EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
- 'The Gilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See
- As Death Toll Rises Beyond 500, Garment Factory Disaster 'Worst in World History'
- Report: Toxic Chemicals Found in Thousands of Children's Products
- Wisconsin Bill Would Treat Organic Milk, Sharp Cheddar, Brown Eggs as "Junk Food"
- Pregnant Anti-War Soldier Sent to Prison
- Report: Toxic Chemicals Found in Thousands of Children's Products
- Move Over, Koch Brothers: A Bigger, Darker Rightwing Funder Is Out to Destroy Public Education
- 'The Gilded Age' Statistics Corporations Don't Want Workers, or Anyone, to See
- After Boston, Eyes-Wide Open Hope?
- Time for Big Green to Go Fossil Free
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Threat to al-Jazeera
Since its launch just over a decade ago, the al-Jazeera satellite TV station has transformed the politics of the Middle East. For the first time, people in the region had access to a genuinely free and independent source of news and comment that was neither under the control of dictatorial regimes nor western states or corporations. Under its slogan of "The opinion ... and the other opinion", al-Jazeera gave an Arab world hungry for information and debate the means to talk to itself and shape its future. It spawned imitators across the region and has launched an English language station that is beginning to challenge the western monopoly of international news as a "voice of the global south". And the station also put Qatar, which sponsors it, on the political map and gave it unprecedented prestige throughout the Arab world and beyond.
But now that achievement is being put at risk. The evidence is clear that the US government is using its influence in Qatar to try to neuter the station's independence, bring it to heel and shift its coverage in a pro-western direction. If it succeeds, it would be a disaster for the Arab world and its chance to shape an independent and democratic future.
When al-Jazeera was launched in 1996, it was hailed by the US as a brave step towards liberalisation of the Middle Eastern media. But that all changed after September 2001 and the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The US administration could not tolerate a TV station that was popular and trusted in the Arab and Muslim world broadcasting about the reality of western and Israeli policies on the ground - and giving airtime to their enemies. Although US and Israeli viewpoints have always been given plenty of airtime, the freedom enjoyed by al-Jazeera's editorial staff has clearly been too liberal and democratic for the world's "leading democracy". Meanwhile, dictatorial regimes in the region pressed Washington to do something about this "turbulent priest" they believed was stirring their peoples against their despotic rule.
Initially, al-Jazeera had forced other channels in the Arab world to open up their coverage. But the new freedoms were not tolerated for long. And although the US government launched its own Arabic news channel al-Hurra, and Saudi Arabia al-Arabiya, neither succeeded in denting al-Jazeera's popularity.
But the station has had to pay a high price for its independence and professionalism. Its offices in Kabul and Baghdad were bombed by the US; its Baghdad correspondent Tariq Ayyub was killed; its Kabul correspondent Taysir Alluni was arrested in Spain and charged with terrorism; and its cameraman Sami Alhajj was kidnapped in Kabul and continues to be held in Guantánamo Bay. Most notoriously of all, George Bush even suggested to Tony Blair that they bomb al-Jazeera's Doha headquarters.
Now the US, which maintains a large military base in Qatar, has adopted a more subtle approach to breaking the Arabs' voice of independence and diversity. And the signs are that some elements in the Qatari government have yielded to the relentless US pressure. As one source close to al-Jazeera has put it: "You don't need to bomb a TV station to change its direction." A recent reshuffle has brought outspokenly pro-US directors on to the board, including a former Qatari ambassador to Washington. Another has boasted publicly that the tone and content of al-Jazeera's coverage is going to be changed. But these moves have already backfired and caused huge controversy not only in Qatar but throughout the Middle East, and there is every chance that what is in effect an attempted coup at the station will be reversed. It would be a huge loss for independence and freedom in the Arab world if it succeeded.
George Galloway is Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow www.georgegalloway.com
© 2007 The Guardian/UK
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
9 Comments so far
Show AllI love watching the TV station because I learn about things NOT reported in the western media. However, many of my Arab friends claim it is supported by the CIA. If both sides dislike it, they have to be doing something right.
you see what "freedom of the press" really means to the US when you see their response to a genuinely contrarian press, or when one of their flunkeys gets taken down, as RCTV in venezuela. the truth is dangerous. al jazeera proves they are willing to torture and kill over it.
Anything said by Mr. George Galloway needs to be taken seriously. This news about Al-Jazeera is extremely worrying, particularly when the world is faced with a compromised and lying media. Among them, Al-Jazeera shines like a beacon, particularly because it pays so much attention to the developing world and to the truth. Obviously, the US will not like this because it wishes to hide all its evil deeds.
I believe Al-Jazeera is the most respected news outlet in the world, and must have a loyal following, not only in the Middle East, but in all other parts of the world.
It would be a terrible shame if Qatar had to bow to US requests, and change this wonderful station. I hope good sense will prevail in Qatar. The US has meddled enough in the Middle East. Damn Bush and all his evil cronies.
I think it all goes back to a principle enunciated by former speaker Sam Rayburn. Lyndon Johnson had just come to the House and also being from Texas, Sam took him under his wing. One day early on, he put his arm around Lyndon and told him, "Lyndon, the way to get along here is to go along."
jon
Connecting the dots: from human behaviors to ecosystem decline
http://StudentsForTheEarth.org
As a supporter of al Jazeera, I do not think it is either anti Western or pro Western. It just a TV station with an agenda to telling people about what is going on. I have been watching it on the net for months. I agree it places a lot of emphasis on developing world issues and is willing to incorporate the Muslim/Arab point of view but it is also willing to listen to the US/Western point of view as well. That, in my view is part of the essence of fair journalism.
Try watching al Jazeera -
www.aljazeera.net/english
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1EBB4C7F-7F2E-4257-A04C-56678862E31A.htm
My article on al Jazeera -
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/headlines/why_is_america_so_afraid_of_al_jazeera
Our entire mainstream media is deeply biased in favor of the U.S. point of view and is clearly not 'fair' in any sense. Being 'fair' is actually quiote archaic in this deeply polarised world. I think Al-Jazeera should take a firm anti-American stand if it thinks it should and not cater or succumb to pressure.
The neocon agenda must be understood for what it is, a feral beast which will not be destroyed by sunlight alone. With rare exceptions, the neocons have had their way across the board. None of their "mistakes" have been "mistakes" at all. The deliberateness of their evil is perfectly consistent and now quite predictable, including their currently unfolding plans to attack Iran. Even when caught in the most heinous of criminal acts they continue their poisonous assault on civilization. Their list of crimes far exceeds any retribution they have suffered. It is important to bear this in mind because they are truly the enemy of all that is good and decent. The world needs to extirpate them completely, and to know one's enemy is essential in defeating him.
Lies are the very essence of the neocon philosophy. Dishonesty is infused into every policy they initiate for the obvious reason that their unvarnished contempt for humanity needs to be camouflaged in order to oil the machinery of their operations.
Unless and until there is a price to pay, the neocon operatives responsible for the endless cavalcade of dirty tricks, of which the systematic poisoning of Al-Jazeera is but one example, will continue with ever increasing force. Can you name a single reason why Cheney, Bush, Chertoff, AIPAC, AEI, NY Times and other corporate media, Pentagon, CIA, Rupert Murdock, and all the other individuals and organizations under the control of the neocons should cease and desist from their current activities? Their success rate is perfect. The cost to them has been nil. The contempt of the mases means nothing to them, perhaps it amuses them. It is not enough to discover and comment upon their evil. Something more is required.
fd32: You are entirely correct. Now here is the big question. If you are an atheist, feel free not to respond. If you, like myself, entertain the belief that earth is a school room, and souls journey here to learn exceedingly tough lessons, then could a master plan be at work? Let me pause to provide by symbolism, where I am heading in conjecture. If something goes "wrong" in nature, SHE generally is able to work the thing broken into the larger eco-system. Optimists say "All things work for good," or that there is a purpose (something to be learned) behind every event. Suppose the neocons for all the things they are guilty of have been ALLOWED to go this far (without yet the proof of karmic rebound), in order to drive the world to the brink of disaster as a MOTIVATIONAL DEVICE on a grand scale, one that will rouse persons from their materialistic orientations and up-till-now comfort zones to LOOK upon life itself as a shared creation, a unified field, a web of interaction where we MUST place our shared emphasis on agreements, rather than disagreements. What if Cheney and Bush and Rice and their supporters are a projection of our OWN dark side? And to the degree each of us masters it in the ways and means taught by ALL enlightened masters: FORGIVE that person or persons who has trespassed against you. Do your part to deflate hate and all things calamitous. Could not this balloon made of the hot air of so much anger, depravity and pain among peoples slowly dissolve? Perhaps then we would see Cheney's pacemaker go off as might have been Divine intention were it not for science interfering with the technology that keeps his less-than-human heart ticking. Maybe Bush slips. Now for the less than metaphysical types, in your verbiage, you know, SHIT can happen. What we can't do in protests or what hasn't worked in letter campaigns or voting, perhaps must now become a SACRED work taken one by one as the quintessential INSIDE job. WHAT kind of people we elect to be... as more and more FOCUS on healing themselves, their relations, could this not have a magnified effect that defuses those that make policies founded on hate and destruction? LOVE is the answer. Let us do what we can to apply it, for it is, as per Universal law, the ONLY thing, the only entity that is equipped to disarm MARS, war god (who rules in US, Israel and UK these days).
Souixrose, appreciate your comments, but your rationalized passivity is the path which has lead to the deaths of hundred thousands in Iraq and millions of people around the world over the last few years... from Iraq to Darfur and global warming.
What is happening today is much less the demonstration of a greater Being's "plan" than a product of ad-hoc economic/political systems motivated by the insatiable sense of greed.
You rationalize what is "bad" (the NeoCon agendas) as something "good" and therefore perpetuate the endless calamaties that they have, and continue to inflict, upon humanity. Your thought process results in an Orwellian world. Stop that.
While the neoCon agenda may represent the "dark side" (as you put it) of our nature, it is a side of human nature that most of us do NOT choose to side with.
Greed and fear CAN be rationalized away. Start there!