'i object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.' – Mahatma Gandhi For a long time, Al-Jazeera TV had been seen as a public sphere for the Arabs, a dramatic example of the theory of sudden change, or what the US academic Thomas S. Kuhn has termed a “paradigm shift” in the Arab media scene. It has mushroomed over the past two decades and penetrated almost all Egyptian homes, being presented as a form of resistance journalism, particularly during the years before the 25 January Revolution. However, Al-Jazeera's creditability has declined since 2011 because of its paradoxical coverage and interpretations of the transformation in the political situation in Egypt and Syria. Al-Jazeera's ostensible political agenda raises scepticism about its hidden identity and provokes an inquiry into its political mask. Al-Jazeera originally emerged as a pan-Arab media station with a distinctively different perspective, vigorous news strategies, and the courage and vision to debate the status quo of the Arabs. It constructed itself as a heroic institution in the Arab world. To put the matter simply, Al-Jazeera imbued its audience with the idea that it was symbolically fighting on behalf of the Egyptians and Syrians against the regimes led by former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad. It appeared, according to US academic James C. Scott's Domination and the Arts of Resistance, as a manifestation of disobedience to the hegemonic discourses prevailing in the media of the two regimes. In the eyes of Yosri Fouda, a former Al-Jazeera investigative correspondent and London bureau chief, Al-Jazeera emerged as “the rebel” and as a channel that tackled the reluctance of the Arab regimes to face new realities. Al-Jazeera also continued to serve as the model of a media that was both radical and risking repression, albeit one that was resilient enough to persist in its agenda. While being on the offensive in its screen incarnation, Al-Jazeera chose to position itself in an underdog niche, particularly in the field of reporting, where its crews have been almost routinely harassed or detained. Yet, people's perceptions of Al-Jazeera, particularly those of Egyptians, have dramatically changed since 30 June, 2013. Since then, Al-Jazeera has been receiving reproofs from most Egyptians for its “inflammatory” news coverage. The parameters of the Egyptians' critique of Al-Jazeera have been directly related to the channel's coverage of the aftermath of the removal of Mohamed Morsi, the former president of Egypt. To refer back to the paradox articulated at the beginning of this discussion, Al-Jazeera's coverage of the second Egyptian revolution on 30 June 2013, against the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi strongly suggests that it has been violating its own motto of “the opinion and the other opinion” simply because the channel has become the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood. It has also attempted to manipulate information. The examples are ample, but the most obvious instance concerns the number of protesters in Tahrir Square that Al-Jazeera reported on 30 June 2013. In response to the statements of the protesters, who said that millions of Egyptians had demonstrated against Morsi on 30 June, Al-Jazeera reported that the maximum capacity of Tahrir Square was only 800,000. Surprisingly, the number of people occupying Tahrir Square that Al-Jazeera reported during the 25 January Revolution was two million, however. Although Al-Jazeera was objective when it reported that the removal of the Rabaa Al-Adaweya protesters had been associated with an unexpected number of causalities and had led to bloody scenes, it has continued to overlook the violence in Sinai against the military and security forces. Its coverage continues to suggest that the “rulers of Egypt” are slaughtering the supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood. Al-Jazeera's response to accusations of being inflammatory and biased tends to be factious, particularly when this concerns the local media coverage. Although it is evident that the international media coverage has been focussing on one side of the story, reporting what Al-Jazeera English has described, in an article entitled “Egypt: Are Foreign Journalists Lying?', as a local media scene that is dominated by one narrative, Al-Jazeera's editorial line has been apparently playing the same game, focussing only on the Muslim Brotherhood's side of the story. Al-Jazeera has been exploiting the one-sided coverage of the local media as a pretext to defend the Muslim Brotherhood's agenda. It has also ignored the fact that some private media coverage celebrated the successes of Morsi, but that this coverage nevertheless could not sympathise with the point of view of the Muslim Brotherhood due to Morsi's mistakes that brought Islamic extremism and radical Salafis to Egypt. Al-Jazeera has refused to acknowledge the fact that many people in Egypt, including the former Muslim Brotherhood ally the Salafist Nour Party, wanted “an exit” from Morsi's rule, which they saw as no less “fascist” than that of the former Mubarak regime. Any professional media organisation must remain objective. But Al-Jazeera's coverage has been no less biased than the national media in Egypt. This biased coverage has been monitored by several media analysts, among them Ghaffar Hussein and Abdallah Schleifer. In an article written for The Commentator four months before the removal of Morsi on 18 February 2013, Hussein, a counter-terrorism expert, discussed “The Collapse of Al-Jazeera's Credibility”. He referred to an article published in the German magazine Der Spiegel in which Aktham Suleimen, an Al-Jazeera reporter based in Germany before leaving the channel, said that “before the beginning of the Arab Spring, we were a voice for change... a platform for critics and political activists throughout the region. Now, Al-Jazeera has become a propaganda broadcaster.” According to Hussein, many correspondents had quit the channel, among them Ali Hashim, Al-Jazeera's Beirut correspondent, who had left the channel because “Al-Jazeera takes a clear position in every country from which it reports — and one not based on journalistic priorities.” Two months after the removal of Morsi, Schleifer, professor emeritus of journalism at the American University in Cairo and a former NBC Cairo bureau chief, reaffirmed the change in the editorial line of Al-Jazeera since the establishment of Al-Jazeera Mubasher. Schleifer said that the bias of Al-Jazeera Arabic had influenced its sister English station, commenting that “Al-Jazeera English started to diverge from the news values it previously shared with channels broadcast by the likes of the BBC and France 24.” Looking at Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Syrian spring, Al-Jazeera has long been criticising the Syrian regime for fighting its own people, with the human cost of the war being one of Al-Jazeera's main concerns. Surprisingly, it has followed the editorial lines of the big three US cable channels, with a recent study conducted by Pew Research finding that Al-Jazeera shared the views of CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, which favoured a military intervention in Syria, particularly in the wake of the Syrian chemical weapons story. Whenever Al-Jazeera is criticised for putting graphic images of the victims of the Syrian conflict on the screen, it firmly responds that it is showing the grim face of the war. Al-Jazeera has repeatedly stated that its team will not embellish the face of the Syrian war. However, it did not question the human cost of the possible American strike against Syria. There have been controversial accounts of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the war in Syria. On the one hand, it is evident that Al-Jazeera played a vital role in spreading news about the uprising in Syria. Critics of Al-Jazeera, on the other hand, believe that Al-Jazeera's coverage of the war overlooks concerns over the presence of Al-Qaeda and other jihadist groups in the country. Some reports suggest that Al-Jazeera has moved far beyond being neutral towards practicing what media experts call “attack politics on a TV channel.” In March 2012, for instance, Hashim, a former Al-Jazeera correspondent, reported in Russia Today that “Al-Jazeera paid $50,000 to smuggle phones and satellite communication tools to Syria's rebels.” In a similar account, the Lebanese Al-Akhbar newspaper reported that Ahmed Ibrahim, formerly in charge of Al-Jazeera coverage in Syria, was the brother of a leading Syrian rebel. In order to remove the mask that Al-Jazeera adopts to cover its true editorial line, it is important to examine the common denominator that Al-Jazeera employs whenever it reports on Egypt and Syria. What makes Al-Jazeera distinctive is its attentiveness to the humanitarian side of the story, the human cost of any conflict. But in the eyes of its critics, Al-Jazeera reports have been aggressive, selective, demagogic, and sensationalistic. Many people are nevertheless still loath to abandon the view that the channel presents about itself, describing its identity, according to Al-Jazeera.net, as that of the pan-Arab media. The study I conducted on Al-Jazeera from 2001-2006 entitled “Imaging Identity: A Study of Al-Jazeera Online News” found that Al-Jazeera was the mouthpiece of the Muslim Brotherhood. In removing the channel's “humanitarian mask”, the study revealed that Al-Jazeera did not represent the views of all Arabs. Rather, it reproduced the marginalisation of Christian Arabs, while for the most part expressing the views of Muslim ones. Another Arab scholar, Kia Hafez, has reached parallel conclusions, saying that the viewpoint of moderate Islam is well presented on Al-Jazeera, but that the channel fails to recognise a significant part of the wider Arab viewpoint. Further investigation has showed that the representation of Islam has always been reflected on Al-Jazeera through the eyes of the Muslim Brotherhood's spiritual mentor Sheikh Youssef Al-Qaradawi. The question that remains unanswered is why it has taken media experts so long to recognise that Al-Jazeera is the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood. In most debates on the channel, the Islamists are presented as having more legitimacy, and they often enjoy the endorsement of the Al-Jazeera anchors. Since both those who speak from a pan-Arab perspective and the Islamists have matching views regarding the corruption and despotism that exists in the Arab countries, the distinction between the perspective of Al-Jazeera and its framework Muslim Brotherhood identity becomes blurred and is even sometimes unseen. The mask of Al-Jazeera has long covered its editorial face, but it has become clear that the channel has for long been the voice of the Muslim Brotherhood. The challenge it now faces is how it will be able to regain its credibility among the Arabs and whether the Egyptians in particular will ever be able to trust Al-Jazeera again. The writer is an assistant professor of mass communications, The Gulf University for Science and Technology, Kuwait.
