Veronica Pedrosa joins ‘hated’ al-Jazeera TV

The White House dismisses it as absurd. British Prime Minister Tony Blair flatly denies it. Political pundits describe it at best as a crude joke, a la Ronald Reagan’s prank while testing the mike for a presidential speech that he had just declared World War III. But an alleged secret British memo that President George W. Bush had planned to bomb al-Jazeera television station in April 2004 has provoked more twits about his policy in Iraq. And the to-do rages ironically in the midst of al-Jazeera preparations to open a broadcast center in Washington DC no less.

Going by world press editorials on the topic it would seem journalists are about evenly split on whether or not to believe that Bush would think of committing such atrocity. Bashers snort that it depicts Bush’s insensitivity to Middle East affairs, especially since al-Jazeera is based in Arab ally Qatar. Others aver that the issue is about press freedom, since al-Jazeera has been covering the Iraq war from behind insurgent lines, uncovering a side most Western and Arab outfits miss. Defenders point to the fact that the network never was bombed to show that it’s all a mountain out of a molehill.

The no-actual-bombing defense has bummed, and for painful reasons. US forces in the past had fired guided missiles – some say intentionally, the White House has apologized as accidents – into al-Jazeera bureaus in Kabul and Baghdad. The latter incident had occurred a day after the bureau chief, asked if he was worried about the US bombing runs, replied no because he already gave them his office coordinates. In the early months of the Iraq campaign, US military and allied units, including Arab ones, had barred al-Jazeera crews from briefings. Some reporters had been arrested, inciting press protests. Western policymakers have since been careful to accord the network’s crew the same treatment as others.

But the White House is still averse to contact with al-Jazeera. Press watchers believe it is all because of the station’s insistence on "a pan-Arab insight" in news and commentary. Al-Jazeera started beaming satellite news in 1996, funded by a liberal-minded emir of Qatar, precisely for that content. The Western world began to take notice when by sheer luck the unit opened a bureau in Afghanistan just before the US invasion to flush out Osama bin-Laden from Taliban coddlers. That accorded al-Jazeera an exclusive front seat to report the offensive. A White House official praised the station back then as "a beacon of freedom"; another, as "the most exciting" development in Arab media. Soon afterwards al-Jazeera scooped its Western rivals on a video showing bin-Laden to still be alive despite the US carpet-bombing of his mountain hideout. The network has since aired other videos of terrorist claims and hostages (but steadfastly refuses to this day to show beheadings). Its coverage of the Palestine intifada breakout in 2000 elicited huge sympathy for the Palestinians from viewers who saw them as fellow-Muslims and -Arabs. White House opinion of al-Jazeera changed. Bush has given two interviews to its Dubai-based rival, al-Arabiya, owned by a brother-in-law of Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd. But he has not exerted to reach out to al-Jazeera’s 60 million Arab and Middle Eastern viewers. This, in spite of indications of the network’s liberal bent. It was the first-ever Arab station to feature Israeli leaders as guests. It has tackled such public affairs topics as "Why is it that when an Arab leader dies, people moan as if the nation can’t live without him? What have these leaders ever achieved for us? Aren’t they symbols of corruption and backwardness and tyranny?"

The conservative Economist of London, a supporter of Bush, commented in Feb. that he might have missed a unique opportunity to present the US cause. It quoted Capt. Josh Rushing, a US military spokesman during the Iraq invasion, as saying his commanders should have realized that the best way to reach Arab audiences was via al-Jazeera: "They should identified this as mission critical."

Arab satellite TV outfits, the most popular of which is al-Jazeera, have changed the cultural and political landscape. By covering the annual haj live at Mecca, they have forced outlying emirates to adjust local calendars to the same as Saudi’s. They have taught Arabs to express their choices, even if only through text votes to American Idol-like TV contests. More than that, they have instilled a sense of an Arab metropolis. Middle Eastern watched how free elections were held in Lebanon and Iraq. Burka-clad women have begun to wonder why Muslim sisters in Turkey or coastal areas are allowed to drive, attend school and get elected to corporate boards.

Television too is democratizing erstwhile closed societies. And it is opening the minds of Arabs and Muslims. Another Economist report in Nov. shows radically changed opinions since 2002 against bin-Laden and violence on civilian targets in Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Turkey, Pakistan, to as far away as Indonesia.

It is with this backdrop that an al-Jazeera International is striking out independently of the mother station. "Al-Jazz", the nickname its founders gave the project that starts spring of 2006, would be a 24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel still headquartered in Doha but to be broadcast also from Washington, London, and Kuala Lumpur with material gathered by over 30 bureaus worldwide. The STAR columnist Carmen Pedrosa has written that BBC’s famed David Frost will head the London bureau, with talks ongoing for CNN’s venerable Riz Khan at the Washington desk. Her daughter, CNN’s award-winning Veronica Pedrosa, will be the principal anchor at the Kuala Lumpur center.

"I’m thrilled and honored to be joining the most exciting initiative in international news for decades," Veronica said. "Al-Jazeera International is going to offer viewers a genuine alternative to the western-dominated news of the past." Her European and American colleagues share the sentiment. They have covered events with a western perspective. Now they will turn around and add 60-80 million more viewers from the Arab and Muslim world.

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