Challenger or lackey?: The politics of news on Al-Jazeera

Abstract

Judged by appearances alone, few media outlets in the global South demonstrate contraflow in action as effectively as the Al-Jazeera satellite channel. The headline ‘Move over CNN: Al-Jazeera’s view of the world takes on the West’ (Cassara and Lengel, 2004) is fairly typical of countless examples portraying the Qatar-based 24-hour news channel as an influential challenger to a Western monopoly on international television news. If the significance of a particular source of contra-flow is measured in terms of this kind of brand awareness, then Al-Jazeera’s high profile is not in question. The channel had been operating for just five years when it soared to international prominence in late 2001, after the US government responded to the 9/11 suicide attacks by bombing Afghanistan. As the only television station already in Afghanistan since 2000, Al-Jazeera had unique access to footage that was much in demand by Western media organisations. Thereafter, its coverage of events in Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory in 2002 and the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 elicited strong reactions, especially from interest groups in the US. Although it was still broadcasting only in Arabic at this time, these reactions were strong enough to turn Al-Jazeera into a global household name. An advertising industry website reported in January 2005 that a poll of nearly 2,000 advertising executives in 75 countries had identified Al-Jazeera as the world’s fifth most recognised brand (Clark, 2005).

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