The vicissitudes of Al Jazeera

The Doha-based Al Jazeera media group recently announced that it will be closing its US network (Al Jazeera America) in April this year. Barbara Nimri Aziz reflects on the changing complexion and role of the media group since its emergence in 1996.

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NO one need be surprised by news of the demise of Al Jazeera America (AJAM). In 2013, people unfamiliar with the history and politics of the Doha-based Al Jazeera media group welcomed the American edition as a valued addition to international(ised) news sources. Early enthusiasm was likely based on an outdated reputation of the original Al Jazeera satellite network, launched in 1996 and funded by Qatar's rulers. That Arabic language service dazzled the world when it arrived, its reputation for hard-hitting news stories reinforced by Jehane Noujaim's 2004 film Control Room.

The original (mother) Al Jazeera offered news coverage and commentaries by non-Europeans, talents generally unheard and unimagined from Arabs, concerning their world affairs.

Why AJAM was set up is a mystery. The American public could benefit from wider perspectives but AJAM did not offer that; it exhibited no enlightened Arab or Muslim viewpoints in its productions and editorials. Neither were Arab and Arab American staff in evidence in its productions.

If American viewers don't tap international sources like Euronews, France 24, Press TV (the Iranian English language channel) or Russia's RT, to name the major English sources beyond CBC (Canada) and the UK's BBC, why subscribe to AJAM? Long before, in 2006, Al Jazeera English (also Doha-based) was launched and it has established itself as an innovative and distinctive network. Originally accessible in the US online and by satellite, it boasts a strong international team who produce hard-hitting programmes like Witness and Empire, with a network of correspondents across the globe. It attracts left-leaning audiences for its critical approach to American policies and its support for the Palestinian struggle, with coverage from Occupied Palestine unseen on American networks. Its website also carries insightful opinion pieces, many by well-informed American Arab writers whose perspectives you are unlikely to find elsewhere.

(With the founding of AJAM, Al Jazeera English became unavailable in the US online.)

The original Al Jazeera (Arabic) news channel has changed dramatically since its spectacular arrival in 1996. Then it was marked by a high professional standard of journalism and an aggressive approach to international affairs previously unknown in the Arab lands. Its exclusively Arab staff equalled - no, excelled - those of British and French Arabic language channels. (Al Jazeera Arabic initially drew its technical and editorial staff largely from the BBC.) It attracted Lebanese, Palestinian, Algerian and Egyptian expatriate journalists whose homelands either were in turmoil or offered limited opportunities and facilities.

Al Jazeera tapped the most dynamic, creative and courageous Arab journalists in the world; its work generated new pride among the Arab public, encouraged by quality public dialogue happening among their own ranks. The Arabs' economic resources were finally being put to good use. By 2003 the network boasted 70 correspondents and 23 bureaus around the world, from Cairo to Jakarta, Islamabad to Kabul, London to Moscow.

Initially Al Jazeera Media Network, although funded and managed by Qatar's ruling family, seemed to be independent of government control; it appeared to be beyond US interference too. Indeed Washington suggested the network was a mouthpiece for terrorists when, for example, after 2001, it regularly aired videos produced by Al-Qaida. American military attacks were launched on Al Jazeera twice. Al Jazeera's Baghdad office was bombed and its correspondent Tarek Ayoub was killed in American strikes during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Before that, in the early days of the US assault on Afghanistan, a Sudanese Al Jazeera cameraman was held by US authorities at the Guantanamo prison.

Although Qatari and other Gulf area leaders escape criticism by Al Jazeera, other regional dictators do not; at times, in Algeria and Jordan for example, its correspondents were banned. By 2003 satellite TV was ubiquitous and every Arab home has had access to Al Jazeera news, which also sent reports direct from Jerusalem (with a sympathetic eye to Palestinian aspirations). Its broadcasts brought Israeli officials and commentators into Arab homes for the first time.

As the company grew in popularity - a reputation that's declined since the Arab Spring - it greatly expanded its services. Al Jazeera Media Network is now a vast communications empire with several sports channels, a children's channel and a documentary channel, all commercial-free. Before it opened AJAM, Al Jazeera established a Balkan unit and a Turkish unit.

Al Jazeera's appeal for its early presentations of regional political issues waned among Arabs as the US occupation of Iraq turned ugly, and after 2011 when, with the rise of the so-called Arab Spring, Qatar's policy towards Libya and Syria moved in sync with Washington's. Indeed, the Doha news channel explicitly advocates regime change in Syria and Libya.

Meanwhile Al Jazeera enjoys considerable soft power through its sports and documentary channels. Screened documentaries, many produced by US filmmakers critical of American policies, are popular with the Arab public. But the sports channels likely draw most viewers. As a depressing political status quo settles across the Arab world, the public's desire for escapist entertainment is stronger than ever, and Al Jazeera is there to help.                                             

Barbara Nimri Aziz is a New York-based writer, anthropologist and journalist. CounterPunch.org regularly carries her articles. See RadioTahrir.org - from which the above article is reproduced - for more of her work. Her latest book is Swimming Up the Tigris: Real Life Encounters with Iraq (University Press of Florida).

*Third World Resurgence No. 305/306, January/February 2016, pp 59-60