Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West Review

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Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West ReviewHaving been born in Qatar where my father worked for 25 years I am astonished by the emergence of Al-Jazeera and Hugh Miles' account of it. I do not feel that he is a cheer leader for Al Jazeera but objective. CNN's success is not through it's quality of news, personnel, or perspective, but due to its ability to market itself and garner huge advertisers into its fold and to make strategic business alliances. Al-jazzera's success is the opposite. It is financially disasterous, yet it's news is trusted by more viewers in the middle east than any other news organization.
Miles correctly points out that almost every country in the region has had its dirty laundry examined by Al-jazeera and in return has put pressure on Hamid Al -Thani to close down the organization or modify it. As has the US and Britain. Both nations have tried to dismiss Al-Jazeera as a mouth piece for Bin Laden. But I would argue that without Al Jazeera the other side of the coin would never see the light of day. CNN dutifully acts as a Washington sternographer and the BBC in its quest for ratings has also dumbed its news down and been very conservative, yet to its credit it has challenged the government on the legitimacy of the war and became embroiled in a battle with the government over it's "sexing" up of the weapons of mass destruction.
But both organizations have been left looking like "also ran's" by Al Jazeera which has shown the realities of war, the impact upon the civilians and the propoganda and misconduct propogated by the allies. So powerful was their news that the Bush administration arrogantly decided that the truth had to be obliterated and for the second time an Al-Jazeera bureau was struck by a US missile and a journalist was murdered.
Miles sense of outrage is quite tepid and with the benefit of hindsight and the recently disclosed knowledge that Bush was openly discussing attacking Al-Jazeera with Blair, his tameness on this issue is understood.
He examines the issue of tainted reporters and naively gives them the benefit of the doubt. There is often very little difference between a reporter and a spy. Reporters are ardently recruited by governments and the CIA has boasted of its highly successful recruitment of thousands of journalists and even editors. It is likely that Al-Jazeera has been penetrated by factions that have an agenda or even governments, but as a youthful organization they are far less tainted than their Western counterparts.
It was good to see Miles demonstrating the hypocricy of CNN and other news organizations whereby they demonize the network and then use its news pictures on their own network.
Miles doesn't really look at the long term future of Al-Jazeera. Which is probably wise. The West and Middle East governments have tried to create competitive news services in the area with very limited success. The survival of the organization is probably dovetailed to the longevity or whims of hamid Al-Thani, it's benefactor.
One thing for certain it offers as Miles says a far better diet than it's predecessors which showed endless coverage of the drollest minutiae in the local leaders affairs of state, usually greeting another local head of state, kissing him on both cheeks and then another stream of film of the the pair seated in a majlis sipping tea, followed by the signing of some obscure bipartisan treaty or trade agreement. This was usually followed by an enebriated ex-patriate reading the English news and then the drama of the days weather report. I would recommend this book to anyone who is intrested in fairness and accuracy in reporting or the media. I would not recommend it to anyone who watches CNN as their attention span may be too compromised to absorb waht lies between the covers.Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That is Challenging the West Overview

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