Al Jazeera: “Serious times require serious journalism.”

by Yeoh Siew Hoon

You couldn’t have asked for a more innocuous name. “Al” means “The” and Jazeera means “Peninsula” in Arabic, as Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al Jazeera International, explains.

“Qatar is a peninsula and in the city, we have Al Jazeera cafes, Al Jazeera shops and no, they are not brand extensions but no one could have guessed the notoriety the name would take.”

Ironically, he said, Al Jazeera was a child of censorship – and pornography. A joint venture between BBC and Saudi Arabia, the partnership fell apart when BBC refused to axe a sensitive programme.

As Parsons then tells it, “The Emir of Qatar missed it and picked it up. At its launch, it was difficult to get widespread coverage. Then a technician in Paris made the mistake of beaming hardcore pornography across the Middle East disguised as children’s programming. We got that slot.”

The channel quickly became “the beacon of freedom of information” and a “sign of democracy”.

“Arabs were shocked when their governments were criticised and Israelis were allowed to tell their stories. It broke the monopoly on state-run information.”

Upholding its belief of “sharing the truth, no matter what”, it earned the ire of the Bush administration which wanted the world to see a “sanitised conflict”.

“All wars are ugly, we are not judging whether it’s right or wrong but we want to tell the story of human suffering. Other networks show the missiles taking off, we show you what happens when they land.

“The Americans bombed our office twice, Al Qaeda called us Israeli spies, we seemed to be upsetting everyone.

“As journalists, we knew we were on the right track. Rumsfeld was our best PR – every time he attacked us, our ratings shot up.”

Given its beginnings – it shot to notoriety after showing an Al Qaeda video – it’s been accused of having an Islamic agenda, something that Parsons shoots down.

“We are not an Islamic channel, our headquarters is in the Middle East. We do expect English-speaking Muslims to have a natural empathy with us but beyond that, we want to reach out to other audiences, especially the 20-35s who are disenfranchised and have turned off mainstream media.”

Noting that Al Jazeera was ranked by Interbrand as the fifth most influential brand in the world, after Starbucks, last year, the former director of Associated Press Television News, whose journalistic career spans 30 years, said launching Al Jazeera International was the “most ambitious, technically complex project ever undertaken”.

“I had a blank sheet of paper to make a difference. Right from the start, we didn’t set out to follow anyone. We didn’t want to be second or third but to be the market leader.”

Saying he was surprised by the quality of people who wanted to join the network, he said, “Some people saw us as the broadcasting equivalent of the Chelsea football club, buying ourselves into the game, but we wanted the right person to join us for the right reason.”

And the reason: “To give a voice to the voiceless, to offer an alternative viewpoint.”

From the outset, he left it to the creative director to create a look and feel “which would be crucial to the way it would be perceived”.

“We decided to unclutter the screen and to go for a clean, simple look that reflected the feel of the desert.”

Headquarted in Doha, it has news centres in Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington DC, with each pursuing and following their own stories.

“People were tired of seeing the world through foreign eyes. And while Americans are accused of knowing next to nothing about the outside world, the outside world has little knowledge of the American heartland.”

It now has 150 employees in Kuala Lumpur, broadcasting for four hours everyday. Today it reaches 100 million households.

“And we haven’t even gone into India yet. The British, it is said, brought bureaucracy to India but they’ve finessed it into an art form.”

At nine months old, he says Al Jazeera International has learnt to walk and is now ready to jog.

“While the rest of the media is covering lightweight celebrity news, we will continue to cover conflicts, politics and the environment. Serious times require serious journalism.”

Catch up with Yeoh Siew Hoon at her regular haunt, the Transit Café at www.thetransitcafe.com