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The other air war over
Iraq
By Ian Urbina
The war in
Iraq will surely not only be a contest for oil, it will
also be a competition for television viewers as
al-Jazeera’s corner on this market could be up for
grabs. A number of upstart stations located everywhere
from London to Abu Dhabi have their hopes set on 
claiming a piece of al-Jazeera’s 35 million audience.
But in truth, there is only one competitor who has any
chance of pulling it off.
Al-Arabiya, a
Dubai-based Arab satellite news channel launched last
week, presently offers 12 hours of broadcasting a day -
with news bulletins, documentaries, interviews and
political talk shows - and next week (on March 3), the
station will begin around-the-clock transmission.
The $300 million in seed money for the channel
comes from an array of Saudi, Kuwaiti and Lebanese
investors, but the day-to-day operations of the station
will reside under the auspices of the Middle East
Broadcasting Center (MBC), which is owned by the
brother-in-law of Saudi Arabia's King Fahd. With 32 news
bureaus across the world, including in Iraq, Israel, the
Palestinian territories and the United States, MBC is
headed by Salah Nejem, a BBC veteran and chief editor of
al-Jazeera until 2001. In short, al-Arabiya could prove
to be a real heavyweight in the fight for access to an
increasingly growing media market.
Al-Arabiya is
billing itself as the less provocative alternative to
al-Jazeera, which airs controversial live talk shows
allowing viewers to call in to vent their anger at their
own leaders, Israel and the United States. Since all of
al-Arabiya’s interviews will be pre-recorded, it seems
clear that the station has no intention of opening such
a wide margin for discussion and debate. Consequently,
many wonder whether the station will be able to
accurately provide the diversity of opinion - truly the
good, the bad, and the ugly of the Arab world - to the
same extent that al-Jazeera does. More to the point,
many will also be watching to see if al-Arabiya is
willing to run critical pieces which invite the ire of
regional governments.
So far, the upstart
station seems to be marketing itself along just the
opposite lines, claiming that it will provide a more
polished and less sensationalist product. In an
interview in a specialist journal published by the
American University in Cairo, Nejem outlined
al-Arabiya's offering: "News with quality production and
editorial values, as well as a look on the screen and
the provision of opinions that respect the reason and
mentality and dignity of both the audience and our
guests and provides a broad range of opinions, rather
than going for the easy solution." Salah Kallab, a
former Jordanian information minister who will serve as
al-Arabiya's director-general, expressed a similar
vision: "We are not going to make problems for Arab
countries. We'll stick with the truth, but there's no
sensationalism."
Still, the real race will be
for Iraq. Much as the 1991 Persian Gulf War made a name
for CNN, and the war in Afghanistan put al-Jazeera on
the map, the present conflict will be the make-or-break
moment for broadcasters. In the beginning, many viewers
will surely channel surf toward the new station, if only
out of curiosity. But to succeed, al-Arabiya will need a
considerable amount of journalistic aggressiveness,
since polish alone will not land the breaking stories
that cause viewers to tune in and stay put. The measures
of merit will be credibility, broad and breaking news
coverage, speed in broadcasting news, and rigorous
investigation as well as politically tough stands when
it comes to the freedom to inform.
There will be
some other smaller competitors in the mix. Abu Dhabi TV,
which has 25 total correspondents, already broadcasts
eight hours of news and will have several correspondents
in Baghdad. An Algerian company, Khalifa TV, has been
transmitting for 12 hours a day since last November and
has intentions of expanding into a 24-hour all-news
channel. Owned by a wealthy Algerian businessman, Abdul
Muneim Khalifa, the station, which focuses primarily on
North Africa, will surely shift if and when the war
begins. Saudi-funded Al-Majd 2 is being billed as the
first English language Islamic satellite television
channel. It began transmissions last November from
studios in Dubai Media City, Riyadh and Cairo. The
channel is devoted entirely to the presentation of an
Islamic perspective for non-Arabic speakers.
There is also a new and noteworthy player in
Newsroom Ink, which is a recent partnership between the
London-based pan-Arab daily newspaper, al-Hayat, and the
Lebanese Broadcasting Company, mainly an entertainment
channel. Al-Hayat is owned by Prince Khalid bin Sultan,
Fahd's nephew, who invested $12 million a year in the
project. The collaboration will be run by Jihad Khazen,
a former Al Hayat editor and columnist, and will draw
from the newspaper's 69 correspondents to supply news
for LBC's three half-hour daily bulletins. However, some
sources claim that cracks are already forming in this
partnership, with the Lebanese and Saudi sides locked in
argument over the editorial line.
But with much
larger staffs and budgets, al-Jazeera and al-Arabiya
will mostly be battling only each other. While
al-Jazeera certainly has more of a track record, it has
also picked up quite a few enemies along the way, not
least of all among Arab governments. In the last year
alone, its correspondents have been expelled from
Kuwait, Jordan Algeria, and elsewhere.
The Bush
administration has also not been among al-Jazeera’s
fans. After the World Trade Center attacks, the State
Department called the station "inflammatory" for airing
a 1998 interview with bin Laden. In November 2001, US
forces bombed its Kabul office. The Pentagon said it was
an accident, but some at al-Jazeera were not so
convinced. But as Brian Whitaker has reported for the
Guardian of London, this time the station is not taking
chances. "We're giving the Americans the coordinates of
our office in Baghdad and also the code of our signal to
the satellite transponder," an al-Jazeera correspondent
remarked. "We will try to give the Americans the whole
information about where we are in Baghdad, so there will
be no excuse for bombing us. But we are worried."
Though it is al-Jazeera’s mark of pride, the
station’s rough and tumble approach could prove to be an
Achilles heel in the race with al-Arabiya. Over the past
months, Gulf Arab countries have refused or delayed
accrediting al-Jazeera journalists, and the channel’s
journalists are banned in Kuwait, a key American base
for the war and a likely staging ground for important
coverage. Al-Arabiya does not suffer this handicap.
Nevertheless, with more than a 50 percent share
of the news audiences in the Arab world, strong
correspondents and sources inside Iraq, and having
already personally interviewed the Iraqi leader, the
Qatari station is likely to stay ahead of its rivals in
covering the war.
In the meantime, the station
seems to stay one step ahead of the game. The
English-language counterpart to its Arabic website
should be coming online any day now, and the channel
also announced that next year, it will begin putting $20
million annually toward producing English-language TV
broadcasts.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
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