I Want My Al-Jazeera

Michael Hedges October 17, 2005

The Al-Jazeera television network moves further into the mainstream, asking Sir David Frost to present a program on its soon-to-be launched English-language service. Al-Jazeera International will be previewed, along with other offerings, at the Media and Marketing Show in Dubai.

Frost is but the most recent – and most high-profile – addition to the Qater-based broadcasters team. Behind the scenes are more than a few television professionals with backgrounds at the BBC, ITN and ITV. Al-Jazeera International’s managing director Nigel Parsons came from Associated Press Television News (APTN) and had previously worked at the BBC.

On the job a bit more than a year, Parsons is looking for still more talented journalists. When the channel launches officially next year he’ll need 300 to staff the four major broadcast centers. Fortunately for Parsons, with broadcasters and newspapers cutting back on foreign bureaus, he’ll have, as they say, the pick of the litter. Middle Eastern State broadcasters are complaining that al-Jazeera is poaching their talent for the English-language channel, the sports and children’s channels.

Another recent Parsons pick is former US Marine Corps Captain Josh Rushing, once stationed in Iraq as a CENTCOM public information officer, for the Washington DC bureau. After a central role in the documentary Control Room in which he was shown questioning media coverage of Iraq, Rushing left the Corps and was headed to a PR job in Houston, Texas. Last week (October 11) Murdoch-owned Fox News promoted an interview with Rushing using his photo captioned “TRAITOR?”

Sir David, who has interviewed the last six British prime ministers, the last seven US presidents as well as dozens of the world’s more interesting personalities, will enjoy “total editorial control” over the program, yet without name, format or time-slot. Al-Jazeera is targeting the world’s billion or so English-speaking television news watchers. Distribution, not content, has always been its biggest challenge. Adding top-tier Western journalists like Frost may not assure wide cable distribution but it goes a very long way in solving the problem.

US officials, notably Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, find al-Jazeera a thorn in its side. Rumsfeld, reported by the AP in June, said the network promoted terrorism by showing beheadings and other attacks. Rumsfeld also said German television coverage of Iraq was “more biased than al-Jazeera.”

Frost told the Washington Post he “checked out” al-Jazeera with the British and US governments, which gave the network “a clean bill of health in terms of its lack of links with terrorism.”

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