by Marina Keegan:
American flags, “Unite for Change” posters, and zealous political enthusiasts flooded the floor of the democratic National Convention (DNC) with energy. Yet amid this paradigm of patriotism was an unlikely image. Beside the media skyboxes of CNN, CSPAN, and FOX News, an illuminated sign announced the presence of Al Jazeera, just as audaciously as the banners of its American counterparts.
The Qatar-based Arabic news network, though regularly condemned by many in the United States for anti-Americanism and anti- Semitism, has become one of the most influential news stations in the world. Americans first came to know Al Jazeera after September 11, when the network controversially aired terrorist-produced videos. Its perceived connection to or sympathy for terrorists has since haunted the network’s reputation in the United States, but today Al Jazeera is more likely to broadcast images of Barack Obama than Osama Bin Laden. This year Al Jazeera devoted considerably more airtime to the American election than to stories of radical Islamic organizations, and its coverage of American politics resembled that of American news outlets in content.
Al Jazeera’s presence at the DNC indicates a growing recognition of the network in the United States. Yet its reception beyond the convention floor revealed the lingering stereotypes many Americans hold of the Arab world and its top news organization. As Al Jazeera gains prominence and respect around the world, despite any new high-level acknowledgement in American politics, it still fights for acceptance in households across the United States.
A Controversial Debut
When it was created in 1996, Al Jazeera became the first TV channel in the Middle East not owned and operated by a national government. Though founded and supported by Sheikh Hamid bin Khalifa Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, the network is a private, for-profit company that has introduced unprecedented freedom of speech into a region where government-crafted ideologies previously dominated the media.
Before 2001, the U.S. government praised Al Jazeera as a source of independent news in the Middle East. This changed when the network broadcast videos of Osama bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith justifying the September 11 attacks. Al Jazeera was accused of disseminating terrorist propaganda, even though several U.S. networks eventually also aired the tapes. Secretary of State Colin Powell was so distressed by its programming that he mentioned it to Khalifa in an October 2001 meeting. One month later, during the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Al Jazeera’s Kabul office was destroyed by a U.S. missile. The U.S. denied the network’s accusations that it was an intentional strike.
In the 2004 presidential election cycle, Al Jazeera had no visible presence at either party’s convention. While the station sent correspondents to the 2004 democratic convention in Boston, it was asked to remove its $30,000 sign from the stage backdrop before broadcasting began. A 20-foot-long banner advertising JohnKerry.com was put in its place. The official dNC statement said the decision was made for aesthetic reasons.
“Things were slightly different back then,” said Steve Grossman, who was the national chairman of the democratic National Committee from 1997 to 1999. “It was much closer to 9/11. There was a fear that [Al Jazeera’s] presence in a significant way would open the democrats up to attacks by Republicans—and we were highly risk-averse.” But the democratic Party’s treatment of Al Jazeera has changed in four years. At the 2008 convention, no one asked that the network conceal its attendance, and no media outlet ran a story characterizing its presence as controversial.
Golden Skeptics
Hostility toward Al Jazeera has faded since 2001, but it has not disappeared. The citizens of one small Colorado town showed that the sentiment still holds.
As part of its 2008 convention coverage, Al Jazeera planned to use the town of Golden—about 15 miles outside denver—to show the station’s audience life in a typical American town. Golden Mayor Jacob Smith welcomed the opportunity. “Clearly there are Arabs intent on doing us harm, and we are intolerant of this violence and violent intent,” he said. “But as President Bush has said many times, these views aren’t universal, and some reasonable coverage of American citizens engaged in the democratic process might help change attitudes in Arab countries about the U.S. and about Americans.”
Smith had agreed to allow Al Jazeera to broadcast from his backyard during a convention-watching party. But he withdrew the invitation only days before the event after an uproar of complaints from town residents. At a City Council meeting, citizens argued the broadcast would be disrespectful to veterans and troops. Some of Golden’s 18,000 residents staged protests, waving American flags and holding signs reading: “Arabic or English: Al Jazeera is Terrorism” and “Antidemocracy, Anti-Christian, Anti-American!”
The station planning to report from Golden was not even Al Jazeera’s primary network. Rather, it was Al Jazeera English, which was created in 2006 to reach audiences beyond the Arabic-speaking world. With over 100 million viewers worldwide, Al Jazeera English now rivals BBC World as the world’s most watched news program, yet almost none of these viewers live in the United States, where it is practically impossible to access the channel. No major cable providers carry the network, and the only places in North America where it is broadcast are Burlington, Vermont, and Toledo, Ohio. Opposition to the network exists beyond Golden: a 2006 poll by media watchdog Accuracy in Media (AIM) found that 53 percent of Americans were opposed to having the Al Jazeera available via cable in the United States, and 38 percent were “adamantly against the channel.” Without widespread access to the channel, this skepticism seems likely to persist.
The Silent Treatment
While average citizens remain wary of the network, Grossman sees the rejection of Al Jazeera’s banner at the 2004 democratic convention as “an example of putting politics over the freedom of press,” an approach that is fundamentally “not what this party’s about.” On the change in the treatment of Al Jazeera from 2004 to 2008, Grossman said, “There has been a realization that in a global economy where news is instantaneous and disseminated all over the world, to treat a legitimate news organization differently is ridiculous, especially when there’s a huge global demand for news about this election.” That realization, however, is far from universal.
Though Al Jazeera was permitted to cover this year’s democratic convention, staking its banner alongside those of major American news networks, no presidential candidate gave the station a single interview. during a campaign in which an Arabic middle name sparked rumors and smears, and in which a candidate’s childhood years in Indonesia led attackers to charge that he had attended a madrassa, none of the candidates would appear on an Arabic-language news station, especially not one with Al Jazeera’s associations.
Ahmed Sheikh, editor-in-chief of Al Jazeera’s Arabic service, expressed resignation toward this situation in a public statement issued on May 12, saying, “We would be interested in interviews, yes, but I believe they would not agree, especially John McCain.” Gross- man attributed the candidates’ refusal to appear on Al Jazeera to Americans’ lingering fear that the station is connected to terrorism. “Republicans are doing their best to make Obama look like something un-American,” he said. “They’ve been trying to connect him with terrorists.”
Yet Sheikh’s statement emphasized the objectivity of the network’s coverage of U.S. events, insisting: “We do not support al-Qaeda’s policies. Al Jazeera tries to cover all sides in the U.S. conflict with them. It attempts to balance stories by giving both points of view.”
Beyond the Skybox
So far, American campaigns have made few attempts to include Middle Eastern countries and people in political conversation. Allowing a public presence at the dNC may be a step in the right direction, but it is not enough. If candidates were willing to acknowledge Al Jazeera’s legitimacy by granting it interviews, the network—and its millions of viewers in the Middle East—might find more acceptance within the United States. as well. Pundits, scholars, and policymakers opine that a different strategy is needed to combat terrorism—one that involves addressing the psychology of the mutual misperceptions between the United States and the Arab world. This strategy could include more than a skybox every four years.
Al Jazeera’s American critics ignore or dispute the network’s importance as an international media outlet that produces balanced stories from on-the-ground reporting, but others have recognized it as exactly that. Giving Al Jazeera real media access and extending its reach across America could help the countries and citizens of both the United States and the Middle East move beyond the mistrust expressed on the streets of Golden.
Marina Keegan ’12 is an English major in Saybrook College.