Gulf Media Monitor -- Al Jazeera TV Qatar

keralamonitor.com June 11, 2002. Journalist sentenced to six months in prison Joel Campagna:* Last March, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gushed that Qatar's wildly popular 24-hour news satellite channel Al-Jazeera [www.al-jazeera.net] is "not only the biggest media phenomenon to hit the Arab world since the advent of television, it also is the biggest political phenomenon." Commentators continued to heap praise on the Arabic-language news channel, which has managed to enrage Arab authoritarian regimes with its hard-hitting programming. But ever since U.S. secretary of state Colin Powell urged Qatar's emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani in early October to rein in what the U.S. administration sees as Al-Jazeera's anti-American bias and inflammatory coverage of the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the press has adopted a more critical eye. As the United States wages a "war on terror," Al-Jazeera remains the sole foreign broadcaster in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan (and Osama bin Laden's preferred news outlet for transmitting messages). The channel's provocative coverage, which reaches an estimated 35 million viewers, has set off alarm bells in Washington. Journalists and commentators are now asking whether the station is a balanced news source or a biased outlet for inciting the Arab world against the United States; whether it is an independent news gatherer or a tool in the hands of Bin Laden and his propaganda machine. To Al-Jazeera's defenders, the station is a reliable, professional, and informative news channel that reflects the perspective of its audience but also tries to present all sides of the story. In a region where the U.S. media are viewed as fundamentally partisan and biased in their own right, the Bush administration's efforts to stifle the channel appear as a hypocritical attempt to smother unwelcome news coverage. A popular channel There is little question that Al-Jazeera has revolutionized Arabic-language television news in a region that for decades has been accustomed to the stale, heavily censored offerings of state-controlled television. Founded in 1996 with a start-up grant of US$140 million from the Qatari government, Al-Jazeera has quickly become the most watched—and most controversial—news channel in the region, winning over viewers with its bold, uncensored news coverage, its unbridled political debates, and its call-in-show formats that tackle a range of sensitive social, political, and cultural issues. Governments from Algeria to Yemen have lodged complaints against the station at one time or another. Some, like Tunisia and Libya, have temporarily withdrawn their ambassadors from Qatar's capital, Doha, to protest the appearance of political dissidents on talk shows or slights made against their leaders. A few years ago, Algeria reportedly cut power in part of Algiers to prevent residents from watching a show about the country's brutal civil war. Kuwait temporarily banned the channel's reporters from the country after a caller phoned in and criticized the Emir Sheikh Jaber al-Ahmed al-Sabah live on the air. Recently, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority temporarily closed Al-Jazeera's Ramallah bureau because of a promotional trailer for a documentary series about the Lebanese civil war that contained an unflattering image of the Palestinian leader. Pressure from the U.S. On October 3, at a press conference in Washington, D.C., Qatari ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani acknowledged that U.S. officials had asked him to use his influence to rein in Al-Jazeera's news coverage. [Read CPJ's alert] "We heard from the U.S. administration, and also from the previous administration," the emir, referring to both the Bush and Clinton administrations, was quoted as saying. "Naturally we take these things as a kind of advice." Earlier, the U.S. Embassy in Qatar had filed a formal diplomatic complaint with Qatari authorities regarding Al-Jazeera's coverage. Bush administration officials made it clear afterward that they were upset by what they viewed as Al-Jazeera's unbalanced and anti-American coverage. Officials said they feared that Al-Jazeera's replays of its exclusive 1998 interview with Osama bin Laden were stirring up fundamentalist feelings in the region. U.S. officials were also bothered by airtime given to analysts who expressed anti-American views or attacked U.S. policies in the Middle East. Specifically, the U.S. government was angered when Al-Jazeera broadcast an unconfirmed report that Taliban forces had captured U.S. Special Forces troops inside Afghanistan. Later, U.S. government officials expressed concern that taped messages from Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al-Qaeda, originally aired on Al-Jazeera and rebroadcast by U.S. networks could contain secret codes instructing operatives in the United States to carry out further attacks. After Secretary Powell's meeting with Emir Hamad, a State Department official told CNN that Powell and the emir "had a frank exchange" on the issue and "there should have been no mistake of where we are coming from." Said U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher during a daily briefing a few days later: "We would certainly like to see them tone down the rhetoric." A biased, anti-American channel? During the administration's offensive against Al-Jazeera, U.S. media have put the channel under the microscope. Although the Qatari government subsidizes Al-Jazeera, the station has been generally well regarded for its editorial independence. Nevertheless, it has been taken to task for usually avoiding tough scrutiny of Qatari affairs and any strong criticism of the ruling al-Thani family. Arab critics have accused the channel's free-for-all debate shows of being sensational and at times unprofessional. Deeper questions have been asked about Al-Jazeera's alleged anti-American editorial bias, the supposed pro-Taliban leanings of its Kabul correspondent Tayseer Allouni, and its apparent failure to air footage that shows the Taliban in a negative light. Critics have accused the channel of acting as a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden by broadcasting his taped messages. Western media have even questioned whether Allouni had held on to Bin Laden's first videotaped message after the September 11 attacks until after U.S. bombing of Afghanistan began—something Al-Jazeera and Allouni have denied. A New York Times editorial recently criticized Al-Jazeera for reporting that Jews had been informed in advance of September 11 not to go to work at the World Trade Center. (An official at the station told CPJ that a talk show host cited the charge, which had previously appeared in a Jordanian newspaper, and asked his guests what they thought about the report.) More recently, the channel has been criticized for using the term "martyr" in newscasts to describe Palestinian suicide bombers who have killed Israeli civilians. But Al-Jazeera contends that they use the term for all Palestinians who die fighting a "cause," not just suicide bombers. With tensions already high in the Middle East and anti-American sentiment growing, some say such programming only worsens the atmosphere. "This isn't playing with fire, this is using a flamethrower in terms of the potential impact on the governments in the Islamic world," James Morris of the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter in Britain was quoted as saying recently in the Christian Science Monitor. "This is Osama bin Laden's loudspeaker." The criticism has angered Al-Jazeera staff, who have roundly rejected most of the accusations and maintain that their reporting is objective and includes all points of view. "Osama Bin Laden, like it or not, is a party to this present crisis," news editor Ahmed Sheikh told the BBC. "If we said that we were not going to allow him the air time, then we would have lost our integrity and objectivity and our coverage of the story would have become unbalanced." While analysts who have appeared on its talk shows or news programs have harshly criticized U.S. policy, Al-Jazeera maintains that other opinions have been presented and that the views of U.S. officials, as well as State Department briefings, have been duly aired since September 11. According to the channel, some Arab viewers even accuse it of promoting U.S. propaganda when it airs U.S. officials or statements. Nevertheless, some at Al-Jazeera are self-critical. "I think since September 11...or even before—that some people would put [on the air] what could be called inflammatory rhetoric or people with outrageous views," a source at Al-Jazeera told CPJ. "After the crisis and the complaints I think [the coverage] has toned down....The message was heard and Al-Jazeera adjusted." But the same source argued that any bias at Al-Jazeera did not stem from ill intent but simply reflected the reporters' backgrounds and points of view. A new war, an old double standard Journalists and others in the Arab world see the United States, which touts itself as a symbol of freedom and democracy, as hypocritical for pressuring Al-Jazeera to modify its coverage. "The work of Al-Jazeera has been professional and balanced," says Daoud Kuttab, director of the Institute of Modern Media at Al-Quds University in the West Bank and an observer of Arab regional media. "As to the Americans, they are completely wrong and apply a double standard. I can see why they are angry but it is not because Al-Jazeera is not fair. On the contrary, I think they wish for Al-Jazeera to be biased to the U.S." Moreover, many viewers from the region view Western media coverage as extremely partisan, especially where the Middle East is concerned. "The lies, falsehood, and enmity with respect to Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. media, particularly CNN, play an extremely bad role in kindling feelings of revenge," a columnist at Jordan's semi-official daily Al-Dustur argued recently. "What about the U.S. right-wing press that's been [bashing] Arabs?" asks former CNN correspondent Peter Arnett, who himself was a target of U.S. criticism for his coverage from Baghdad during the Gulf War. "Do they rein them in? Do they rein in Fox TV? Are we going to order our own media to rein in its coverage? It's getting out of hand." Aside from the press freedom implications, U.S. calls for Qatar to censor Al-Jazeera may have backfired by sparking criticism from the Arab world at a time when the United States needs the support of people in the region. "I think this elevates Al-Jazeera into an even more powerful organization than it is," says Arnett. "Simply it's a news source that's threatening the U.S....They don't have any guns. They haven't been traced to Bin Laden." Getting the point across Critics of the administration's policy have advised the United States to respond to Al-Jazeera in the same way it would respond to critics at home—by getting out its own message instead of trying to censor the channel. In fact, Al-Jazeera has complained that U.S. officials have been unavailable to present their side of the story to viewers. Hafez al-Mirazi, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief, points out that while he secured an interview with Colin Powell shortly after the September 11 attacks, U.S. officials did not show a keen interest afterward in making further appearances. But the administration appears to have grasped the channel's importance as a medium to reach millions in the Arab world. The State Department has now assigned at least one official per day to speak with the channel, according to al-Mirazi. He has already interviewed Assistant Secretary of State for the Near East William Burns, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. President Bush is said to be considering an appearance of his own. In addition, U.S. government is considering taking out paid advertisements on the channel. By putting administration officials on the air, the United States hopes to exploit Al-Jazeera's reach in the Arab world and make its case to the public in a region where anti-American sentiment runs strong. As Al-Jazeera continues to cover the war in Afghanistan—and its effects on civilians—such a policy may become more essential. Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera staff stand behind their coverage. An anchor at Al-Jazeera argued that his channel is not biased. "Every press conference of every U.S. leader or the Pentagon or the State Department is aired directly live on the channel," he said. "We try to have lots of viewpoints." June 10, 2002. keralamonitor.com The Toll: Journalists Killed 1992-2001 NEW YORK: Each year in January, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) publishes a list of journalists killed in the line of duty around the world. This list has become the most widely cited press freedom statistic and is often seen as a barometer of the state of global press freedom. While the correlation between the number of journalists killed and the state of press freedom in a particular country is far from exact—no journalists have been killed in Cuba, for example, and only one has been killed in China during the last decade—the annual list does give some sense of the range of risks that journalists face in reporting the news. To provide a more complete statistical picture, CPJ is releasing a list of journalists killed during the last decade. The list has been broken down by year, country, and a variety of other categories. Methodology As with all of its casework, CPJ applies strict journalistic standards when investigating a journalist's murder. We only consider a case "confirmed" if our research confirms or strongly suggests that a journalist was likely killed in direct reprisal for his or her work or in cross fire while carrying out a dangerous assignment. We do not include journalists who are killed in accidents—such as car or plane crashes—unless the crash was caused by bellicose human action (for example, if a plane were shot down or a car crashed trying to avoid gunfire). If the motives are unclear, but it is possible that a journalist was killed because of his or her work, CPJ classifies the case as "unconfirmed" and continues to investigate to determine the motive for the murder. For this 10-year statistical analysis, we used only confirmed cases. While we believe that this list is both comprehensive and accurate, we generally have more detailed information about more recent cases. Our staff has grown over the years, and new information technologies such as the Internet and e-mail have made it much easier to report on the killing of journalists, even in remote places. Murdered with impunity During the last decade, 389 journalists have been killed while carrying out their work. While conflict and war provide the backdrop to much of the violence against the press, CPJ research demonstrates that the vast majority of journalists killed since 1992 did not die in cross fire. Instead, they were hunted down and murdered, often in direct reprisal for their reporting. In fact, according to CPJ statistics, only 62 journalists (16 percent) died in cross fire, while 298 (77 percent) were murdered in reprisal for their reporting. The remaining journalists were killed in conflict situations that cannot be described as combat—while covering violent street demonstrations, for example. Since 1992, CPJ has recorded only 20 cases in which the person or persons who ordered a journalist's murder have been arrested and prosecuted. That means that in 94 percent of the cases, those who murder journalists do so with impunity. What are the motives behind the killings? In many cases, journalists are murdered either to prevent them from reporting on corruption or human rights abuses, or to punish them after they have done so. The brazenness of the killers is suggested by the fact that 53 of the 298 journalists who were murdered during the last decade were threatened before they were killed. In 25 cases since 1992, journalists were kidnapped—taken alive by militants, criminals, guerrillas, or government forces—and subsequently killed. The kidnapping and murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl highlighted this terrible phenomenon. (Pearl was killed in early 2002 and is therefore not included in the 10-year list, which covers the decade from 1992 to 2001). In several cases, notably in Algeria and Turkey, journalists have simply "disappeared" after being taken into government custody. Who are they? Photographing combat is probably the most dangerous assignment in journalism, and during the last decade 50 cameramen and photographers have been killed. The majority of them died in cross fire in places such as Somalia, Georgia, Bosnia, and Russia. But others were deliberately murdered because of images they had captured. In January 1997, the charred and handcuffed body of Argentine photographer José Luis Cabezas was found in a rental car in a resort city near Buenos Aires. He had been killed because he had managed to photograph a reclusive business tycoon reputed to be the head of the Argentine mafia. Forty-nine radio reporters were also killed during the last decade. The surprisingly high number highlights the importance of radio worldwide, particularly in poor, isolated regions and in places where literacy is low. Local radio reporters are exposed to heightened risk precisely because they are largely invisible to the outside world while being extremely visible in the communities where they report. This may explain why 11 of the 49 radio reporters killed since 1992 worked in Colombia, many of them in rural areas. Violence is endemic in the Colombian countryside, where political and personal disagreements are routinely settled through force, and Colombian authorities have virtually no ability to enforce the law. At the other end of the spectrum are American journalists, either in the United States or overseas. U.S. reporters working abroad tend to be extremely visible, to be employed by powerful news outlets, and to work in danger zones for relatively short periods of times. While murders of U.S. journalists understandably generate intensive media coverage in the United States, they are relatively rare.In fact, only 14 of the 389 journalists killed during the last decade were American—.36 percent of the total. Most dangerous years / most dangerous countries The single deadliest year in the last decade was 1994, when 66 journalists were killed, primarily in Algeria, Rwanda, and Bosnia. Fifty-seven journalists were killed in 1993; 51 in 1995; 43 in 1992; and 37 died last year, including eight journalists who were killed in Afghanistan. (A ninth died in 2001 from wounds he suffered covering the Afghan conflict in 1999.) The most deadly country for journalists during the last decade was Algeria, where 60 local journalists have been killed (several more media workers have also been killed). Fifty-eight of them were murdered between 1993 and 1996, when Algeria was at the height bitter civil conflict that began after the government canceled elections in 1992 to prevent the Islamic Salvation Front from winning power. In response, religious extremists launched a brutal insurgency campaign that included targeted attacks on journalists, intellectuals, and other civilians. Militants are responsible for the bulk of the journalists' killings, but government security forces are believed to be responsible for a number of disappearances. Algerian authorities have failed to conduct a serious investigation into the deaths and have refused to allow independent international inquiries. In Russia, where 34 journalists have been killed during the last decade, 14, or almost half, were targeted in retaliation for their work, in many cases by the mafia. Successive wars in the breakaway republic of Chechnya have also been dangerous for journalists. While 11 were caught in cross fire or killed by mines, at least four journalists were killed for their reporting on the conflict, usually for investigating human rights abuses by the Russian military. Lawlessness and war are also major threats to press freedom in Colombia, where 29 journalists have been killed since 1992. Leftist guerrillas, right-wing paramilitaries, drug traffickers, and corrupt government officials have all been implicated in attacks. Twenty-nine journalists have also been murdered covering the separatist wars in the Balkans, 19 of them in Bosnia when snipers sometimes targeted journalists riding in vehicles clearly marked as "press." Turkey, where 18 journalists have been killed during the last decade, rounds out the top five most lethal countries for the press. Almost all of the 18 journalists killed there in the last decade were targeted for their reporting on the controversial Kurdish question. What does it mean? Local journalists covering crime, corruption, and human rights violations are extremely vulnerable, particularly in countries where conflict is widespread and impunity is the norm. Those are the facts suggested by CPJ's statistics over the last decade. Covering combat is risky, but a much greater threat than a stray bullet are the murderers who kill journalists deliberately, using the generalized violence associated with war to cover their tracks. Increasing safety for local journalists working in dangerous places means giving them greater visibility, and that means publicizing attacks against them. Doing so is one way to fight impunity for those who murder journalists, which is the single greatest threat to the physical survival of the press around the world. Journalist sentenced to six months in prison New York, The Committee to Protect Journalists condemned the prison sentence imposed on Egyptian journalist Ahmed Haridy, editor of the online daily newspaper Al Methaq Al Araby.On April 28, Haridy was sentenced to six months in prison after the Boulak Abu al-Aila Misdemeanor Court in the capital, Cairo, found him guilty of defaming Ibrahim Nafie, editor-in-chief and chairman of Egypt's largest newspaper, the semi-official Al-Ahram. The charges stem from a series of articles published in Al Methaq Al Araby last May and June alleging that Nafie and several other senior managers of Al-Ahram were involved in financial malfeasance. According to Haridy, Nafie filed suit against him in July 2001. "The Egyptian press will not be free until journalists no longer face the prospect of being jailed for their reporting," said CPJ executive director Ann Cooper. "While journalists should be responsible for what they write, they should never be subject to criminal penalties for their journalistic work." Haridy told CPJ that he posted a bail fee of 1,000 Egyptian pounds (US$215). He has appealed the court's decision. The appeal hearing is slated for July.

Joel Campagna is coordinator of the Middle East and North Africa program for Committee for Protecting Journalists.