Accuracy in Media and the Targeting of Al Jazeera
By Arab Media Watch intern Adam Ashcroft and chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi
8 March 2007
"Accuracy In Media is a non-profit, grassroots citizens watchdog of the news media that critiques botched and bungled news stories and sets the record straight on important issues that have received slanted coverage."
This is the mission statement of AIM, an organisation set up in 1969 by Reed Irvine, a renowned and very active conservative. Despite its right-wing origins (Irvine was described as a "die-hard anti-communist" by his son Donald), its stated goal is to "encourage members of the media to report the news fairly and objectively, without resorting to bias or partisanship."
It was conceived as a reaction to the supposedly liberal American media in the 1960s, and while its slogan is "For fairness, balance and accuracy in news reporting," AIM tends to ignore this in practice. Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi experienced this first-hand when he was interviewed on More4 News in late 2006 with AIM editor Cliff Kincaid regarding the launch of Al Jazeera English.
AIM and Al Jazeera
Accuracy In Media has a strongly worded and highly active campaign against Al Jazeera, or as it likes to call it, "a vicious, anti-American propaganda vehicle", "the enemy's propaganda organs", "Terror Television" and "an insidious threat to America."
Far from seeing Al Jazeera as an independent, balanced news organisation, AIM believes it serves to promote the cause of Al Qaeda and international terrorism by streaming anti-American propaganda into the homes of millions of viewers: "If Al-Jazeera makes waves on American cable, then the possibility of suicide bombers in America could lurk close behind."
AIM believes this not only adversely affects the ongoing war in Iraq and the international 'war on terror', but Israel's recent war against Lebanon: "In the same way that Al-Jazeera television has complicated the prospect of a U.S. victory in Iraq, the channel has dramatically increased the Islamic terrorist threat to Israel, helping to produce the war with the Hezbollah terrorist group."
In fact, Al Jazeera was the first Arab channel to interview Israelis, and "in sharp contrast to most television in the Middle East, it has hosted all shades of political and religious opinion," said Nick Fielding of the Sunday Times in January 2005.
Furthermore, at the 2005 Doha Forum on Free Trade and Democracy, which Arab Media Watch chairman Sharif Hikmat Nashashibi attended, Hugh Miles - former Times young journalist of the year and author of "Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenges America" - said the channel had broadcast about five hours in total of Osama bin Laden footage, compared to more than 500 hours of live broadcasts by US President George Bush. On several occasions, Al Jazeera has covered live speeches by Bush which none of the American networks carried.
"I think you will agree this is hardly indicative of a channel with a militant Islamic agenda or a channel that is in league with terrorists, as it has so often been accused," said Miles.
"The network has already made history by successfully reversing the flow of information from East to West, for the first time in hundreds of years," he added. "It is an exciting fact that the new English language channel will be the first time an Islamic or Arabic perspective on the world has been brought to a Western audience in English."
Nonetheless, AIM's views have resonance in certain sections of the media. For instance, Britain's Daily Express claimed in an editorial on 18 November 2006: "This is a TV station that glorifies those who want to destroy us." In fact, the official British TV regulatory watchdog Ofcom has consistently criticised Fox News more often than Al Jazeera.
In a More4 News interview with Nashashibi and AIM editor Cliff Kincaid in late 2006, the latter even said the government of Qatar, which funds Al Jazeera, has connections to Al Qaeda.
Nashashibi replied that there was no evidence for this whatsoever, while reminding Kincaid that Qatar is a close US ally, and highlighting the hypocrisy of such an absurd claim being made by a spokesman for an organisation with the word "accuracy" in its name.
Kincaid made a similarly nonsensical, unsubstantiated claim that Al Jazeera had connections with Saddam Hussein. Perhaps Kincaid and AIM are among the last few on earth to still cling to the myth that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda. They are certainly the only ones on earth to throw Qatar into the equation.
As of February 2006, a simple search on AIM's website (www.aim.org) shows 237 recent articles slamming Al Jazeera.
AIM successfully waged a campaign against the introduction in the US and Canada of Al Jazeera English (initially Al Jazeera International), which it believes is merely a ploy to reach out to English-speaking Muslims and persuade them to resort to violence. Note the hypocrisy of the ban by two countries that claim to champion free media and speech.
The message that the US administration is sending, according to Miles, is: "Freedom of expression is important for Americans but not for Arabs, just like civil rights for Arabs are not important the way they are for Americans."
Referring to the fact that Al Jazeera and Al Jazeera English share the same Washington DC offices, AIM says: "This means that the management that supervises Al-Jazeera International is also responsible for motivating terrorists to kill Americans, and is the same team that was banned from Iraq by the newly formed government for encouraging devastation in the war-torn country."
Clearly, AIM believes that a channel offering news from a different perspective is a motivation for terrorists to kill Americans. This vendetta has even resulted in an "Al Jazeera Hall of Shame" (http://www.aim.org/pdf/aji-hall-of-shame.pdf), in which AIM displays all the staff members to have moved from other mainstream news organisations such as the BBC or CNN.
It would seem that from AIM's point of view, working for Al Jazeera English is tantamount to treason. They have also, rather crassly, released a DVD entitled "Terror Television: The Rise of Al Jazeera and the Hate America Media," and run a website called www.stopaljazeera.org.
Regional Targeting of Al Jazeera
With a rather uninformed opinion, Accuracy In Media claims that Al Jazeera helps prop up Arab dictators by blaming all their woes on the West: "Al-Jazeera in fact serves the purpose of Arab dictatorships by deflecting all blame for internal problems onto the outside world. Instead of covering the numerous human rights abuses being carried out by Muslim governments and terrorist groups, often against their own people, Al-Jazeera brainwashes its audience into a constant state of fear and aggression toward others."
In fact, Al Jazeera broadcasts weekly shows informing and educating Arabs about democratic processes in America and Europe, and has given extensive coverage to elections in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon.
"This satellite channel, beamed into the majority of Arab homes, took an immediate stand in opposition to traditional news broadcast by authorised media," said press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders in a report published in November 2006 entitled 'Al Jazeera is ten years old - a decade of paying the price for its outspokenness'.
"…its programmes regularly enraged Arab leaders for giving a voice to their opponents and to viewers themselves and because it raised political and social issues considered taboo in many countries in the Arab world."
RWB added: "Numerous governments have tried to censor al-Jazeera, using financial and advertising boycotts, closing down its offices, banning it from covering major events, expulsions, arrests and deaths of its journalists, bombings of its premises and putting diplomatic pressure on Qatar…its outspokenness created a genuine precedent in the Arab broadcast landscape."
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19526
"I think it is fair to say Al Jazeera has done more to educate Arabs about democracy than any other broadcaster," said Hugh Miles, former Times young journalist of the year and author of "Al Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenges America."
This sentiment is echoed by Nick Fielding of the Sunday Times, who said that "it is hard to overestimate the impact" the channel has had "on the conservative and inward-looking regimes in the region. By the end of the 1990s, Al-Jazeera was the leading broadcaster in the Middle East, loathed by many regimes, but loved by its viewers."
Even Rupert Murdoch's New York Daily News, a longtime foe of the network, conceded in March 2005: "Many analysts consider the Qatar-based network a greater catalyst for democracy in the Middle East than any US policy."
AIM clearly has not attempted to check the facts regarding Al Jazeera's status in various Arab countries where it has been banned or restricted in some way. These countries represent a diverse spectrum of beliefs and ideologies within the Arab world, so any attempt to pigeonhole Al Jazeera's agenda by virtue of its opposition would be futile.
In 2002, Bahrain banned the station from covering any story within the Gulf state, specifically its first elections in almost 30 years, with accusations of pro-Zionism.
"We believe [Al Jazeera] is suspect and represents the Zionist side in the region," said Information Minister Nabil Al Hamr. "We will not deal with this channel because we object to its coverage of current affairs. It is a channel penetrated by Zionists" that "deliberately seeks to harm Bahrain."
In 2001, the Palestinian Authority closed down the Ramallah offices of Al Jazeera after it apparently broadcast an unflattering image of Yasser Arafat. Since 2003, the Saudi authorities have prevented Al Jazeera from covering the Hajj (pilgrimage to Mecca). In 2002, Jordan closed the station's office there and recalled its ambassador to Qatar.
Algeria has banned the channel since 2004 for airing programmes in which opposition leaders criticised the government. It is the first time in 10 years that a foreign channel has been subjected to such a ban.
Iran threatened to expel the station for referring to the "Arabic Gulf" and not the "Persian Gulf." Tunisia has refused to allow the channel to open an office, and in 2002 Kuwait's authorities closed its office there on the grounds of "lack of professionalism and neutrality when dealing with Kuwaiti issues." Morocco has also restricted Al Jazeera's operations, and the channel is banned in Iraq.
Egypt has initiated trial proceedings against Al Jazeera TV Producer Howayda Taha for "harming national interest" in her intention to make a documentary on police torture in the country which, in light of recent mobile phone footage of police abuse, can be seen as nothing more than a repressive measure by the government to cover its tracks.
"Like so many other journalists, Taha is paying a high price for denouncing the abusive practices of a regime that is unable to shake off its old authoritarian reflexes," said RWB.
"Al Jazeera has long infuriated autocrats across the Arab world with its unfiltered news and political debates," Joel Campagna, senior program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune. "Arab governments have hurled tirades at the station, withdrawn diplomats from Doha in protest and harassed the station's correspondents."
http://www.cpj.org/op_ed/Campagna04aug04.html
This statement is backed up by a particularly venomous attack from former Iraqi Defence Minister Hazem Shaalan, who echoed AIM's language when he called the station a "terrorist channel" and added: "The day will come when we deal with Al Jazeera in other ways than with words." RWB said Iraq's clampdown on the station "confirms the trend towards rebuilding the country at the expense of democracy and press freedom."
In yet another example of a US-supported government clamping down on freedom of speech, the Somali Transitional Federal Government shut down the Al Jazeera TV office in Mogadishu in March 2007. The director of the International Federation of Journalists' Africa office, Gabriel Baglo, has condemned the government's clampdown on the station as an "unacceptable violation of press freedom."
Western Targeting of Al Jazeera
Western opposition has been just as vociferous, and more violent. The US "has eagerly used its muscle against Al Jazeera," Joel Campagna, senior program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune.
The channel's office in the Afghan capital Kabul was deliberately bombed by US forces in November 2001, one month after then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell asked Qatar's ruler to alter its coverage.
It was "at the time a facility used by al-Qaeda," claimed Rear Admiral Craig Quigley, US assistant defense secretary for public affairs. General Tommy Franks said it "had repeatedly been the location of significant Al Qaeda activity." To this day, there has been no evidence to back this claim.
In April 2003, an American A-10 'tankbuster' fired two missiles at the channel's office in Baghdad, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub, a rising star in the organisation whose death was widely mourned. There was no investigation or apology from the Pentagon. As in Kabul, the American authorities had been explicitly told the location of the bureau.
"So long as the United States remains indifferent and refuses to explain the actions of its soldiers in these killings there will be speculation about deliberate targeting of media staff," said the International Federation of Journalists' General Secretary Aiden White.
Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Haj is still held without charge in Guantanamo Bay nearly six years after he was taken prisoner, and former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused the station of "constantly lying" and "working in concert with the terrorists." US officials reportedly withheld invitations to Qatari officials to the G8 summit in Georgia, in protest against Al Jazeera.
It was revealed in 2005 that British Prime Minister Tony Blair talked US President George Bush out of bombing the firm's Doha headquarters during a meeting between the two leaders in April 2004.
Former British Home Secretary David Blunkett admitted that he urged Blair to bomb Al Jazeera's Baghdad television transmitter during the Iraq conflict, claiming the station was "attempting to win a propaganda war on behalf of our enemy." Such deliberate military targeting of a media outlet is a clear violation of international law.
Despite all this, Al Jazeera "has doggedly stuck to its mission of providing accurate information, combined with a healthy diet of debate," and "nothing has diminished the Arab world's appetite for its highly professional service and unbeatable diet of timely, well-informed news programmes," said Nick Fielding of the Sunday Times.
Press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders has acknowledged and noted this disparate opposition to Al Jazeera, accusing the US, Canada, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Iraq and Iran of "persistent harassment" of the channel.
"We regret that some governments have no hesitation in censoring al-Jazeera, the leading Arabic news channel, to protect their political and diplomatic interests," it said. "These methods demonstrate their intolerance of critics." A rundown of oppressive measures taken against Al Jazeera by these countries can be seen at:
http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=19526
Conclusion
"Al Jazeera is…a serious news organization whose reporting is regularly cited by the best news organizations," Joel Campagna, senior program coordinator at the Committee to Protect Journalists, said in an op-ed in the International Herald Tribune. "And for Al Jazeera, which has built its reputation on defiantly reporting in the face of official harassment, each criticism adds to its legend in the region."
It is often a symbol of good reporting when a major broadcaster comes face to face with vitriolic opposition from countries with sensitive, acute and varying political agendas.
In 2003, The Index of Censorship gave Al Jazeera the Award for Best Circumvention of Censorship for its early reporting of the Iraq war. "Since its inception, al-Jazeera has been at the forefront of the struggle to maintain free, independent and balanced reporting," said Muftah al-Suwaidan, executive director of the channel's London bureau.
"We are proud to receive this award from such a prestigious organisation which has as its core concern the well being and the development of our profession, and the maintenance of professional integrity. Different people have different views - but the common denominator should always remain to be the right of people to know and the freedom of all to express themselves."
Campagna surmises: "Baghdad and Washington would do well to stop exaggerating the impact of Arab satellite television and disabuse themselves of the notion that by browbeating media organizations they will win more favorable coverage. They should not underestimate Arab viewers, many of whom, accustomed to years of filtered news and state propaganda, have a keen ability to discern what's credible and what's not. Al Jazeera and others do not lead public opinion so much as reflect it."
Perhaps Accuracy In Media should concentrate its efforts on improving the reality rather than destroying the image.