Pioneer Satellite TV Network Transforming Arab World

by Virginia Quirke

By nightfall, the bureau's chief correspondent, Walid Omar, staggers back to base after a day of heavy clashes in Hebron and tosses more tapes in the editor's direction.

This is the West Bank bureau of Al-Jazeera, the most popular satellite television station in the Arab world.

Founded four years ago, the station was the brainchild of Qatar's ruler, Mohammed bin Khalife al Thani, who wanted to bring uncensored news to the Arab world.

Since then, Al-Jazeera has successfully beamed out to the homes of 7 million viewers a day. The influential role that this station has played during the last two months of Israeli-Palestinian violence cannot be ignored.

Crowds who took to the streets of Arab capitals in support of the Palestinian uprising, received intense coverage from channels like Al-Jazeera, helping to create regional support out of what started as a local protest.

"Everybody in the Arab world watches Al-Jazeera," says Ayman Sbeih, 36, owner of a factory in Ramallah. "In a region where government-censored news is the norm it is good to hear somebody talking about the impotence of certain Arab regimes."

The station, whose policy is to be objective and to maintain a sense of balance, offers a podium for contradictory opinions through interviews, discussion panels, and investigative reporting from behind the scenes.

"Sometimes, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief listening to their reports," says Sbeih. "Because they often represent exactly what I feel."

"We were the first to interview Israelis," says Omar, the popular and highly respected local correspondent. "Nobody wanted to hear what they had to say."

Omar, originally from Israel's northern Galilee region, was tapped to work for other Arab stations but he refused on the grounds that the television stations only wanted to give the government's official line. He prefers to tell people the whole story.

"When Al-Jazeera tells people about a shooting incident, it tells the story from both sides. It doesn't just give the young stone thrower's story," he points out.

The station also started a trend in media terminology. Whereas other correspondents habitually announce that they are reporting from "the West Bank," or from "the Occupied Territories," Al- Jazeera in its daring style reports to seven million viewers "from Palestine."

Six years ago, the young prince of Qatar, Mohammed bin Khalife al Thani launched a coup against his father. Enthusiastic and in the mood for reform, he replaced those who had acquired longstanding ministerial positions through family ties, by young educated Qataris.

He also dismantled the Ministry of Information, a ministry which is synonym with control of the media in any less than democratic country.

Qatar, a country with over 300,000 citizens, is not as wealthy as its Gulf neighbors. But al Thani made a mark for his small country in the region, when he invested $600 million, to develop an uncensored satellite television.

Within the first six months of its opening, the channel managed to irritate almost every Arab regime. Their offices were closed and not always reopened in several countries, like Kuwait and Jordan. The channel's slogan, "one opinion....and the other opinion" was sometimes too much for those who did not think that there was a second opinion.

Rumors started to blossom and charged that the channel was funded by Israeli investors, by the CIA, or by the Saudi rebel Ossama bin Laden.

Al-Jazeera is the only international television station with a bureau in Baghdad and it was the only station to interview Ossama bin Laden after pursuing him for over one year.

The station also ventures beyond the daily digest of politics. It hosts a popular Egyptian Sheikh who holds frank debates on sexual behavior and whether the Koran bans certain intimate acts.

All employees appearing on Al-Jazeera speak fus'ha, classical Arabic, which solves the problem of the variations on spoken Arabic across the region.

Speaking local Arabic and English from behind his office desk, Bureau Chief, Wael Abu Dagga, manages to watch television, answer telephone calls and eat a late lunch of roasted chicken at the same time. The lively 37-year-old is proud that his station always gets the news fast and first.

"As the Intifada developed, my phone was constantly ringing," he says. "People called us to give news directly to Al-Jazeera before anybody else."

But the man who joined Al-Jazeera, because it steered clear of propaganda and censorship, chooses to engage in what he terms "self-censorship."

The day two ill-fated Israeli soldiers wandered into Ramallah and were beaten to death by angry Palestinians, Abu Dagga had sent three cameramen from his television studio to film the horrific event.

Unhappy with the turn of events, Palestinian police swiftly seized film footage from any media present. The crew of Al-Jazeera was allowed to keep theirs.

Abu Dagga cut out the gruesome images of the lynching in the editing suite, as he claims he would do for any footage that's too graphic. Before releasing the final version, he also made sure that the faces of any participants in the attack were wiped out -- knowing that the Israelis would use it as evidence to track down the killers.

So while the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to intensify beyond the double-glazing windows of the Ramallah television studio, the West Bank bureau chief remains confident that the most popular station in the Arab world will continue to put tough questions to political leaders and persist in its endeavors to articulate the once silent thoughts of millions of Arabs.