Is Al-Jazeera International losing its Arab identity?

AN IMPORTANT ARTICLE
By Khalid Amayreh, The Electronic Intifada, 29 October 2006

"As al-Jazeera Arab satellite television channel is celebrating its tenth anniversary, with achievements unprecedented in the history of Arab media, al-Jazeera International (AJI) which encompasses al-Jazeera.net/English plus the yet-to-be launched al-Jazeera English TV, is slowly but definitely losing its original Arab identity.

Indeed, a fleeting look at AJI's English website these days would be sufficient to make one realize how far and deep the Qatari-based media outlet has departed from its original defining character.

In fact, one would exaggerate very little by saying that the AJI has lost not only its Arab face, but also its Arab heart and soul, and is fast assuming an "international" (western) identity, very much similar to the BBC, CNN or Sky.

A few months ago, especially prior to the publication of my article (pro-Israeli editors seek to influence Aljazeera English Satellite TV), AJI relied disproportionately on AP reports, especially from Palestine.AP, especially since the 9/11 events, has been thoroughly influenced by the worldview of George W. Bush and his conservative administration. Its choice of words, tendentious reportorial patterns and the highly de-contextualized texts of its reports, especially with regard to the Arab world, Palestine and Islam, amply testify to a growing politicized and ideological mode of reporting.

With regard to the Palestinian-Israeli strife in particular, AP is proving itself a quasi-Israeli news agency. Indeed, AP offices in West Jerusalem are staffed with hard-line American Jewish Zionists or even hard-line Talmudic settlers living in the West Bank. This may explains why a pro-Israeli slant is always present, even conspicuous, in AP reports from Israel and the occupied territories.

There is another even scandalous aspect of AJI's Reuters reports from Palestine, namely the use or overuse of quotations and statements by Israeli army spokespersons as if these professional liars were the ultimate paragons of truth and credibility.

Furthermore, there is another worrying trend that is increasingly dominate in Reuters reports from Palestine/Israel and that is the impression of symmetry between Israel and the Palestinians one would get from reading Reuters reports.

So far, I haven't been able to find convincing reasons for this scandalous departure by AJI editors from al-Jazeera's truly professional ethics that prevailed until the beginning of 2006 when AJI administratively belonged to the Arabic department.

Now, it seems, everything has changed and is changing after AJI became virtually independent, with English, American and Australian editors, who include some-openly pro-Israeli individuals, giving ultimate authority and control over what may or may not appear on AJI English Website. Even erstwhile Arab English-speaking reporters for AJI, such as this reporter, have been either fired or neutralized and replaced by Israeli Jewish reporters.

In conclusion, I want to say the following to the executives and directors of al-Jazeera. During the past ten years, you have succeeded in enriching the Arab cultural and political life as never before. I myself on several occasions described al-Jazeera as "probably the greatest Arab achievement in sixty years." You succeeded because you insisted on being more or less independent, because you refused to succumb to western pressure, including the bombing and contemplated bombing of your offices and studios, and because you often consistently sought to be the voice for the voiceless and the beating-heart of the ordinary man in the street. Now, however, AJI is being hijacked by people whose sympathies lie elsewhere, people who in the name of professional ethics are killing AJI even before it has seen the light."