Q&A: Al Jazeera English’s Al Anstey

Five years since its launch as the global offshoot of the Qatar-based Arabic news network Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English (AJE) has finally made inroads into the U.S. market. While still not available nationwide, AJE is currently carried in select cities, and on the heels of its acclaimed coverage of this year’s Arab Spring—winning a Columbia Journalism Award in May—Al Anstey, the network’s managing director, is confident that wider distribution is on the horizon. He speaks to TV Real Weekly about building upon the current reach of more than 200 million homes in 100-plus countries, and the challenges of covering the fast-moving political developments in the Middle East and across the globe.

TV REAL: How is your U.S. expansion progressing?
ANSTEY: Recently we launched in Manhattan and prior to that we were seen in Washington, D.C., and various other pockets of the United States. But the launch in New York was very significant for us. It’s obviously a very important market. It’s an outward-looking, intelligent audience that is interested in what’s going on in the world. We believe that we’re putting out high-quality, in-depth information from journalists across the globe who are eye-witnessing events for themselves. Within the context of the wider industry where, through economic challenges, people’s commitment to on-the-ground field reporting is ever decreasing, it was important to us to enter into the marketplace in the New York metropolitan area.

We’re having some very fruitful meetings with all of the key cable and satellite operators [about full 24-hour carriage], so I always say it’s a question of when, not if. What we’ve seen in recent months is an increasing recognition of the quality and the depth and the integrity of the journalism that we put out every minute of every day. From the beginning of [the protests in] Egypt, for example, we saw a 2,500-percent increase in the online viewership of the channel. More than half of our online traffic, live streaming and web traffic, comes from the United States. Evidence of demand is also being witnessed by people contacting the operators themselves—people have been sending e-mails to their operators asking for Al Jazeera English to be put onto their systems. So we’re confident that we’ll be breaking through in the near future.

TV REAL: You were part of AJE’s founding team five years ago. What were the channel’s goals, and what obstacles did you see?
ANSTEY: I would describe us as a child in a way within a very adult, very mature industry. When we launched the channel the philosophy was [based on] a number of key points. First, the original reporting, being an eye-witness to events across the globe with our own journalists. Second, to be truly global. I would describe it as, you put the countries of the world on a level playing field and then you evaluate the stories on their merit. That means we’re able to cover the developing world as well as the developed world. The third point is the comprehensive nature of the coverage, to give viewers a full picture of what’s going on. When you look at a story as complicated as Libya, for example, it’s fast moving, it’s very dynamic, we’re watching the live picture, but it’s critical to explain why that story is happening. The final thing, which is really important, is reliable information. It’s got to be information with integrity, upholding the higher standards of journalism and upholding the higher standards of balance.

I think the real challenge was getting to be known. Our main competitors have been established for a very long time.

TV REAL: AJE’s coverage of the Egyptian protests raised its profile worldwide. What challenges did you encounter with that reporting?
ANSTEY: Basic journalistic challenges at the first instance. It was a fast-moving, very dynamic story. It had many sides to it, from the opposition to the government to the army to various dynamics that were happening in remote geographical parts of Egypt. To actually get fully comprehensive, balanced coverage was one of the key challenges first and foremost. The second one was a challenge that I think faced all journalists covering that story, and indeed many of the stories that we’d been witnessing in the Arab world in recent months, and that was the sheer danger the journalists were in.

We were shut down at one point—the authorities asked us to stop broadcasting. Our signals were interrupted. And we had to take serious measures to protect the safety of our people in the field. We stopped naming our correspondents; some of them came out of vision to protect their privacy so they could continue doing the job.

It was so fast moving from the very beginning, events were unfolding minute by minute, and one of the challenges was to provide that context, the in-depth coverage. We weren’t just showing what was happening now, we gave our audiences a full picture of what was happening with the different sides that were at play, and ultimately why those events were happening. That full understanding is very critical.

TV REAL: What do you say to those critics who question AJE’s independence given its relationship to the Qatari government?
ANSTEY: I always describe us in a way as a public broadcaster. The fabric of Al Jazeera English is editorial integrity, and therefore editorial balance and editorial independence. It’s not just part of the corporate fabric, it’s part of the fabric of every one of the journalists who work for us. We are headquartered in Qatar but…we are editorially independent of Qatar. We cover Qatar like we cover every other country and [it’s at the core] of this channel that we are here to carry out the job of journalism and do that with integrity.

TV REAL: What are your plans for further expansion of the channel?
ANSTEY: The U.S. clearly is a very important territory. We received our landing license to broadcast into India some months ago and we’ll be pushing forward into that marketplace very soon. Obviously we’re seen widely across the Middle East, across Africa, across many parts of Asia, so really now it’s consolidating in those places where we want to push our distribution even further. It does also come back to building on the reputation, to reaching out to new viewers and of course to reaching out to these viewers on all the new platforms that are available. We talk about “TV Everywhere.” I believe it’s content everywhere. We’ve got to make sure that we’re available to people at a time and place of their choosing. And I think that’s one of the key elements moving forward that we have embraced. We’re available on all the main platforms both for live streaming and for web content—through the BlackBerry, the iPad, the iPhone, all of the main devices. Obviously this is a fast-moving world where it seems like every week there’s a new platform that becomes available to the consumer. We want to make sure that we keep to the leading edge of the new technologies as well as the traditional methods of getting information out to audiences.