Al-Jazeera is scheduled to launch an English language channel by the end of 2005 to reach out to a wider international audience, reports Mustafa El-Menshawy The latest Osama Bin Laden video was aired by Al-Jazeera on 4 November, but was noticeably different from his earlier messages. Containing English subtitles, at Bin Laden's request, this broadcast primarily addressed an American English-speaking audience rather than the usual Arabic speaking one. The Al-Qaeda leader wanted English-speaking viewers to tune into his favoured Arabic-language conduit and watch his fiery statements. Despite its short eight-year history the Qatar- based satellite channel boasts an audience of 35 million and has become as much a global player as CNN and the BBC World Service. Indeed, it was its highly professional staff and sophisticated technology that boosted Al-Jazeera's hard-hitting style of journalism. Where Arab broadcasters have traditionally been little more than governmental mouthpieces, Al-Jazeera has continually sold exclusive footage to other global broadcasters. Now, after more than three years of planning, Al-Jazeera is ready to take its popularity one stage further with the launch of a 24-hour English- language channel. "We will not be a direct translation of the Arabic channel. We will target anyone who speaks English," Nigel Parsons, the managing editor of Al-Jazeera International, told Al- Ahram Weekly. When asked how his nascent project could compete with well-established broadcasters such as CNN, BBC or Sky News, Parsons confidently responded with: "We will simply try to be a balanced and credible world channel." The channel officials have defined their target audience through meticulous planning. Four hours of live broadcasts, including news, current events, sports, documentaries and some entertainment programmes are planned as the focal point of each day. Another 12 hours will be broadcast from Al-Jazeera's headquarters in Doha and four hours each from its bureaus in Washington and London. At least four hours of the 24-hour station will be dedicated to Asia, a regional target for the new broadcaster. An office either in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur or Singapore will be established for this purpose. "We want to reach out to the large number of Muslims in Asia who do not speak Arabic and want to follow the news of their areas of interest," Jihad Ballout, the spokesman for Al-Jazeera, told the Weekly. Also, if Al-Jazeera International maintains the Arab and Islamic identity of its Arabic-language sister station, the new broadcaster could also potentially lure millions of Muslim viewers living in the West. Analysts and experts believe Al-Jazeera International will be a big success. "They have a better chance of accommodating a varied audience, judging by the channel's intention to focus on such areas as Asia and the Middle East, which Al- Jazeera knows better than other media outlets," said Abdallah Schleifer of the Adham Centre for Television Journalism in Cairo. Schleifer, the executive producer of Control Room, an award- winning American documentary on Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq invasion, stated that hundreds of thousands of Americans who watched the documentary in the US were convinced of Al- Jazeera's neutrality. Though while "there is no way for Al-Jazeera International to ensure as many viewers as CNN or BBC, it could be a second choice for viewers," he added. Upon going live the channel will have several hurdles to overcome. The first challenge is finding a foothold amid a plethora of English- language broadcasters. "I already have a vast selection of TV news channels bringing me international news in English. So it's not really a question of Al-Jazeera being unacceptable, just that I feel the news is saturated," Kate Howells, a British-based media producer, told the Weekly. However, Howells said that "if Al-Jazeera is promoting the new English channel as a gateway to understanding what and how the Arab world is thinking, that could be a useful comparative source of news for me." Admitting the fierce competition, Al-Jazeera spokesman Ballout said Al-Jazeera International could be a "complementary source of news" rather than the only source to English-language viewers. Second, the new channel could come under virulent criticism by the US and British governments. Al-Jazeera has been demonised as a mouthpiece for terrorists -- a charge vehemently denied by the station. Al-Jazeera's accreditation to cover the New York Stock Exchange was cancelled after the station showed pictures of captured US prisoners in Iraq in March 2003. US warplanes had already attacked the station's Kabul office during the Afghan war in 2001 and went on to bomb the Al-Jazeera Baghdad office, killing one of its correspondents, in April 2003. The US-allied Iraqi government also closed the office of Al-Jazeera indefinitely in September after it aired US aerial strikes on Falluja at the same time as US military officials said they were committed to a cease-fire. The Al-Jazeera website, launched in March 2003 after the start of the US invasion, was repeatedly attacked by hackers unhappy about its the hard-hitting war coverage. "The Zionist lobby will mobilise against Al- Jazeera International as it will probably pose a challenge to the US vested interests," said Trevor Partiff, a British associate professor of political science at the American University in Cairo. Partiff also expects a vicious campaign from media tycoons who control television in the US and Britain to push Al-Jazeera out of the race. The airing of tapes of Bin Laden and Iraqi kidnappers could provide fodder for such a smear campaign. However, Partiff believes that Al-Jazeera will brave the smear campaign by objective coverage of exclusive news and talk shows. The station's officials said they will have an editorial policy independent from that of the Arabic language channel, a chance, they hinted, for avoiding usage of such terms as "US occupation forces", "Palestinian martyr attacks" and "Iraqi resistance fighters". Still, some analysts go to the other extreme. "The channel will end in failure, a conclusion I can make from the Al-Jazeera.net English- language website, which offers poor and outdated news, mostly taken from news wires," said one broadcast journalist on condition of anonymity. Al-Jazeera International, with 300 employees worldwide, will also be a lean operation by Western standards when compared to CNN's 4,000 and BBC News' 3,300 employees. Al-Jazeera refused to reveal the budget of the new channel, but they hope to be self-funding within three to five years. While this means it will initially be financed by the Qatari government, Al-Jazeera officials insist that the new channel will maintain its editorial independence. They hope to avoid the same advert boycott as its Arabic-language sister station suffers as a result of their broadcasting interviews with Arab opposition leaders and thus drawing the ire of the Arab governments dominating the ad market. No stranger to controversy, Al-Jazeera has always survived earlier battles by waiving its motto, "The opinion and the other opinion" -- similar to the Anglo-American journalistic axiom "both sides of the story". What remains to be seen is whether Al-Jazeera International will survive its biggest battle to date against powerful opponents in the English-language media market and potential trashing from those opposed to "the other opinion".
