How Tiny Qatar Jars Arab Media

DOHA, Qatar —  Arab kings in their gilded palaces tune in every night. Goatherding Bedouins living in ramshackle huts in Israel’s Negev desert don’t miss a broadcast. On many nights, the regulars at Anaheim’s Al Basha Cafe, a popular hangout for Arab expatriates, wouldn’t dream of changing the channel on the big-screen television.

They’re all glued to Al Jazeera, a 24-hour satellite channel beamed out of the Qatari desert that offers what no other news outlet can: uncensored information and commentary from an Arab perspective.

Watched by tens of millions across the globe, Al Jazeera’s coverage of the Palestinians’ revolt against Israeli occupation is now helping to unite the Arab world.

For Arab viewers, Al Jazeera is to the intifada against Israel what CNN was to the Persian Gulf War. The channel’s blanket coverage has put pressure on Arab governments to play a more active role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In fact, Israeli and Arab critics charge that the channel helps stoke the violence.

The station’s news and talk shows tackle topics considered haraam, or forbidden, in the Arab world, including polygamy, women’s rights and the role of ancient Islamic law in Arab society. Some programs go further, providing platforms for political dissidents who question the legitimacy of autocratic Arab regimes.

“We’re seeing a sea change in the Arab media thanks to Al Jazeera,” said Jon B. Alterman, a Middle East expert at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. “Al Jazeera is . . . forcing other broadcasters to compete. It is breaking down walls of censorship and expanding the realm of what people in Arab countries can talk about.”

The station is part of an attempt by Qatar’s reformist leader to transform his devoutly Muslim nation into a modern society where women have the right to vote and citizens enjoy the benefits of a free press.

“We’re playing a strange kind of music,” said Mohammed Jasem al Ali, managing director of Al Jazeera, which means “the Peninsula” in Arabic.

Governments Complain to Foreign Ministry

Many Arab governments find Al Jazeera’s tune jarring. Hardly a day goes by without one of the other Arab states complaining to the Qatari Foreign Ministry that a program resulted in slander, loss of national prestige or simply hurt feelings.

Jordan, Kuwait and Yasser Arafat’s Palestinian Authority have on occasion shut down Al Jazeera news bureaus in protest. (Palestinian security forces briefly shuttered the channel’s West Bank office after the station broadcast old footage from Lebanon’s civil war of a demonstrator holding shoes over a picture of Arafat.)

Neighboring Bahrain and Saudi Arabia won’t permit Al Jazeera reporters on their soil. Morocco, Libya and several other Arab countries have recalled their ambassadors to Qatar to protest shows or news reports critical of their regimes.

Algeria even cut off power to several major cities after authorities learned that Al Jazeera was planning to broadcast a show about the government’s repressive actions during the country’s bloody civil war.

Yet Al Jazeera is spawning imitators across the Middle East. Satellite stations in nearby Dubai and Abu Dhabi and in Lebanon now try to cover news in the same freewheeling style. Even the Voice of America, on a mission to expand its presence in the Arab world, recently pleaded with Al Jazeera to broadcast its programs. After officials at the Qatari channel politely declined, the VOA said it would open a radio station in Qatar.

Azmi Bishara, an Arab member of the Israeli parliament, says Al Jazeera has restored some credibility to the Arab media.

“Pan-Arabism never dreamed of conditions like this, in which the whole Arab world has broadcasts that are received simultaneously in every country in literary Arabic,” Bishara told an Israeli newspaper recently.

The estimated 30 million Arabs who tune in to Al Jazeera have one man to thank: Sheik Hamad ibn Khalifa al Thani, the 51-year-old emir of Qatar, an oil-rich nation slightly larger than Los Angeles County. Hamad overthrew his father in a bloodless coup nearly six years ago, when the elder Thani was vacationing in Switzerland.

Decrees Indicate Desire to Create Modern State

Since then, Hamad has issued decree upon decree indicating that he wants to transform his Persian Gulf nation of about 150,000 citizens and 600,000 guest workers--mainly from India, Pakistan and some Arab countries--into a modern democracy.

In 1999, Hamad decreed that women could vote and even run for seats on a council that advises him. Elected government is a radical idea in Arab countries of the Persian Gulf, where strict Islamic laws demand, among other things, that women who venture outside the home be covered from head to toe. Allowing women to run for office or even vote is considered extreme.

One of Hamad’s first decrees was to abolish Qatar’s Information Ministry, which was responsible for censorship. In 1996, Hamad approved $150 million--to be spent over five years--to launch Al Jazeera.

Analysts say Al Jazeera, which aired its first broadcast in November 1996, began to satisfy a yearning in the Arab world for unexpurgated news. Until then, Arabs often remarked that they tuned in to radio and television stations in Europe to find out what was happening in their own countries. In the rest of the Arab world, state-run television news programs are stuffed with reverential footage of the king, emir or president welcoming or sending off foreign dignitaries--sometimes even low-level diplomats.

During the 1990s, millions of Arabs took advantage of the plunging prices of satellite dishes to keep abreast of news and entertainment. By some estimates, more than 80% of all Saudi homes, for example, have access to satellite television.

The proliferation of satellite dishes has led to an explosion of channels in the region. Al Jazeera and about 30 other satellite stations now broadcast in Arabic to the region. Even Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed fundamentalist group based in Lebanon, has its own satellite broadcasts.

The trend is a nightmare for Arab governments accustomed to determining what kinds of information their masses receive. Thanks to technology, censors cannot get their hands on Al Jazeera and other stations that freely beam news and information across borders.

Al Jazeera has been credited with playing a major role in mobilizing support for the Palestinians and sustaining their 7-month-old intifada.

Arabs from the Persian Gulf to North Africa to the United States now watch footage of Palestinians clashing with Israeli forces. Middle East experts say Al Jazeera has united Arabs behind a single issue for the first time since the early 1970s, when Um Kalthoum, the legendary Egyptian diva, rallied the entire Arab world with her stirring monthly radio concerts.

Walid al Omary, the station’s correspondent in the West Bank, said his two cell phones ring around the clock with news tips, many of them from Palestinians in far-flung villages.

“It’s not easy, because every village wants their clashes or their bombings to be on Al Jazeera,” Omary said. “Some of them say if it’s not on Al Jazeera, it might as well not have happened.”

Most Palestinians Turn to Station, Expert Says

About 78% of Palestinians now turn to Al Jazeera for their information, according to Nabil Khatib, director of the Media Institute at Birzeit University in the West Bank.

Several Arab governments, including Egypt and Jordan, have stated that Al Jazeera’s coverage of the intifada threatens the stability of their regimes and has unfairly exposed them to criticism that they have failed to adequately support the Palestinians.

Egypt and Jordan have been more critical of Al Jazeera than has Israel, which worries that the station’s coverage helps incite Palestinians to riot yet continues to allow its correspondents to operate freely within its borders.

In the Al Jazeera newsroom, chief editor Salah Negm dismissed criticism that the channel adds to the violence. And Arab leaders, he said, have to get used to the fact that Al Jazeera is not going to carry water for their regimes.

Negm said the same people who accuse Al Jazeera of inciting violence also attacked the station as pro-Zionist when it interviewed then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and other Jewish leaders.

“Everyone here understands that news value rules,” Negm said. “We’ll be out of business in no time if we feel the need to be sensitive to this king or that government.”

Al Jazeera has scored scoop after scoop in the Arab world. When the U.S. bombed sites near Baghdad in February, Al Jazeera was the first to carry live pictures. CNN followed 15 minutes later with Al Jazeera’s footage.

In January, the channel broadcast pictures of the fugitive most wanted by the United States, Osama bin Laden, at the wedding of his son in Afghanistan. Several months earlier, Al Jazeera scored an exclusive interview with the Saudi militant.

If Al Jazeera’s news broadcasts offend some Arab governments, then “Opposite Directions,” a live two-hour weekly current affairs show hosted by Faisal al Kasim, makes them boil with anger.

Kasim, a BBC veteran with a doctorate in English literature, invites two guests with opposing views to wrestle with a variety of political, cultural and economic issues. The guests take calls from viewers across the Arab world. (Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi called in once to talk about Arab nationalism. He appeared as a guest on another segment even though he had recalled his ambassador to Qatar to protest a program featuring Libyan dissidents.)

Videotapes of Kasim’s show, especially those questioning Islamic orthodoxy, fetch up to $100 on the black market.

Kasim, the 38-year-old son of a Syrian peasant farmer, said he delights in promoting diverse views and stirring up fierce debate.

“These shows are quite ordinary for Western viewers, but it is revolutionary for Arabs,” Kasim said. “For 50 years, the media in the Arab world have been feeding people nothing but lies. Now it is getting impossible to hide the truth from the people.”

For now, Al Jazeera plans to dish out even more information. The channel is considering 24-hour financial news and documentary channels.

Al Jazeera, according to station officials, is beginning to break even, earning revenue from cable subscriptions, sales of programs and advertisements.

Most of the 300,000 daily page views on Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language Web site originate from North America, he said. Al Jazeera’s list of nearly 200,000 subscribers in the United States and Canada is growing by 2,500 weekly, according to Jasem al Ali, the station’s managing director.

Mo Rayad, manager of Al Basha Cafe in Anaheim, said that many patrons--among the 300,000 to 400,000 Arabs and Arab Americans in the Southland--subscribe to Al Jazeera at home but come to the cafe to sip tea or Turkish coffee, watch the news and discuss the day’s events with their friends.

Ghassan Dib, a Palestinian American who lives in Montgomery, Ala., said the 25 Arab families there depend on Al Jazeera for news about the intifada. Dib, a used-car salesman, pays $24.95 a month for Al Jazeera and six other Arabic channels on Echostar Communications’ Dish Network.

“I don’t know what we would do without it,” Dib said.

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Maharaj was recently on assignment in Jerusalem and Qatar.