The CNN of the Arab World

A week into the bombing campaign against Afghanistan, Americans learned that CNN is not the only 24-hour news outlet with an elephant-size budget and a reach of millions. Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel, founded in 1996 and broadcast from the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar, can now also make that claim. And by providing a video to American networks of Osama bin Laden declaring holy war against the United States the very day bombs began falling in Afghanistan, it at last brought itself into the wide berth of the American living room.

Al-Jazeera has been praised, vilified, described as both highly objective and highly irresponsible. On Oct. 7, day one of the bombing campaign in Afghanistan, Secretary of State Colin Powell denounced the network for airing "vitriolic, irresponsible statements"; in other words, for broadcasting bin Laden's threat to terrorist war, which was picked up by every American network and played to the horror and shock of many.

American news outlets followed Powell's suit. The New York Times opined that Al-Jazeera "often slants its news with a vicious anti-Israel and anti-American bias" and airs "deeply irresponsible reporting [that] reinforces the region's anti-American views." Dan Rather questioned whether there was "any indication that Osama bin Laden has helped finance this operation." NPR warned listeners that Al-Jazeera's coverage should "come with a health warning."

So it was not surprising that when National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice requested networks not to air Al-Jazeera's bin Laden footage because he might be transmitting coded messages, they immediately said they wouldn't -- even though many realized terrorists could easily get bin Laden's alleged messages through Web or satellite broadcasts.

Meanwhile, Arab-American journalists and writers (as well as many Western reporters familiar with the network) leapt to Al-Jazeera's defense, describing it as a revolutionary force -- the first Arab news outlet to offer viewers in the Middle East uncensored information and free interpretation of political events. They pointed out that the channel interviews Israeli leaders and Arab government opposition leaders (something uncommon in the Arab world) and allows guests and viewers who call in to its programs to openly criticize Arab regimes and to discuss such taboo issues as sex, polygamy, political corruption and Islamic fundamentalism. They also argued that Al-Jazeera has unprecedented reporting freedom and a reach of 40 million people, because it receives a $30 million annual subsidy from the Qatar's Emir, who does not exercise editorial control, and because it employs over 50 correspondents from 31 countries.

"Because of its free-wheeling talk shows, Al-Jazeera has evoked the wrath of almost every Arab government," wrote Hussein Ibish and Ali Abunimah of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a Los Angeles Times editorial titled "Al-Jazeera Tells the War Story Unfiltered." They also wrote that "Among the more remarkable developments since Sept. 11 is that the Western monopoly on global news production has met its first serious challenge from a Third World Source."

Does Al-Jazeera provide unfiltered news? Is it broadcasting more accurate and in-depth war coverage of the war in Afghanistan than American networks? Is it revolutionizing Middle East media? And what are its biases?

AlterNet spoke with veteran journalist Lamis Andoni to get behind the controversy brewing over the "CNN of the Arab world." Andoni is an appropriate interlocutor. A native of Jordan, she has reported on Middle Eastern affairs for two decades, and has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Al Hayat (London), Al Ahram (Cairo), Le Monde Diplomatique and the Journal of Palestine Studies. She covered the War of the Camps in Lebanon from 1983-87, the Iran-Iraq war from 1984-88 and the Gulf War for the Christian Science Monitor. AlterNet spoke with Andoni from her home in Washington, D.C.