Al Jazeera, the most important Arab media outlet, is expanding, with a new English-language international channel due to begin broadcasting very soon.
The quality of news coverage by Al Jazeera International, as it is called, is yet to be seen. What we can do, in this pre-launch period, is analyze the content of the website.
Yesterday, several Palestinians were killed by the Israeli army. It might be instructive to examine how Al Jazeera covered this event in comparison with the coverage of other news agencies worldwide.
In this Jazeera article we are repeatedly told what the Israeli army did, but not alot of what was done to them.
Here is an example:
Two Palestinian fighters have died in a second Israeli army raid overnight, this time focusing on southern Gaza, Palestinian medical and police sources say.
The two men were killed early on Wednesday morning during clashes following an Israeli raid on the southern town of Rafah near Gaza's border with Egypt.
Israeli soldiers killed the pair as they approached army positions in the town, an Israeli army spokesman said.
Residents told Reuters news agency that a large Israeli force had reached as deep into southern Gaza as the Rafah terminal, a crossing to Egypt that is Gaza's only access to the outside world without passing through Israel.
Compare this Al Jazeera article with this one from a Chinese news site, China View :
GAZA, Oct. 17 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli army shot dead Tuesday seven Palestinians in clashes with Palestinian gunmen all over the Palestinian territories, medics and security sources said.
On Tuesday night, two Palestinian gunmen, members of Hamas' armed wing, were shot dead in a gun battle with Israeli soldiers in eastern Gaza Strip, medics at Gaza Shiffa Hospital said.
Security sources said that an Israeli unit rolled into eastern Gaza Strip on Tuesday night and clashed with several Palestinian gunmen, adding that two Palestinians were killed and one moderately wounded.
Also, an Israeli undercover unit shot dead two brothers, members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the Fatah movement's armed wing, as their car drove near the northern West Bank town of Nablus.
Three more Palestinians -- an Islamic Jihad (Holy War) militant and two teens, were also shot dead in the town of Qabatia near the northern West Bank city of Jenin.
While the Chinese article still mentions some atrocities - two teens killed - it goes alot further to show that the majority of those killed were combatants. The Al Jazeera article makes them seem more like victims. The farthest the Jazeera article goes in indentifying the slain Palestinians as militants is to call them "fighters", and to talk about "clashes" at one point. The language is vague. Vague enough to make it seem as if the two men were just walking near an Israeli army post when they were murdered.
Lets bring in a third for comparison. This from the website Monsters and Critics
Gaza - Israeli soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip killed two Hamas gunmen Wednesday during clashes east of the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah, medical officials and witnesses said.
Hamas sources said later that one of the two dead men had taken part in a June 25 cross-border raid during which an Israeli army corporal Gilad Shalit soldier was seized.
The source told Ramattan news agency that the 26-year-old Ashraf al-Muasher was a field commander in the Izz el-Deen al-Qassam Brigades, the Hamas' armed wing, and was also a member of 'anti terrorism unit' of al-Qassam.
This article goes even further than the Chinese, and leaps and bounds past Al Jazeera, in identifying one of the slain gunmen as an active, experienced, anti-Israeli combatant.
Does this all boil down to a slant in Al Jazeera's coverage? The news station repeatedly denies that it is biased, but your own bias is hard to see. To you, it just looks like the truth.
Al Jazeera broadcasts in Arabic for a primarily Muslim audience. It is reasonable to assume that they play to their gallery just as much as Fox news or Air America does. As such, their voice is a valuable contribution to the international debate. It will be interesting to see if the new network keeps step with the old.
Sue Kim @ October 18, 2006 - 10:10pm
I agree, but only as much as to the point that Al Jazeera, both in this specific report and in general, has its own flaws just like non-Arabic networks.
The main point of the very existence and success of Al Jazeera is that Arabs finally got a network where Arabs could tell their story not as a source but as a narrator.
More over, objectivity is often a matter of standpoint.
Majority of people in the Middle East, I presume, will see the dead ones as 'fighters,' regardless of what the the rest of the world will dub them. Calling the dead ones 'fighters,' not 'gunmen,' Al Jazeera's report will actually seem to be more objective and unprejudiced to those people. (A fighter indeed means someone who fights. Which I find quite accurate.)
Don't get me wrong. I don't think Al Jazeera's story was a masterpiece of journalistic perfection. I find it particularly irritating Al Jazeera did not mention the dead ones were members of Hamas. By omitting that tiny bit of information, Al Jazeera degraded itself to, say, cheerleaders.
That said, I find Al Jazeera's report fine. Not perfect, but fair enough. I don't have a problem with it. After all, Al Jazeera was objective as far as its standpoint permitted.
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