Bias in the Matchbox

My summer travels culminated in front of a casual security gate staffed by two maroon-clad Qatari soldiers. Past the gate, a 100-yard walk in 120-degree heat took me through the parking lot to the driveway of a small, low-set building with portable housing units scattered about. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak visited this place—the headquarters of the Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera—he surveyed the small compound and exclaimed: “All this noise comes from this matchbox!”

Depending on your point of view, Al-Jazeera is either a shining example of independent Arab media or an infamously irresponsible, biased news outlet. Whether it’s airing exposés on government corruption in Saudi Arabia, discussing political Islam on one of its talk shows or broadcasting graphic images of American corpses being dragged through Baghdad, Al-Jazeera doesn’t shrink from controversy. Biased or not, Al-Jazeera as a media outlet is certainly “free” in the fullest sense of the word. With its unhindered reporting style, Al-Jazeera has lit a fire under Arab governments, Western governments and the Arab “street” alike.

Al-Jazeera’s free-wheeling, emotional style of reporting has attracted criticism from all angles. Media intellectuals fear that Al-Jazeera is setting a bad example for Arab media by not adhering stringently to Western media practices. Arab leaders chafe under the bad press they get for denying their people a say in government—Al-Jazeera has single-handedly ruined relations between Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And American government officials fear that the mix of pan-Arab nationalism, muted Islamism and outright anti-Western bias espoused by the station will only incite the Arab world to new heights of anti-Americanism.

The bias is real. But is Al-Jazeera more partial than some of America’s own pillars of 24-hour news media? Comparing the anchors and talking heads doesn’t reveal much. To call Jamal Rayyin, an Al-Jazeera news anchor who told me that Jews were behind the September 11 attacks, more biased than Ann Coulter, a popular Fox pundit who told America that liberals were really to blame for the tragedy, seems like a useless exercise anyways. The place to look to uncover bias will always be off camera. In Al-Jazeera’s case, you’ll find that literally all of the station’s top executives—the people who draw its editorial line, produce its documentary pieces and run its day-to-day operations—have a larger than normal bone to pick with Israel and its closest ally, the United States. That’s at least in part because nearly all of upper management at Al-Jazeera is Palestinian or Jordanian (which is usually code for “Palestinian refugee living in Jordan”).

This bias is reflected in the tenor of any reporting that Al-Jazeera does on the Arab-Israeli conflict and on the current war in Iraq. Pieces about the Arab-Israeli conflict often lack a serious exploration of the Israeli side of the story, although recently Al-Jazeera has started to cover official Israeli press conferences more diligently. Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Iraq is no different. Where CNN runs special reports entitled, “The Struggle for Iraq,” Al-Jazeera’s English website features reports with the slightly more succinct title: “Iraq Under Occupation.” Al-Jazeera’s title reflects an editorial stance that the U.S. presence in Iraq is indeed an occupation. CNN’s title is vague enough to be reasonably objective.

There’s no denying that Al-Jazeera has some severe problems with bias that affect the way it presents the news. By the same token, it’s hard to blame the station for sharing the partiality of its viewers who tune in everyday. It’s a proven fact that people the world over tend to consume media that share their own personal opinions. A pro-democracy, anti-Israel Lebanese person watches Al-Jazeera for the same reason a pro-life, pro-Bush Texan watches Fox. Al-Jazeera has to cater to its viewership or risk becoming worse than biased: unwatched.

Al-Jazeera’s critics need to recognize two things. The first is that a homegrown, Western-style media outlet is not going to arise from the pebbled Qatari soil full-formed. The vast strides that Arab media have made since Al-Jazeera first began broadcasting in 1996 are impressive. Before Al-Jazeera, nearly all Arab media were state-controlled. Now the city of Dubai is selling space in its “Media City” at a brisk pace. Obviously, there is more work to be done. Al-Jazeera’s staff must learn to suppress their personal opinions more effectively, even when making everyday reporting decisions about the wording of articles and headlines. Indeed, the station recently hosted a forum on media bias and has developed a training regimen for aspiring Arab reporters. Al-Jazeera can’t be faulted for not trying to bring its reporting standards, and the reporting standards of the entire Arab world, up to Western specs.

More important, however, Al-Jazeera’s critics must understand that media and media consumers have a symbiotic relationship. When U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell demands that Al-Jazeera be more fair to America in its coverage of the Iraq war, he might as well demand that the entire Arab world treat the United States more fairly. Media reflect the society they are born from—the society that they serve. You can’t change the underlying assumptions of a media outlet without changing the underlying assumptions of its consumers. To make Al-Jazeera kinder towards America, America is best off being kinder towards the Arab world.

Sweating outside of Al-Jazeera’s Doha headquarters, I reflected on all this; and then I trudged inside to meet the station’s Editor-in-Chief. He told me something that will test whether media outlets change to meet the demands of their consumers once and for all: Al-Jazeera is launching an English channel this coming spring.

Alex Slack ’06 is a history concentrator in Leverett House. His column appears on alternate Fridays.