While many media analysts are painstakingly discussing the PR war between Washington andBaghdad, few have absorbed the watershed that al-Jazeera has brought to the picture. If Arabs are explicitlyconsidered the main target group for each side's PR campaign, the American side--the belligerent side, thatis--is losing the revered "hearts and minds" war far more drastically than it has ever imagined. Nosmall portion of the credit goes to al-Jazeera's coverage.
It is an old and sour joke in the Arab World that Arabs tune in to BBC--radio--to learn what is happening ontheir own streets. Regrettably, this has always been true. Arab media--almost all state-run or semi-officialuntil very recently--are not only shamelessly yellow, they are devastatingly boring and pathetically inept aswell. Not any more. Now, virtually every Arab who cares to know or understand current events--and has accessto satellite TV--watches al-Jazeera, precisely because it is perceived--quite deservedly--as the mostaccurate, pluralistic and professional media outlet to turn to. For the past eleven days of war, it furtherconsolidated its impressive dominance as the main source of news for Arabs from the Gulf to the Atlantic.
When al-Jazeera was born a few years ago rumours proliferated about its origins, funders, and secretconnections to the Mossad or CIA, ...etc. Part of this malicious attack was undoubtedly fed by the disgruntledArab governments who grew used to their own categorical monopoly on the media. Those despotic regimes had anearly experience of shock and awe after al-Jazeera started giving voice to all the voiceless Arabs that theyhave managed to keep a lid on for decades: opposition politicians, women activists, human-rights advocates,leftists, Islamists, pan-Arabists, communists, ethnic minorities, independent journalists and analysts, andrepresentatives of just about every shade of the political spectrum. But, there are also other factors thatcontributed to the air of disbelief surrounding the highly controversial al-Jazeera coverage: other than thefact that it was established by one of the most loyal American-protected regimes in the Arab World: thegovernment of Qatar--not exactly an Arab Sweden in its not-so-luminous record of human rights and democracy--al-Jazeera also projected a degree of excellence, professionalism and objectivity hitherto unheard of in anyArab or even developing country. A measure of self-hate--to borrow a term from our Abrahamic cousins--played arole in discarding al-Jazeera at first as a "foreign agent," a provocateur or simply a transientphenomenon that was bound to dissipate soon like a summer cloud in the sky of Baghdad.
Incidentally, al-Jazeera had another precedent: it introduced millions of Arabs for the very first time toIsraeli politicians and commentators, a tactic that at first compounded the suspicions and even the openanimosity that almost overwhelmed the young satellite channel. But, as in most taboos, being perceived asradically defiant, original and mischievous only fanned the already simmering interest in watching al-Jazeera,secretly, at times. Its ratings soared, and soon enough most realized that watching their enemies ontelevision was not like going to bed with them, that being exposed to "the opinion and the otheropinion"--al-Jazeera's brilliant motto--was not the high treason their governments had led them tobelieve, that pluralism only expanded the choices before them, without forcing them to subscribe to anyparticular line.
All on its own, al-Jazeera has arguably been more effective than most Arab liberal and leftists parties puttogether in raising the Arab public's awareness about democracy, human rights, pluralism, activism,repression, international cultures, politics and even economics, and even the various dimensions of the allencompassing Israeli occupation--which had been largely dealt with in the official media in terms of clichésand highly rhetorical discourse with poor understanding. It was as open a university as it gets, with notuition fees, no homework and no patronizing lectures from above.
After putting its viewers to what seemed like a crash course in a truly Arab version of glasnost andperestroika, al-Jazeera created its own virtual reality, not in the news that it presented, which was asaccurate and objective as any, but in affording the average Arab citizen a space to be free, to hope, to feelproud of this oasis of distinction surviving in the midst of a stupendous desert of intellectual stagnation,repression and under-development, all maintained with a complex fusion of local tyranny and American carrotsand sticks.
In sad comparison, weeks before the U.S.-led war on Iraq had started, the mainstream American mediameticulously fell into its well-rehearsed place and acted precisely according to the script written by the"ruling party." Sounds more like third-world state-run media? Well, it is worse, in fact. At leastin the latter case no one claims it is free, objective or close to professional. In the former, the arrogance,self-righteousness and monopoly on "truth" can easily fill a galaxy.
Watching news on Fox, CNN or any of the major U.S. TV networks has always exacted from the viewer a degree ofmental numbness, and a will to believe in metaphysics. But, it was at least entertaining, and visuallystimulating. Americans have always shone in making a glitzy show out of lackluster news--which invariablyreduced the world to simplistic terms and sound bytes spoon-fed to the average American media consumer. Butnow, after seeing elsewhere what Mr. Bush and his obliging poodle really had in store for us in their illegal,unjust and criminal war, watching news on those American channels has become an exercise in suspending thefaculty of reason, abandoning logic and steering strictly away from any critical thinking altogether.
And with all the dehumanization of Arabs all over the coverage it is far from entertaining.
Having the advantage of speaking Arabic--finally, this has become an advantage during my lifetime--I get towatch al-Jazeera, among many other Arab satellite channels which present a truly impressive spectrum ofopinion, commentary and analysis. And for once, I am getting far more, better and decisively more accuratenews than those not bestowed with the ability to understand Arabic in the English-speaking world. Al-Jazeerapresents every significant American or British announcement, as offensive or even racist as sometimes it mightbe, with remarkable fairness and objectivity, along with the amalgam of Arab opinions. Its accuracy during thewar on Afghanistan, the ongoing Palestinian intifada and the unfolding Anglo-American war on Iraq truly putsto shame any English language television channel, the BBC included.
If American television can be easily disregarded as a textbook case of obdurate, populistic, one-sided,sponsor-parroting media, BBC cannot. It has a long tradition in objectivity and a wider margin of pluralismthan its American counterparts. But, compared to al-Jazeera, BBC comes across as rather narrow-minded,anachronistically colonial and pitifully "embedded," or, to borrow a term from a New York peacedemonstration: in-bedded.
Americans, and to a lesser extent Brits, who mostly rely on television coverage for news on the war are reallyat a critical disadvantage. They are getting a lot more government party line and very little free or accuratecoverage. They are bombarded with an average of one to two grand lies a day, coupled with an assortment oflesser lies to match. In short, they are getting media that are worthy of the worst banana republic. Maybethey ought to learn Arabic, or, for that matter, French, German, or Spanish to see the light.
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Omar Barghouti is a Palestinian political analyst. His article "9.11 Putting the Moment on HumanTerms" was chosen among the "Best of 2002" by the Guardian. His articles have appeared in theHartford Courant, Al-Ahram (Cairo), Z-Magazine among others.
