Starts today: Al-Jazeera TV from London

In praise of ... al-Jazeera

Leader

Wednesday November 15, 2006
The Guardian

Al-Jazeera has come a long way in the decade since it launched. With the Middle East's media heavily censored, the Qatar-based television channel answered a crying need for a less restricted Arab voice and soon built a big audience.

Interest became global after 9/11, as Arabic speakers across the world looked to it for a source of news on Afghanistan and Iraq which emphasised reports about civilian life over those from journalists embedded in western armies. Its presence has sometimes been provocative. But its influence has kept growing, and will develop further with the launch - at noon today - of its 24-hour English news channel, al-Jazeera English, whose signings include David Frost, Rageh Omaar and Darren Jordan.

The channel already has an established English-language website. But as it looks west, al-Jazeera may need to reappraise some issues, like the line between those it calls terrorists and those it dubs martyrs. The channel is unlikely to be cowed into abandoning its Arab perspective, however, used as it is to attracting controversy, with Middle Eastern regimes and Washington alike.

It took hits from US bombs in Kabul and Baghdad and contested reports allege George Bush was once ready to bomb the HQ. Just as British reports have their biases, as a new study on the Iraq war underlines, so al-Jazeera has its own. But by reporting inconvenient facts and airing diverse views, it has helped the Arab region. By offering a new slant, it will do good for the wider world too.

The four broadcast centres, in London, Washington, Doha and Kuala Lumpur, will hand over to one another and "follow the sun" around the world.

David ain't going to be very popular with a few folks over her in 'merica. "Drop another skud down that traitorous limey's chimney" sort of thing.

David ain't going to be very popular with a few folks over her in 'merica. "Drop another skud down that traitorous limey's chimney" sort of thing.

blatham wrote:

David ain't going to be very popular with a few folks over her in 'merica. "Drop another skud down that traitorous limey's chimney" sort of thing.

If you think David Frost gives a toss about what others think Blatham, !!!

You don't know David Frost.

If you get chance to watch him, do so, he's a maestro at it!

Some of the best memories I recall of Frost would be from the late 60's.

There was a TV programme he hosted, with amongst others, Millicent Martin, Bernard Levin, Marty Feldman, and I am pretty sure John Cleese was amongst them.

TWTWTW

'That Was The Week That Was. Absolutely brilliant!


Does anybody recall it?

Some of the best memories I recall of Frost would be from the late 60's.

There was a TV programme he hosted, with amongst others, Millicent Martin, Bernard Levin, Marty Feldman, and I am pretty sure John Cleese was amongst them.

TWTWTW

'That Was The Week That Was. Absolutely brilliant!

Does anybody recall it?

A load of crap.

Throwing stones at the Headmaster's windows.

Weather in Arabia, crisis in Gaza, and no sign of Sir David's Through the Cavehole

Mark Lawson
Thursday November 16, 2006
The Guardian

It's the weather that hits you first. The blonde meteorologist is a fairly standard post-Ulrika Jonsson model, but her survey begins with "cloud in the Arabian peninsula" and then works through Asia and Europe before a quick pay-off mentioning "a lot of rain in America".
This approach was, however, emblematic of al-Jazeera English's general attempt to change the climate of television journalism.

The emphasis is quite deliberate: to show American and European viewers how it has felt to be an Arab or Asian viewer of the BBC or CNN in recent decades. And so the London viewer tuning in to the sports news heard not about Marcus Trescothick's depression or Steve McLaren's temper but, first up: "The Iraq football team's search for somewhere to play."


Article continues

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The network makes no changes to the grammar of 24-hour news - the headlines are generally read by man and woman double acts sitting at desks - but editorial priorities are overhauled.
The use of four broadcast centres - Doha, Kuala Lumpur, Washington and London - gives the viewer a sense of editorial tension about where the coverage will go next. The choice of which capital will anchor each hour seems to indicate priorities: the geopolitical equivalent of boys being picked for a school football team.

In the first hours of the network's life, it was London and Washington that were left standing against the wall, signalling desperately to the captains to pick them. The first hour came from the Qatar base, the second from Malaysia and then - after a half-hour documentary about Liberia - it was back to the Kuala Lumpur pair again for the third hour. A report from Zimbabwe was clearly scheduled to underline the BBC's exclusion from that country.

Only at 3pm British time did Stephen Cole pop up in London with a single headline, which concerned the security measures of the UK passport service rather than the Queen's Speech. The lead headline in all the debut bulletins was a "humanitarian crisis in Gaza", with reports from a hospital in the Palestinian territory.

Views rather than news - this report could have run at any point in the last few years, and especially as it was soon followed by a "first-person testimony" from a Palestinian ambulance driver - will confirm British and American fears that al-Jazeera intends to be a polemical network.

Other parts of the coverage seemed to anticipate the most likely criticism of the service: an Arab bias. Throughout the early programmes, the first headline on the so-called "news crawl" moving caption was "Israeli woman killed by Palestinian rocket". An interview with Israel's deputy prime minister, Shimon Peres, was also frequently trailed. And each report on the Palestinian humanitarian crisis was followed by a live report from Jackie Rowland in Jerusalem, framed against the city skyline, another CNN-cliche uncritically accepted by the newcomer.

This felt like a calculated attempt to deflect those who joked that the programmes should be transmitted on Channel 9/11 and that the schedule would feature such programmes as Through the Cavehole, with Sir David Frost asking us to guess which al-Qaida leader lived beneath which mountains.

But, however balanced it manages to seem on the issues of the Middle East, the first day's reporting felt unbalanced in its concentration on that region and the resulting almost contemptuous attitude to US and UK affairs. The problem with this approach is that an English-language broadcaster will surely limit its potential audience by continuing this editorial belittlement of the biggest English-speaking cultures.

On yesterday's evidence, the natural viewer for al-Jazeera English will be a creature rare in Britain and almost non-existent in America: someone desperate for submersion in other cultures to the exclusion of their own. Otherwise, the service will need to win viewers from the existing Arabic network who would rather hear English, which, again, seems a small constituency.

The bulletins also felt repetitive. At the top of four successive hours, the Palestinian report was followed by the Jerusalem two-way, which was billed as "live", although the reporter's contribution was so eerily identical as to raise the suspicion that a tape was being played. Only in mid-afternoon, when Rowley suddenly changed from a blue blouse to a white one, could viewers be sure that they were watching actuality.

Yet it's important to remember that CNN was the subject of roaring jokes in reporters' bars at the end of its first day and Sky News and BBC News 24 seemed in need of more rehearsals at their launches. Perhaps partly because of the almost year-long delay in launching - blamed on technical difficulties - al-Jazeera English reached the air slicker than any previous 24-hour news network. Other than an irritating gap between the questions from Doha and the answers elsewhere - some two-ways resembled early transatlantic phone calls - the equipment and personnel were well-drilled. The question, though, is whether enough Anglophone viewers resent the Anglophone bias of conventional news sufficiently to want this alternative.

A load of crap.

Throwing stones at the Headmaster's windows.