United States vs. Al Jazeera
I’ve always been a fan of Al Jazeera. It is a force for change in the middle east, shining the light on areas that regional leaders prefer to keep in the dark. Al Jazeera is truly independent, pretty objective in its reporting. It has annoyed most Arab countries at one time or another, and has often been kicked out or sanctioned. It was the first Arab station to interview Israeli officials.
It was precisely this objectivity that angered the United States during the Iraq war. Remember, American media simply does not allow certain views to be aired, especially when it comes to the effects of American or Israeli policies. We all know that in the Iraq war, the media abandoned all pretense of objectivity and got in line behind the war machine. But just as Al Jazeera does not kow-tow to regional dictators, it does also not kow-tow to the Americans military either. This made Al Jazeera a breath of fresh air – a voice on the ground willing to challenge the official narrative and present the facts – and the deaths. Even today, it is almost impossible to get English-language Al Jazeera on American cable, which is a real pity as it offers the best coverage of the Egyptian protests by far.
The attacks on Al Jazeera during the Bush years go well beyond official frustration. They verge on war crimes. Consider this list:
* The Bush administration bombed its offices in Afghanistan in 2001.
* In 2003, the US military shelled the Basra hotel, where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests, and killed Iraq correspondent Tareq Ayoub a few days later in Baghdad.
* The Bush administration imprisoned and tortured numerous Al Jazeera journalists. Cameraman Sami al-Haj spent seven years at Guantanamo.
* The Bush administration periodically banned Al Jazeera from reporting in Iraq, putting it in the same company as Saddam Hussein.
* After Al Jazeera showed that the US was indeed killing civilians in Falluja (against the official propaganda), the journalists were fired upon by tanks and fighter jets. The house where the reporters had spent the night was bombed, killing the owner. They had to stop reporting as fighter jets would target them and open fire.
* In a 2004 meeting with Tony Blair, George Bush proposed the bombing of Al Jazeera headquarters in Qatar.
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Verge on war crimes?
Yes, quite the understatement!!!
At some point in the future, as the American Empire fizzles out into a stew of depravity and hypocrisy, some ones or a few of these war criminals are going to be caught in foreign capitals, just as Pinochet was, and an effort is going to be made to bring them to justice. God or the gods always do this with their kind of hybris.
The reputation of the decadent, imperialist and ersatz republic of America WILL be blackened by future historians, just as hubristic, war-mongering Athens was, by the historians of the Peloponnesian War. The decline of America as a self-confident, virile and ethically strong society will be associated by such historians with these actions.
I watch Al Jazeera often as well, although mostly to try to understand the Arab point of view, which we generally do not share, since we do not look at world events from the same position. My favorites are Fault Lines, Inside Iraq, and 101 East.
I believe Al Jazeera is controlled by the Qatar Media Corporation, which is in turn run by the government of Qatar’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Still, Al Jazeera carries much more and better coverage of the developing world than US news outlets. It’s probably worth noting the channel’s slogans are “reversing the North to South flow of information” and “setting the news agenda.”
AJ English’s reporting is very similar to the BBC, and they scored oints when they landed Sir David Frost, CNN’s Riz Khan, and Josh Rushing, a US Marine vet journalist. Although it stresses Arab suffering and anti-US themes pretty heavily at times. Definitely an interesting alternative source of current events coverage.
Interesting you wrote al Jazeera is “shining the light on areas that regional leaders prefer to keep in the dark.” Of course, al Jazeera means “the island” or “oasis”, which is characterized by shade. Their logo is their name in arabic stylized as a shade tree. While western news organizations frequently have names like “The Sun” or “The Beacon”.
We ought to be careful not to project our western image of journalistic objectivity and the role it performs in our society onto alternative news outlets.
After looking into it a bit, it seems the organization was named Al Jazeera, the island, in order to show its independence. The logo was selected by the Emir of Qatar as the winner in a design contest. Interesting.
A disturbing post to be sure, MM. If I might ask, where are you getting this information? Can we know it’s credible? How can we know your interpretation of what happened is credible. If both are credible, what does that say about American foreign policy and the military?
There’s a bunch more question I could ask, but that will do for now.
The Bush administration’s targeting of Al Jazeera is well documented.
Remember ten years ago we were all learning unfamiliar terms, trying to figure out what “al qaeda” “al jazeera” “sunni” “jihad” and so forth meant. Many Americans continue to lump the news network with the terror organizations. To be fair, AQ uses AJ as their primary method of commo with the world, even more so in those early years.
Now, we do recognize the human tendency to not understand others is not one-sided. Don’t we? Or should we rather attribute this exclusively to evil in the hearts of US politicians of the other side of the aisle?
OK I’ll happily do my own research. Assuming that the US military targeted Al-Jazeera, I have to wonder “why?” The easy and perhaps correct answer is that the US military targeted Al-Jazeera for propaganda purposes. I wonder about the internal narrative of the individual(s) who decided to start targeting journalists and by extension civilians. Perhaps it was this: “Innocent people are dying because of our actions. If the world sees this, Arabs, Europeans, and, worst of all, Americans might begin to oppose the war in a potentially troublesome way.” Or, was it something different. I also wonder what this says about our country and our democracy.
This is not US military targeting journalists to silence them and hide the atrocities they are planning to commit. Remember the US forces were embedding reporters into their formations to report on the war, and the editors in NY and Washington didn’t like it because the reports showed by-and-large the stroy of US soldiers trying hard to fight nobly to defeat the Iraqi army and take down Saddam Hussein’s regime and doing well. Abu Gharaib, Second Fallujah, and other problems were the exception, not the plan.
My experience tells me the US Army targeting process makes great efforts to avoid civilian casualities, but does consider “effects.” The tricky part is the secondary, and third order effects, which are quite hard to predict with much accuracy.
I think FF’s last point is a very good one. I spend a bit of time reflecting on that these days myself.