Ruling the airwaves
Arab satellite news networks are proliferating, with tremendous impact on the region's peoples. But with more Arabs glued to TV screens than ever before, Alaa Shahine finds Al-Jazeera still ruling the airwaves
With the US-led invasion of Iraq entering its fourth week, a different kind of battle is taking place to capture Arab TV viewers hungry for information about the war. And with the increasing anger of Arab viewers towards Western media stations, particularly CNN, Arab satellite stations old and new are taking center stage.
Having predicted the outbreak of war in light of the US administration's aggressive campaign against Iraq throughout the past few months, Arab satellite stations have expanded their coverage to meet the growing needs of viewers. Some stations have launched new services to coincide with the beginning of military operations.
"The war didn't catch us by surprise," Tarek El-Shami, Abu Dhabi TV's Egypt bureau chief, said. "We were well-prepared and our correspondents were on the ground."
The eruption of war forced all main Arab stations to make drastic changes in their programme schedules. For example, Abu Dhabi TV, normally an entertainment channel with a newscast every three hours, became an all-news channel broadcasting war developments round the clock.
"We do not even accept advertisements now," El-Shami said. "But this policy is paying off according to our rating reports, which indicate that we have been on top of the charts since the beginning of the war."
While the state-run Abu Dhabi TV was satisfied with scheduling changes, the Middle East News, which also runs the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), took a more aggressive step by choosing to launch a new all-news channel shortly before the beginning of military operations.
Al-Arabiya went on air shortly before the war erupted and became the second Pan-Arab all-news channel, challenging the supremacy of the Qatar-based Al- Jazeera satellite station. Al-Arabiya started in late February with 12 hours of news and programmes and began broadcasting 24 hours a day on 3 March from Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
"Preparations to launch the channel took about a year and it happened that a war erupted in the region when it was ready to go on air," said Nabil Shawkat, Al-Arabiya correspondent in Egypt. "There is definitely a space in the Arab world for a news channel other than Al-Jazeera," he added.
The new channel was launched with exclusive interviews with key Western policy makers such as US Secretary of State Colin Powell and his British counterpart Jack Straw. It also featured several news anchors and presenters known to the Arab viewers such as George Qerdahi, the Lebanese presenter who gained fame hosting the Arab world's version of the "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" show on MBC.
The beginning of military operations caused the station to suspend many of its regular programmes and it dedicated all of its political programmes to the war.
Anger towards American and Western media has been increasing in the Middle East mainly due to the coverage dedicated to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict which Arabs view as pro-Israeli. Also, the portrayal of the invasion of Iraq as a war to "liberate the Iraqi people" on hard-line American networks such as Fox News has not increased the legitimacy of foreign satellite news channels on the Arab street.
"Arabs need their own versions of CNN and Fox News. They need pro- Arab coverage highlighting the fact that what is going on is a brutal and unjustified invasion of an Arab country," Khaled Youssef, a young Egyptian said.
Apart from Abu Dhabi TV, the instant comparisons between Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera do not stem from the fact that they are the only all-news channels in the Arab world. Al-Arabiya is distinctly more tame than its often provocative Qatar-based competitor, which has been running into trouble with several Arab governments for airing views of local opposition figures and their criticism of the countries' rulers.
In July, a prominent Saudi dissident appeared on Al-Jazeera and criticised the kingdom's Crown Prince Abdullah and the Saudi ruling family, causing a severe strain in relations between the two neighbouring Gulf states.
Shortly afterwards, the kingdom recalled its ambassador to Qatar for consultations and later downgraded its representation in the annual Gulf Cooperation Council's summit in Doha.
Najeeb Al-Nauimi, a former Qatari minister of justice and one of Al- Jazeera's founders, explains that Al- Jazeera has virtually unlimited freedom in reporting, which will keep it ahead of other Arab channels, especially Al- Arabiya.
"I believe that Al-Arabiya will never be able to gain the freedom Al-Jazeera has," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview from Doha, Qatar's capital.
Al-Nauimi said that while Al-Jazeera is able to freely criticise other Arab states and tackle crucial issues of interest to the Arab viewer, "Al-Arabiya's [Saudi] financiers won't allow the channel to take any aggressive approach unless it is a criticism against Qatar or something like that," he opined.
The Qatari channel has also been criticised for not tackling critical issues involving Qatar, a close US ally and the site of the current headquarters of the US Central Command for the war in Iraq.
"Al-Jazeera's only drawback is that it has been used by its hosts as a tool to achieve political gains, but even this has begun to shrink," Al-Nauimi said. "We all see their coverage of Qatar's Al-Udeid airbase, which is being used in the war on Iraq."
Mohamed Abdulrahman, a news anchor at Dubai TV, argued that "Al- Arabiya's anchors have yet to gain the acceptance of the Arab viewers, and I don't see them getting anywhere so far."
Al-Arabiya's Shawkat, however, disagreed, saying that one of Al-Arabiya's main concerns was to avoid Al- Jazeera's sensational style of reporting in news-oriented programmes.
"You hear a lot of yelling in their programmes and Al-Arabiya wants to avoid that," he said. "But it is too early to make any judgment about the channel now. It will develop and improve over time."
Shawkat said that Al-Arabiya has been relying on correspondents in 30 bureaus worldwide and that the number of correspondents will soon increase.
Some correspondents and anchors hired by the Dubai-based channel were lured from Al-Jazeera, including veteran anchor Muntaha Al-Ramhi and Seifeddin Shahine, who reports from the Palestinian territories.
Editors at Al-Jazeera refused to comment on competition with other stations, preferring instead to focus on their own war-related agenda.
"We have not hired any new correspondents for the war. We have just relocated some of our men and they are currently on the ground in Iraq and other main points," Yasser Thabet, the station's broadcast editor, told the Weekly from Doha. "We are being quoted constantly from Western networks like CNN and BBC, and that proves how successful we are."
Since the beginning of the invasion, the channel has been dedicating approximately 19 hours a day to live coverage of the war, leaving the remaining five hours for important business and sports news. All talk shows and political documentaries were temporarily removed from the channel's schedules.
In the second week of battle, Al- Jazeera reported that one of its cameramen, Aqeel Abdulreda, was missing in the southern Iraqi city of Basra after a heavy bombardment by coalition forces.
"During the bombing, he tried to seek shelter with our correspondent Mohamed Al-Abdullah, but we could not find him later," Thabet said. "This tells you that our men on the ground aim for the best possible coverage and that's what gives us the cutting edge."
Abdulaziz Al- Mahmoud, editor-in- chief of Al- Jazeera.net -- the channel's official Web site -- said he believed that Al- Abdullah and his cameraman were deliberately targeted by the invasion forces in the Basra bombing.
"One day before Al-Abdullah's car was hit, we predicted that he would be targeted [by coalition forces] in our daily editorial meeting," he said.
Al-Abdullah is the correspondent who interviewed the purported commander of the Iraqi Army's 51st division two days after the US military announced that the division had surrendered.
"He proved them [the American military] incorrect and caused them a lot of embarrassment with his reporting from Basra," Al-Mahmoud said.
Al-Jazeera has previously drawn criticism from the United States for airing statements by Osama Bin Laden, whose Al-Qa'eda terror network is blamed for the 11 September attacks in New York and Washington.
In the final days of the US bombardment of Afghanistan that dislodged Al- Qa'eda and its Taliban hosts, an unoccupied Al-Jazeera office was hit during an air raid. US officials said at the time that they did not know the television had an office in that location.
But Al-Mahmoud had his own online woes to worry about. A few days after the invasion, hackers wreaked havoc on the station's Web site by diverting surfers to a page with a US flag and the message "Let Freedom Ring".
Hackers impersonating an Al-Jazeera employee tricked the US company that provides the Web domain into making changes that effectively turned over the control of the Web site.
Al-Mahmoud would not reveal the company's name but said that their excuse that they were tricked by the hackers was "ridiculous".
"How would they listen to somebody who is calling over the phone without verifying his identity. This is a fiasco to say the least," he told the Weekly.
"Our lawyers are preparing to take legal action against the company," he said, without elaborating further.
The hacking incident took place as the station was preparing to launch an English-language Web site and expanding its already-existing Arabic-language Web site.
"We hired new correspondents to write exclusive reports for us during the war period, and will decide whether or not they will stay with us after the war," Al-Mahmoud said.
He said the new English-language interface would offer Western users news from a different perspective and will feature "more interactive activities and more integration with the station's television coverage to compete with other long-established Web sites".
The station's Arabic-language Web site, which was launched two years ago, is the most visited all-news Web site in the Arab world according to traffic details provided by Alexa.com, which monitors Web site traffic.
Specific ratings are impossible to come by, but every station interviewed assured the Weekly that they had the highest share of Arab viewers. But is capturing the minds of Arabs in these times of war and scepticism really that simple to report?
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 10 -16 April 2003 (Issue No. 633)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/633/fe4.htm