When Blairs Communications director visited...

[Vanhalen 0]

Great article this, Alistair Campbell for those who dont know, was essentially Blairs number 2 man, for a number of years, until he resigned after the Iraq war, now hes working back in the media

 

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/stor...1304737,00.html

 

I don't know what I expected from visiting al-Jazeera's HQ. I had had run-ins with the station in the past. Once, for example, I felt compelled to protest when its Baghdad reporter asked live on air whether the House of Commons had debated "reports of British soldiers executing Iraqi prisoners of war after taking them prisoner". There had been no such reports, so far as we were aware, and certainly no such executions.

 

More vocal, perhaps, were the complaints we made over gory coverage of UK casualties and the concerns we raised over the use of Osama bin Laden videos of unknown provenance and unclear intent. They were unapologetic about both. "War is war. It produces carnage and death," says Wadah Khanfar, its managing director. "Part of our job is to show that."

 

As for the videos, the Jordanian-born head of the Qatar-based station says they are aware of the dangers of being exploited. They take care to authenticate Bin Laden's voice. They never show the videos in full. They edit out anything that could be taken as an exhortation to kill.

 

But Bin Laden is a major figure in current affairs, he insists, not unreasonably. If the videos went to the BBC or CNN, they would happily use them. They go to al-Jazeera, he says, because, "We are more trusted and credible in the region."

 

Despite their robustness on the specific, they struck me as quite defensive in general. Though clearly proud of the impact they have made, in less than a decade of existence, they appear genuinely at a loss to know why they have become a source of such controversy, and a target of attack from US politicians in particular. Part of them seems pleased. "The more Rumsfeld attacks us, the more popular we are with our viewers," says the station's communications director, Jihad Ballout.

 

But Khanfar's view is that the Americans fail to see the wider significance of al-Jazeera. "The Americans call for reform. They call for freedom of expression. For democratisation, liberalisation. We have been part of that process, helping create real and lasting change in society, give people a voice. We are part of the march towards reform in the Middle East. They cannot see it," he says. Jihad Ballout adds: "We have broken many political and social taboos in the region. But the main contact we get from the Americans is the attacks from the politicians and the visits from the ambassador complaining about our coverage."

 

That night, channel hopping in my Doha hotel room, I had a clearer understanding of Khanfar's point. In look, and feel, al-Jazeera is now not unlike American or European 24-hour news channels. Presenters attempting gravitas, not always with success. Pictures as lively and graphic as possible. The bottom of the screen busy with explanations of stories that are coming or have just gone. When a major international story is running, it is sometimes only the language that really sets the channels apart.

 

But sandwiched in between are the state-controlled television stations of the region. Omani TV news leads with pictures of the sultan shaking hands with a succession of smiling men leaving his palace, soothing music the only commentary. Kuwaiti TV has happy children singing traditional songs. Saudi TV is broadcasting prayers from a mosque. Raised on western media, we are so used to a modern, vibrant media that perhaps we underestimate the scale of change that al-Jazeera has wrought in the region, given relative freedom by its main backer, the Emir of Qatar. It also explains why several Arab regimes have condemned it from time to time - most recently the interim Iraqi government which shut its office in Baghdad.

 

To the western eye, the station is presenting events unashamedly from an Arab perspective, particularly its coverage of the Israel-Palestine question. Given the makeup of its viewers, this is hardly surprising. Nor is its Iraq coverage comfortable viewing. But as it presses on with plans for an English language service, expanding its 23 bureaux and rebranding itself as "al-Jazeera International", it may be time for American and other western governments to think afresh about how to deal with it.

 

When I worked for the government, we established in the Foreign Office an Islamic media unit whose task was to reach out both to the Muslim community at home and the Arab media abroad. Though small in number, the team was highly effective. The then head, a 29-year-old fluent Arabic speaker named Gerard Russell, regularly appeared on al-Jazeera and other Arab media. Once it noticed that we were making an effort, the channel regularly asked for other western voices. On my visit to Qatar, where I was speaking at an unrelated conference, I found myself invited on live to talk about current events, and the next day I was asked to do a sit-down, half-hour interview with a former London correspondent. As expected, he mainly focused on Iraq, the Middle East, the Bush-Blair relationship, and "spin", but I was more struck by his good old-fashioned view that interviewers ask a question, hear the answer, then ask a follow-up and so let a conversation flow.

 

It was partly to get the chance to visit al-Jazeera that I accepted the offer to speak at the conference in Qatar. Because of where it is and the scale of change it represents, it is a fascinating political and media story. Whenever I spend time in British or other western TV stations, my views of them tend to be reinforced by the experience. Here, I found my mind opening to the possibility of a very different perspective to the one I had arrived with.

 

Though al-Jazeera has the same 24 hours to fill, it is a tiny operation compared to Sky News, let alone the BBC. The newsroom is about a third the size of the newsroom at BBC Bristol. The canteen is minuscule. As the al-Jazeera phenomenon has grown, so has the collection of Portakabins that house many of the staff. There is one control room, again a fraction of the size of any I have seen in the west, with a young North African directing a young, multinational team. There was a hand-to-mouth feel to activity inside the studio. A few seconds before we were due live on air, the floor manager was under the desk trying to plug in my connection to an interpreter, who seemed to share my surprise that one of the first questions was about a poll on the relative merits of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. My meeting with the senior management forms a small part of a Channel 5 documentary being broadcast tonight, which covers my transition from Downing Street to something approaching a more normal life. But what that cannot capture, in the way a series of meetings over a couple of days could, is the complexity of al-Jazeera's situation. I thought they would be cocky and brash because they had made themselves into the media story of the last decade. In fact, I found them worried about the way they were perceived, and genuinely perplexed by what they saw as a one-dimensional American view of their output. They see themselves as agents of change, but condemned as part of a dangerous status quo. They report anti-Americanism, but deny anti-Americanism is part of their ethos. There is widespread coverage of anti-Americanism in South America and Asia, even in Japan, says Khanfar. But it goes unnoticed. "We are unfairly treated in the way we are singled out."

 

I thought they would be more hostile to Britain. Blair as Bush's poodle was a line I heard more than once (always accompanied by the observation that the jibe was coined in the west and not by them.) But though the hostility to President Bush was clear, there was a greater understanding of the complexities of the Blair position than I had expected. Some felt that at least he was trying on the Middle East and understood the urgency, even if - in their view because of the Americans and Israelis - he was not getting as far or as fast as he would like.

 

On one occasion, a woman member of the al-Jazeera staff asked the Channel 5 people to stop filming and asked to speak to me away from any cameras. She was close to tears. She was from Iraq. She said, "Please tell Blair that he did the right thing, and my family are grateful that Saddam has gone." She said that there were more who thought it than we might think, even if it was not the done thing to say so.

 

I left the small dusty compound wishing I had found time to go there, as Gerard Russell had urged me to, when I had been in Downing Street. I wish we had done more to persuade the Americans that like them or not, al-Jazeera represents an opportunity as well as a potential threat. It is why I argued that the ability to communicate on pan-Arab media should be an important consideration in ambassadorial appointments to the region. Qatar is a country of just 500,000 people. British or American faces with good links to al-Jazeera can reach millions on a regular basis.

 

It may well be that Jihad Ballout - could there be a better name for an Arab spin doctor? - saw me coming and put together a very effective operation to lead me to a more measured view than the one I left London with. It may simply be that they have a point, and they put it well. Whether I was lulled or not, the truth is that the station is now a significant media player. It will become more so when the English language service comes on stream. Western politicians should feel free to attack it if they think it deserves it. But there is a case for a more engaged approach. It is no good just complaining that your policy is constantly misrepresented. You have to engage in the task of putting your case, whatever you think of the medium, and you will probably do the job better if you try to understand where the medium is coming from.

[Zorin Industries 0]

Funny, I was thinking of posting this. The fact that it comes from Campbell himself does increase the validity of the article