Inside Al Jazeera

Considering its influence, Al Jazeera's newsroom is puny. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak peeked in during a visit to Doha, Qatar, a couple of years ago, he asked, "All this noise comes from this matchbox?" Behind a glass wall at one end is the smallest of Al Jazeera's three broadcast studios, where anchors read five-minute newscasts every hour. On the opposite side of the room an illuminated map of the world, flanked by thirty-two television screens, serves as a backdrop for the newscasts. In between are forty-eight computer terminals.

It feels like an American newsroom at first, until you notice the details. While a few of the monitors are tuned to CNN, BBC, and AP Television News, most are set to stations from across the Arab world: Palestine, Iraq, Egypt, Abu Dhabi, Beirut-based Al Manar, and the Middle East Broadcasting Centre (MBC), soon to move from London to Dubai. Journalists bang away at keyboards with Arabic characters, which they read on their screens from right to left. Many of them wear khakis or Western business suits, but some men dress in traditional white thoubs and several women wear headscarves. Virtually all employees are Arab Muslims, although Al Jazeera's headquarters is a secular place. Employees who choose to pray during work hours do so in a tiny mosque behind the main building.

The journalists are a loose, sociable bunch, representing almost all twenty-two members of the Arab League. Moroccan producers, Syrian talk show hosts, Iraqi translators, Algerian fixers, Sudanese librarians, Palestinian secretaries, and Qatari executives all speak together in Arabic.

A few paces away from the newsroom is the corner office of Mohamed Jasem Al Ali, Al Jazeera's managing director. Al Ali strides around his office, his thoub flowing and white kaffiyeh held on his head by black cords, pointing out some of the dozens of plaques, trophies, and framed certificates jamming the sill along two walls. He points to citations from the Netherlands, Germany, Lebanon, Egypt, and Russia, clearly proud of the honors his satellite network has garnered in barely five years.

But he is especially eager to explain the significance of one framed newspaper page: the cover of the Times of London from December 18, 1998, on which a color photo taken from a television broadcast fills most of the space above the fold. The photo shows a cruise missile exploding over Baghdad. More significant to Al Ali than the picture itself, however, is the logo in the screen's bottom right corner. There, partially obscured by the logo of CNN, is that of Al Jazeera -- then barely two years old -- which originally shot the pictures. That design, Arabic letters in the shape of a flame or a teardrop, has become recognized across the Arab world as the symbol of a television network that stirs more emotions than any news medium the region has ever seen.

Wide Open

Al Jazeera, which translates as "the Peninsula," was established by emiri decree in February 1996. Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, who seized power in 1995 from his father, created Al Jazeera as part of an effort to modernize and democratize Qatar. He allocated $137 million to Al Jazeera with the goal that the station would be self-sustaining within five years of its November 1, 1996, debut.

It has grown rapidly, expanding from its original six hours a day to twelve and then, on January 1, 1999, to twenty-four hours. It employs 500 people, including seventy journalists. Among its twenty-seven bureaus are offices in Washington, New York, London, Paris, Brussels, Moscow, Djakarta, and Islamabad.

Al Jazeera is the only twenty-four-hour Arab news station. In addition to its fast-moving, video-heavy newscasts, it has built an audience through its talk shows, which probe political, social, and religious issues previously untouched by Arab media. Perhaps the most popular program is The Opposite Direction, hosted by Faisal Al Qasim, a British-educated Syrian who has a talent for drawing out guests with opposing views and goading them to mix it up on air. He has pitted an Egyptian supporting normalization of relations with Israel against another Egyptian who quoted anti-Semitic writings. A woman opposed to the abolition of polygamy walked off the set, fed up with her counterpart's insistence that it was an anachronistic practice.