After months of delay, the new English-language Al Jazeera International will launch this week. The date coincides with the tenth anniversary of the highly-successful Arabic-language Al Jazeera.
The original Al Jazeera changed the political landscape of the Middle East in ways no one anticipated. The new channel spawned dozens of cross-border news competitors and loosened the information stranglehold of authoritarian governments across the region. (See more on that here.)
It changed the playing field for American diplomacy as well. A recent column by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius attempted to tease out the truth and the fiction in the common American perceptions of just what Al Jazeera really is. My own thoughts on Al Jazeera were formed in the production of a major public radio documentary on the rise and influence of open Arab media.
The new channel is organizing itself as the first truly global news channel....meaning that "command and control" of the news stream will not be handled from a central location. An article in the April 2006 edition of Fast Company explained the plan this way:
"...Al Jazeera International's news day--and news management--will follow the sun: Programming will begin in Doha, Qatar, which will likely host a 12-hour chunk of the day, then shift to London for a four-hour segment, then to Washington, DC, for a 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. (local-time) slot, and finally to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The top of each hour will be hard news; the back half, analysis, chat shows, and documentaries, some of it generated by viewers. There will be only one feed, so viewers worldwide will all see the same broadcast at the same time. More intriguing, each news desk will be run independently, with the mandate to report international news through its own lens."
There are plenty of people in the United States who are highly critical of Al Jazeera and are actively working to make sure no American cable company or satellite television provider will carry the Al Jazeera International signal. Accuracy in Media has launched a video and Web site titled, "Terror Television: The Rise of Al-Jazeera and the Hate America Media."
The launch of an English Al Jazeera channel will no doubt reignite the debate over Al Jazeera's true motives and impact. And there is intense speculation over just how many Americans will have access to the new channel (either via cable or satellite)....and over how important this is to Al Jazeera International's success. Company officials say they are hoping to reach English speakers (including the hundreds of millions of Muslim English speakers outside the Arab world) everywhere, not just Americans.
