The newsroom at Al-Jazeera International on K Street is newer than most — everything is digital — but producers and editors monitor events around the globe via computer just as they do at CNN, NBC, ABC and CBS.
Competitors, however, “are owned by conglomerates that determine what they do and don’t do,” while AJI is bankrolled by the emir of Qatar, says producer Sol Levine, who once ran CNN’s Crossfire. “His only directive has been to be different, balanced and to report what people don’t see on other networks.”
AJI viewers “will hear voices, many of them angry and unhappy from the southern portion of the globe that you may not see on any of our competitors’ networks,” says anchor Dave Marash, a former Nightline correspondent.
Says Marash: “Even if you think about it in the most adversarial way, you want to know your enemy, and a lot of people consider themselves our enemy, so better we should know what’s on their minds than to pretend it isn’t there.”
The Pentagon remains outwardly cool toward Al-Jazeera for what it perceives as pro-terrorist coverage.
But AJI talk show host Josh Rushing, a former U.S. Marine captain who served as a spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, says that “senior military officers” are glad they will now be able to watch AJI coverage in English and will have the chance to appear on the channel. Rushing says AJI will appeal to Americans who “are craving alternative sources of information and are comfortable with it.”
Ghida Fakhry, who will co-anchor with Marash, says American viewers, “once they see this is not some new monster when the word ‘Al-Jazeera’ appears on the screen, will slowly look at it and see that this is very different from the rhetoric they have been hearing about the network.”
Harvard media analyst Alex Jones says Arabic Al-Jazeera may “have a blood-and-thunder version for the Arab world and something more like the BBC for the West.”
Cable news competitors are unfazed. Fox News had no comment, and MSNBC said AJI is not on its radar. Said CNN spokeswoman Laurie Goldberg: “There are almost 100 news channels around the world, and AJI becomes another.”
But AJI, which will focus on Africa, South America, Asia and the Middle East, “will undoubtedly appeal to a segment of the global audience, particularly in developing countries” often ignored by mainstream media, says Richard Sambrook, director of BBC Global News.
Says AJI producer Kelly Rockwell, who used to work at CBS and ABC News: “We know there’s going to be scrutiny, so we’re making sure we are as balanced as possible. We’ll have such a global audience that we are going to be criticized, so we are going to be very cautious in our delivery. That has been drilled from Day One.”
