Al-Jazeera named an agent of democracy, not terrorism

By Dahr Jamail

DOHA, Qatar (IPS/GIN) - The Al-Jazeera television network is gaining international respect for defending its journalistic mission and press freedoms, despite harassment from U.S. officials who call it a “terrorist network.”

“I support Al-Jazeera because Al-Jazeera has done more to propagate democracy in the Middle East region than anybody else, certainly more than the American government has done,” media specialist Hugh Miles said. “It’s strange to me that people refer to Al-Jazeera as a ‘terrorist network’ because that couldn’t be further from the truth.”

Mr. Miles spoke to IPS at the third annual Al-Jazeera forum, which took place Mar. 31 to Apr. 2 in Doha. The forum highlighted the successful recent expansion of the network while also addressing difficulties that reporters face in the Middle East hot spots.

Mr. Miles, author of “Al- Jazeera: How Arab TV News Challenged the World” and an award-winning freelance journalist, said former U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld had got it wrong on Al-Jazeera.

“Al-Jazeera has been called a ‘terrorist network’ or ‘the voice of (Osama) bin Laden,’ but this just demonstrates deep ignorance of its history and the channel,” he said.

The 10-year-old Al-Jazeera network weathered a U.S. military attack on its Baghdad office during the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in April 2003. It faced accusations from Mr. Rumsfeld that it promoted terrorism by airing beheadings and other attacks.

Al-Jazeera editors say the channel has never aired a beheading, nor does it support terrorism.

Other leading voices at the forum spoke in support of the channel, which has been under frequent attack of all kinds. The forum, titled “Media and the Middle East: Going Beyond the Headlines” brought journalists, international media leaders and scholars from around the world to discuss critical issues facing the media, with a focus on in-depth journalism.

Abdul Bari Atwan, editor-in-chief of the London-based Arabic newspaper al-Quds al- Arabi said, “journalists should unite and raise our voices to say ‘no’ to this kind of brutal treatment by the leader of the free world, by people who are representing freedom. We should stand united against the new wave of embedded journalism because this is censorship.”

Many other journalists are detained without fair trial. Al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj, a Sudanese national, was detained by the U.S. military in Afghanistan in December 2001. He has yet to be charged, and continues to be held as “enemy combatant” at Guantanamo Bay.

On Aug. 7, 2004, the U.S.-backed Iraqi interim government led by former CIA asset Iyad Allawi, shut down the Iraq office of al-Jazeera, claiming that it was presenting a negative image of Iraq, and charging the network with “fueling anti-coalition hostilities.”

That makes it similar to the Inter Press Service (IPS/GIN) news agency, said IPS director-general Mario Lubetkin. Al-Jazeera has much in common with IPS because the Arab network “goes for the news behind the news,” and “because they cover the south,” he said.

The forum addressed several issues such as parachute journalism, journalism of depth and the new media. But the dominant theme remained attacks on journalists in an increasingly difficult global environment.