Big Not-So-Gay Al

Fifteen years ago, Al Jazeera (in Arabic, “the island” referencing the Arabian Peninsula) was founded as a satellite Arabic-language and regional news network. It rapidly expanded onto the Web, added an English-language version, and soon was the most uniform source of news and information to its growing Middle Eastern audience. Based on the Arabian Peninsula, in Doha, Qatar, the network has relied heavily on “loans” from Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa to supplement its advertising and subscriber base. Al Jazeera’s strength, and as far as its rather large audience is concerned, its credibility, comes in significant part from its independence from what is mostly local-government-controlled/censored media in most Muslim countries in the Middle East.

Al Jazeera’s reach across the Middle East is almost total, and its English-language counterpart had a reach of over 100 million households as of 2007 (Wikipedia). It has influenced policies in the region like no other political force, save Islam itself. Governments have stooped to cutting electric power (as did Algeria in 1999 to avoid a program that linked the military to a series of massacres) and are generally unhappy at a network that seems to have given dissidents a new voice. Needless to say, the United States and Israel are favorite targets of the network, and many claim that the rise in anti-American movements can be linked directly to the litany of heavily-slanted, anti-American stories, and the rather graphic and constant negative visualization of America’s military activities in the Muslim world.

Palestinian politics is clearly swayed by Al Jazeera’s coverage: “In Palestine, the station’s influence is particularly strong. Recent polling indicates that in the West Bank and Gaza, Al Jazeera is the primary news source for an astounding 53.4 percent of Palestinian viewers. The second and third most watched channels, Palestine TV and Al Arabiya, poll a distant 12.8 percent and 10 percent, respectively. The result of Al Jazeera’s market dominance is that it has itself become a mover and shaker in Palestinian politics, helping to craft public perceptions and influence the debate. This has obvious implications for the peace process: how Al Jazeera covers the deliberations and the outcome of any negotiated agreement with Israel will fundamentally shape how it is viewed—and, more importantly, whether it is accepted—by the Palestinian public.” Wikipedia. The Palestinian Authority is generally presented as a pawn of Israel and the West, and popular, grass-roots Arab support for this structure is at best minimal.

The revolt in Tunisia, the recent political success of Hezbollah in Lebanon, the explosive violence in Egypt and the rising tide of violent demonstrations in Yemen all seem to have linkage to Al Jazeera’s thematic message: “In many ways, it is Al Jazeera’s moment — not only because of the role it has played, but also because the channel has helped to shape a narrative of popular rage against oppressive American-backed Arab governments (and against Israel) ever since its founding 15 year s ago. That narrative has long been implicit in the channel’s heavy emphasis on Arab suffering and political crisis, its screaming-match talk shows, even its sensational news banners and swelling orchestral accompaniments.” New York Times, January 27^th.

The network definitely takes sides, and regional un-democratic leaders generally are unhappy about negative coverage fomenting a growing tide of regional anger at incumbent regimes. But maybe Al Jazeera’s place in the Middle East was inevitable, because even when the network attempts to pull its punches to present a more balanced story, that negative story is still disseminated through mass media… in an entirely new way: “On [the afternoon of January 25^th], as the street protests in Egypt were heating up, Al Jazeera was uncharacteristically slow to report them, airing a culture documentary, a sports show and more of its ‘Palestine Papers’ coverage of the leaked documents… Many Egyptians felt betrayed, and Facebook and Twitter were full of rumors about a deal between Qatar — the Persian Gulf emirate whose emir, Sheik Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, founded Al Jazeera in 1996 — and President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who visited the emir in Doha last month. Within a day, Al Jazeera was reporting from the streets in Cairo in its usual manic style.” NY Times. And Egypt pulled the plug on local Internet and cell phone service almost immediately.

After watching an inevitable power shift, the White House, through Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, commented on the Egyptian situation on January 28^th: “Robert Gibbs conspicuously declined to answer directly when asked if the President stands by Mubarak, saying only: ‘We're monitoring a very fluid situation.’…Gibbs also repeatedly called on security personnel in Egypt to ‘refrain from violence,’ and insisted that the ‘legitimate grievances that have festered for quite some time in Egypt have to be addressed by the Egyptian government immediately.’ He repeated several times that the grievances are ‘legitimate.’… ‘Violence is not the response,’ Gibbs added. He also seemed to put Egypt on notice with a threat regarding aid: ‘We will be reviewing our assistance posture based on events that take place in the coming days.’” Washington Post, January 28^th. Think Mubarak’s dismissing his existing government and staying in power is gonna fly with the people? How do you think Al Jazeera will spin this? We’ve been backing Mubarak for decades.

Whether we like it or not, modern technology, most of which was born in Western laboratories and initially deployed in the West, is now the powerful tool of those who wish to topple human-rights-violating incumbents (many of whom are U.S. allies), spread the word of misery and discontent and spread the word in favor of a sweeping pan-Muslim fundamentalist movement that is both profoundly anti-Western and increasingly violent. To think that rational calmness will eventually take the power away from this growing wave of Middle Eastern discontent is simply to ignore reality. Strange how the United States has rather completely failed to grasp how to use the very communications technologies it invented to reverse the negative trend (at least vis-à-vis the U.S.) created by those technologies.

I’m Peter Dekom, and failing to understand and flow with the litany of change is to drown in it.