ShareThisAn editorial / By Dale McFeatters
Friday, November 10, 2006
In its 10 years of operation, Al-Jazeera, the Arab language news channel, has offended almost every country it has covered, including ours, and been frequently banned, so it must be doing something right.
Al-Jazeera's version of events in Iraq has been strikingly at variance with the Bush administration's, and the White House alternately courted it and denounced it and, according to one report, considered bombing it.
The Bush administration has spent hundreds of millions through the Pentagon and State Department promoting a positive view of the war in Iraq, and it has not spoken kindly with U.S. news media that said otherwise.
Al-Jazeera frequently _ the White House would say exclusively _ said otherwise. A story Tuesday on the channel's English language Web site about a U.N. monitoring agency began, "A new audit examining 15 contracts signed in Iraq has found new evidence of massive corruption and mismanagement by the U.S. government." (The report wasn't wholly critical of the U.S. It said that the corruption has become much worse since the Iraqis took over the contracts.)
And now, beginning Nov. 15, Al-Jazeera will begin an English language channel, hoping to compete with such international giants as CNN and BBC World, and is actively courting cable and satellite providers in the United States. Thanks to the deep pockets of its sponsors in Qatar, the channel has hired over 500 staffers for the new venture.
Al-Jazeera may indeed at times be hostile to the U.S. government, but it is the single most influential source of news in the Arab and much of the Muslim world. Relays of Republican congressmen returning from guided tours of Baghdad returned home with the ugly canard that Americans were getting a distorted picture of Iraq because U.S. reporters were afraid to leave their hotel rooms.
It is not a charge that can be leveled against Al-Jazeera, which, if anything, has been accused at times of being too close to the insurgency and broadcasting unnecessarily graphic footage of the violence in Iraq.
In the whole Iraqi venture, U.S. government policymakers have been guilty of hearing only what they want to hear and dismissing any information that conflicted with their agenda in the Mideast. Al-Jazeera may not be fair and balanced but, now that it's available in English, it shouldn't be ignored.
