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Al Jazeera: Al Jazeera English
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The Al Jazeera English rolling news output is broken up with specialist programming, such as the documentary strand Witness, presented by Omaar, the entertainment programme The Fabulous Picture Show, and the travel-based 48. Flora Gregory, who joined AJE from Channel 4 and is the producer of Witness, scours the world for films that will appeal to the Al Jazeera audience. Her highlights have been Being Osama, a documentary about six Canadians who happen to share a first name with Bin Laden, and Another Road Home, the search by an Israeli-born woman, Danae Elon, for the male Palestinian house servant who looked after her as a child. "We are not lowering the quality boundaries," says Gregory. "We are reflecting a side of life that doesn't get a look in at other channels." Omaar, who comes up to say hello, has made several films himself, most notably a report from the radical Red Mosque in Islamabad shortly before it came under siege from Pakistani troops in the summer.
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Al Jazeera English's reporters are a professional team as well: seasoned journalists from 45 nations, head-hunted from the likes of ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, and NBC. Even before viewing their headquarter studios in Doha, Qatar, last month, I have been meeting with them since long before they went on air, and I am always impressed by their professionalism, their interest in covering forgotten conflicts, and the budget they have at their disposal to do so.
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Al Jazeera International has retained Brown Lloyd James (BLJ), a PR firm with offices in New York, Washington and London, as its agency of record. Set to launch in 2006, Al Jazeera International will be the 24-hour English-language news channel run by the Qatar-base company. According to PR Week, BLJ will promote the channel to industry trade publications and may eventually target news "consumers." BLJ received $37,500 for work in 2003 to help build political support in Washington for Iyad Allawi in his bid to become prime minister of Iraq. BLJ clients include the BBC, Disney and the Ford Foundation among others.[7]
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In March of 2003, Al Jazeera launched a website featuring its content in English (http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage). While efforts by Internet hackers made the site inaccessible on its official debut, the website has since operated without hesitation. And while it receives a sizeable amount of “hits�? from outside of the Middle East, some critics have found that the content of the English webpage is significantly different from that of the organization’s main website, which is in Arabic (Zayani, 2005). Finally, in March of 2006, Al Jazeera will launch an all-English news channel to be broadcasted worldwide, called Al Jazeera International. The new channel will have broadcast centers in Doha, London, Kuala Lumpur, and Washington D.C. Needless to say, Al Jazeera has become a global media organization to be reckoned with.
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Following the invasion of Iraq, Al Jazeera used the same language it applies to the Israeli-Palestinian struggle: resistance fighters versus occupiers. Today, it has changed the rhetoric, referring instead to military or militia groups and government forces. Al Jazeera's director general, Wadah Khanfar, says only that his network is responding to changing facts. Thus, when the United States handed over the reins of government to the Iraqis in 2004, the UN stopped calling America an occupier--and so did Al Jazeera. The English news channel refers to militants, while the Arabic channel still uses the term "martyrs." Words and their translations are important.
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Andrew Stroehlein, the director of media and information at the International Crisis Group, reflects on why the English language version of Al Jazeera's television news operation "remains unavailable to most Americans." The quality of reporting from what is perhaps the best-funded television news network, he argues, is not the problem. "The hurdle for some [cable companies] is a lingering fear of a public relations backlash -- that some customers might get agitated by their cable company offering a channel whose sister station in Arabic has a reputation for being anti-American," he writes. However, he points out that key administration officials and former White House press secretary, Tony Snow, have given interviews to the station. "If it is worthwhile enough for them to spend their time giving interviews to Al Jazeera English, no one could seriously argue that the American public should not watch it," he writes.
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