Al-Jazeera, the Arab news network the Bush administration says is a tool of al-Qaeda, will launch Wednesday its English version, which will be available in 70 million households worldwide.
Al-Jazeera International will broadcast from Doha, Qatar, and from bureaus in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; London; and Washington, D.C. Cable and satellite distribution deals are expected to be announced today.
Programs will include talk and feature shows and several daily newscasts featuring live reports from the four regions with "different cultural views of the day's events," says Will Stebbins, AJI's Washington bureau chief.
"There's an appetite for international news that doesn't come from a specific national perspective," he says. "We're not going to have any accent."
Dave Marash, a former ABC Nightline correspondent who'll co-anchor a daily newscast, says Al-Jazeera got a black eye from the Bush administration for airing Osama bin Laden videotapes and live reports from Fallujah, Iraq.
Al-Jazeera reported news in both cases, he says, and its journalistic "aspirations, tactics and techniques" are like those of any mainstream news outlet. "No holds barred, political ideology, party affiliation. When people actually see the product, I think a lot of that (criticism) is going to go away."
The White House issued a tepid welcome. "A free press has the responsibility to report news responsibly and accurately, and we work with all outlets that do so," spokeswoman Dana Perino said.
In the USA, most cable firms have refused to give AJI channel space, which means, for now, AJI will primarily be available at English.aljazeera.net.
That will limit Al-Jazeera's reach, says Tom Rosenstiel of the Project for Excellence in Journalism. The Web "is the technology of the future, but it remains to be seen what kind of impact that can have as a platform for a largely TV-driven product."
