New TV stations set to take on Al Jazeera

From London to the Arabian Gulf, Arab journalists and investors are gearing up to challenge the primacy of Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based satellite TV channel whose professional if sometimes sensational 24-hour broadcasts have shattered taboos and created an appetite for unfettered news across the Arab world.

The onset of competition in unbridled reporting marks one of the most far-reaching changes in the Arab world over the past decade, transforming news media that, in spirit if not letter, were shadowed by an 1865 Ottoman Empire law that required journalists to "report on the precious health of the sultan."

It provides a striking window, too, on fear in Arab capitals over the impact on public opinion of a war against Iraq, and a sense that the conflict may be waged as much on the airwaves as on the battlefield.

A Saudi-owned company plans to launch an around-the-clock satellite news channel to compete directly with Al Jazeera, in time, it hopes, for war in Iraq. One of the Arab world's leading newspapers and an influential Lebanese entertainment channel have begun merging their news departments, with talk of another all-news station.

Other entrants, from Algeria and Britain, could be joined in the months ahead by a 24-hour Arabic-language news channel from Iran.

Al Jazeera, which gained fame after the September 11 attacks by airing taped messages from Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants, has planned its answer to the competition: After managing to irritate virtually every country in the region in Arabic, it now plans to expand into English, providing an alternative to what its journalists view as biased Western coverage.

It will unveil an English-language counterpart to its Arabic Web site next month and, by early next year, it plans English-language broadcasts designed to compete with CNN and BBC.

"Everybody's trying to open a TV station now," said Nart Bouran, the news centre director at Abu Dhabi TV, which has tried to challenge Al Jazeera's commanding popularity.

"All of a sudden, a lot of people have realised that media (are) so important and a degree of freedom is the only way to attract an audience. If you don't open up, nobody's going to watch."

But to succeed, journalists said, the new entrants must escape the inevitable tag their funding will bring. All, including Al Jazeera, have ties to governments through investment, advertising or facilities.

Whether those governments give the stations as long a leash as Qatar has granted Al Jazeera since its inception in 1996 remains a question.

"Once they start the channel, you will discover who's controlling them immediately," predicted Ibrahim Hilal, 32, an Egyptian journalist who took over as chief editor of Al Jazeera two months before September 11.

In an unusual experiment, the Lebanese channel LBC and London-based newspaper Al Hayat, which is owned by Prince Khalid bin Sultan, Fahd's nephew, have invested $12 million a year in a joint venture called Newsroom Ink.

Run by Jihad Khazen, a former Al Hayat editor and columnist, the venture has tapped the newspaper's 69 correspondents to supply news for LBC's three half-hour daily bulletins. Once a studio is finished being built, one of the bulletins will move from Beirut to London.

Khazen said that if the venture succeeds, there are plans for yet another 24-hour news channel. But he called the project "uncharted territory" and acknowledged problems in merging television and newspaper cultures.

One of his print reporters in the Gulf refuses to appear on television for religious reasons. Then there are consultants, he said, who "are driving me mad with talk of synergy."

And after decades editing four newspapers, the technology of television has proved intimidating. "They tell me things I've never heard in my life. I keep quiet and they think I'm wise," he said from London.

Without exception, all the stations are seeking to achieve with a war in Iraq what World War II did for Time magazine, the 1991 Gulf War did for CNN and the war in Afghanistan did for Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera, which opened an office in Baghdad in 1997, has spent months laying the groundwork for war. Its managing director, Mohammed Jassem Ali, has traveled repeatedly to the Iraqi capital, winning a meeting with President Saddam Hussain.

It plans to send ten reporters to join four already there, said Omar Bec, the station's director of newsgathering and operations. "Iraq will be the real competition," Hilal said.

Because of Al Jazeera's willingness to push the envelope, it has been expelled from Kuwait, Jordan and Algeria. After the September 11 attacks, the State Department called its coverage "inflammatory" and complained to Qatar about repeated airing of a 1998 interview with bin Laden.

In November 2001, U.S. forces bombed its Kabul office. The Pentagon called it an accident; Al Jazeera officials said otherwise.

Its coverage, particularly on talk shows that give wide license to Arab nationalist and opposition figures and no-holds-barred call-in programmes, has caused diplomatic problems between Qatar and virtually every Arab country.

To Al Jazeera's journalists, 55 correspondents in 35 bureaus, one person's sensationalism is another person's freedom. So far, that freedom has been guaranteed under Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Thani, the Qatari leader.

Al Jazeera's maverick quality has limited its commercial success. In 2001, Al Jazeera received an estimated $53 million in advertising, out of a total of $714 million for all satellite stations broadcasting to the region.

Of the total, three-fourths went to the Middle East Broadcasting Centre, Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) and Future, all well connected politically, according to Naomi Sakr, author of Satellite Realms: Transnational Television, Globalisation and the Middle East.

"I take my hat off to Qatar," said Jian Yacoubi, an Iraqi Kurd who works as senior programme producer at Al Jazeera. "No one can compete with us. Ask me why. Not because we are geniuses. We have only one secret weapon they don't have: freedom."