of its 1996 debut, Al Jazeera spawned copycat enterprises, and 10 years later, the Arab viewer can switch between nearly 40 different news broadcasters. But few if any of those carry the clout Al Jazeera has maintained over the years.

To a certain degree, Al Jazeera was able to restore some level of objectivity to news coverage and succeeded in providing alternatives to what North American media offered a world audience.

A Check-and-Balance

It also acted as a check-and-balance for a lot of inaccuracies, misrepresentations, and falsehoods reported about the region. Who could forget when embedded reporters with the US army told US audiences that the port town of Om Qasr had fallen in Iraq?

An Al Jazeera crew in Om Qasr at the time was able to broadcast live from the town and showed that the US media report was false.

In one rather stoic incident during 2003, US networks were broadcasting live a press conference at the Pentagon with a military spokeswoman stressing the US military's emphasis on targeting military installations in Iraq.

Over at Al Jazeera, the Arab network split the screen in half: on the left side, Iraqis were desperately digging for rubble trying to unearth children who had been pulverized by a "precision-guided smart bomb"; on the right side of the screen, the US military spokeswoman rattled on about avoiding civilian casualties.

The moment could have been a comedic spoof on Saturday Night Live or some other senseless entertainment show had it not been so deadly, so tragic.

But more than any other moment, the splitting of the screen was itself an acknowledgement that there had now become two sides of the coin, two sides of the story, two versions of the news.

Arab audiences now had an alternative to choose and no longer just one version packaged outside the Middle East.

Al Jazeera also succeeded in showing the human cost of warfare: the civilian casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the US military to take accountability, to answer difficult questions.

During the US invasion of Afghanistan, military spokespersons would tell US media that a training camp of Al-Qaeda terrorists had been hit in northeastern Afghanistan.

An Al Jazeera news crew would reveal it was a wedding or some sort of tribal celebration.

So embarrassed by Al Jazeera's success was Washington that it launched its own version of Arabic news coverage — Al-Hurra, translated as "The Free."

Packaged outside the Middle East and overly emphatic in its dedication to showing the US version of the region, the channel flopped.

With Arabic-language networks funded by Washington sinking in the marsh of failed propaganda, and most Arab households turning to Al Jazeera or to a much lesser degree, Al Arabiya, it was time for Western audiences to get an Arab perspective.

And that is precisely what November 15, AJI's launch date, is all about: bringing the perspectives of the Middle East to the Western world.

A Revolution of Sorts

AJI's launch will mark a revolution of sorts, for it will be the first time that a major English-language news network is based in an Arab Muslim country and the first time it is funded by Arab Muslims.

The effects AJI will have on a global audience should not be overlooked nor downplayed.

If the AJI crew of managers led by Al Jazeera's director-general Wadah Khanfar play their cards right and are able to sufficiently convey Arab and developing nations' perspectives to a Western audience, nerves will be rattled in CNN and BBC headquarters.

And, if my sources in both those news networks are to be believed, they have been shaking in their boots for some time.

In addition to launching the channel today, AJI is revamping its website, which has been in operation since 2003 and boasts over 10 million visits a month, mostly from the US and Europe.

AJI will today be broadcasting from Doha, Qatar, the headquarters of Al Jazeera and the site of next month's Asian Games.

AJI also has bureaus and broadcast centers in Athens, London, Cairo, Nairobi, Kuala Lumpur, Buenos Aires, and Washington, DC.

I cannot imagine a more anticipated event in recent Middle Eastern history, particularly in regards to media and journalism.

Expectations are high, to be sure, and many Arab journalists, critics, and analysts are waiting to see just how much the English-language service will abide by the principles, guidelines, and objectives that made the Arabic network so popular and so necessary to Middle Eastern audiences.

From my perspective as a journalist and editor who has worked in both Middle Eastern and North American news markets, this is a historical tipping point that will forever change the way news is packaged, reported, and viewed.

And the reverberations in the West will be profound.

Will Western networks be sufficiently threatened by AJI to produce more accuracy and less stereotyping in their media in regards to all things Arab and Middle Eastern?

One can only hope.