Wadah Khanfar

March 23, 2009 World Screen

Director General
Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera began as a single news channel in 1996 serving the Arab world. Through the years it has grown to an Arabic-language bouquet that includes five sports channels, a documentary channel, two children’s channels, as well as an international news channel in English. Al Jazeera’s director general, Wadah Khanfar, talks about the future of his portfolio.

WS: What has been the strategy behind launching the Documentary Channel and do you have plans for more channels?
KHANFAR: Al Jazeera right now consists of various channels. We have sports channels that were launched about five years ago, some of them are dedicated to certain kinds of sports, and they have become the most popular sports channels in the Arab world. One of them is free to air but four of them are subscription, so they also provide a source of revenue for us.
After the sports channels, we launched the documentary channel, because we thought we could introduce to our audience something very different from the politicized news and documentaries [available on other channels]. Our channel does not broadcast political documentaries but it does increase the knowledge of our audience by looking at various social, cultural, environmental and many other issues. Al Jazeera Documentary Channel has succeeded in becoming one of the best channels in the Arab world and it is the only documentary channel right now in the Arab world.
We are trying to invest in our brand name, hoping that diversifying the output of Al Jazeera will, in the future, lead to income that could help in covering a good percentage of our expenses.
 
WS: It has been difficult for you to secure carriage of Al Jazeera English in the U.S. Do you think that with the change in administration, there may be better chances now of getting distribution for the channel?
KHANFAR: Yes, I do. The George Bush administration had criticized Al Jazeera heavily on many occasions and that developed a negative [perception of] the channel. I believe that many cable companies and media groups in the U.S. were affected by this kind of environment and propaganda against Al Jazeera.
I feel that the new administration has the intention of opening up toward the Arab world and giving us a chance. If you are going to talk to the Arab world, you definitely have to talk to Al Jazeera because we have more presence in the region than anyone else.
People used to hear about Al Jazeera but did not have a way of really knowing what is on Al Jazeera Arabic. Now they have the chance of knowing what is on because it is in English. They can see for themselves that Al Jazeera offers first-class, independent journalism, which is very necessary for everyone to watch in order to understand the major issues that are happening not only in the Middle East, but also around the world, as we are reporting from London, Washington, Kuala Lumpur and many other bureaus. There is an opportunity to have a much more comprehensive understanding of various areas in the world—an understanding that is not centered around Western values of reporting, but on universally recognized standards of journalism.
 
WS: How has Al Jazeera benefitted from being owned by the government of Qatar and how has Qatar benefitted from having Al Jazeera?
KHANFAR: Al Jazeera benefitted from its presence in Qatar because the Qatari government supported the channel financially, hosted it and gave it the freedom to be independent from Qatari foreign politics. The Qatari government did not demand that Al Jazeera be the voice of Qatar, and did not interfere in the professional agenda of the channel.
But at the same time, Qatar benefitted from Al Jazeera because the presence of the channel, which has a lot of popularity in the Arab world and internationally, has also given a good name to Qatar and a good reputation to the Qataris. So this [mutually beneficial] formula actually very much helped in stabilizing our broadcasting because we don’t feel we are under pressure from a government that would like to use us for its own purposes. And the Qataris also feel that this channel that has become very popular internationally and it broadcasting from Doha is excellent branding for Qatar itself, because whenever the name Al Jazeera is mentioned, Qatar is mentioned as well.        
 
WS: What impact has Al Jazeera’s independent journalism had on the viewers and the governments of the Arab world?
KHANFAR: At the beginning, the viewers were actually skeptical about what they were seeing because they thought Al Jazeera might be a new venture that was controlled or initiated by the government, or by certain kinds of groups, in order to influence Arab opinion. But when they found that Al Jazeera is really and truly independent and there is no political agenda behind what it is doing, the people in the Arab world embraced it like nothing else and Al Jazeera became the most credible source of information for most of the Arabs in the Arab world.
As for the governments, they did not welcome Al Jazeera’s presence, since Al Jazeera started to adopt a style of journalism that was alien to the culture that governments wanted to install in the Arab world. Suddenly, opposition figures and leaders had access to the audience by appearing on-screen, and issues related to corruption, democracy and the big authoritarian style of government that we have in the Arab world, all of these issues were discussed on the screen. So most of the Arab governments actually did not welcome Al Jazeera! They started at times to threaten our journalists, close down our bureaus, or withdraw their embassies from Qatar or put pressure on Qatar to close down Al Jazeera or at least to contain its reporting. Of course, that did not work. Al Jazeera gained much more credibility because when most of these authoritarian governments stood against Al Jazeera, the public embraced it more and believed in it more, and that gave us the [confidence] that what we were doing was sound and founded on the very deep roots of the relationship between us and our audience. So governments found another way of dealing with Al Jazeera, which was to allow it to operate in most of the Arab world, sometimes interfering here and there in order to reduce whatever they believe to be the effect of Al Jazeera’s reporting from their countries.
 
WS: Has Al Jazeera’s coverage changed in the face of competition from other Arab channels, such as Al Arabiya?
KHANFAR: For the first years after Al Jazeera launched, it was the only news station reporting in the Arab world. Many other stations started to imitate Al Jazeera’s style of reporting. That actually advanced our mission in the Arab world. We have never seen our station as an institution that should live alone, and the more we see independent TV stations, the more that we feel that we are not isolated, and this is good for us as journalists.
However, Al Jazeera remains the TV station that everyone immediately goes to whenever there is breaking news. We have an excellent network of correspondents. We believe in fieldwork more than newsroom journalism. We believe in being part of the societies where we report from, so we have correspondents or bureaus in more than 75 countries. We can introduce very quick and very accurate reporting.
We do monitor international, local and regional stations as well as trends in new media. We keep our eye on that and it always becomes part of our planning for the future, so that we can [keep up with technology] and always be able to attract a larger audience.
 
WS: Why was it important to launch Al Jazeera English?
KHANFAR: Since Al Jazeera is located in the Middle East and has an excellent understanding of this region, and even a very good reputation, it has definitely developed a very recognized brand internationally. Especially after the war in Iraq in 2003, Al Jazeera was amongst the best-known brands in the world.
We thought an English-language channel would be very important for us, first, since the region is hosting the most complicated hot spots in the world—Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Palestine and various other areas—and we have much better access in these areas than others, so we thought that could be an asset for us to start. And second, we also thought it was very important for us to build on the brand name that we have developed in this region. So these two reasons motivated us to go ahead. In addition, internationally speaking, the Middle East, which is part of the developing world, is under-reported in Western media. We thought that by having a TV station based in Doha, Qatar, we could introduce something different and shed more light on issues that have not been covered, in my opinion, comprehensively by Western media.
 
WS: What are some of the errors Western journalists make in covering issues in the Arab world?
KHANFAR: I cannot generalize because I think there are great journalists who understand this region. However, major broadcasters sometimes tend to spend little on their correspondents and bureaus in the region, so they demand of them much more than they could afford. Often a reporter is flown in overnight from a Western capital to one of the troubled regions in the Middle East and then starts reporting. Maybe he did not have the chance to understand the complexity of a story that started 1,000 years ago, but he is reporting 24 hours and he is on the screen as a specialist on an issue that is much more complicated than what he could afford to look into.
That is number one: limited resources are spent on bureaus and correspondents in the region by most foreign broadcasters.
And the second issue is that a lot of journalists and institutions have that kind of Western-centric view of what is happening, so their agenda of reporting what is happening in the Middle East will be summarized under certain topics. So they will speak about democracy from a Western definition; or maybe look at issues related to certain topics, which might not be the core problem of this region, from an angle that is not very accurate, given the mix of cultures, religions and ethnicities that the Middle East has.
So, in my opinion, we need journalism of depth rather than rooftop journalism or superficial reporting. We need people who are specialists in this region, who could spend more time, who could interact with people and the main players in the region much more often. They should be given some time to develop proper understanding rather than rushing them to the screen without excellent knowledge and deep understanding of events and stories.
 
WS: Do you feel that you allow your reporters to get a better understanding of an area before they start reporting?
KHANFAR: The rule that we have adopted at Al Jazeera is that our journalists are part of the societies from which they report. In 22 Arab countries, our reporters are nationals of these countries, so they do understand what is happening in their own countries. But when it comes to non-Arab countries, in Europe, in Latin America and in Africa, most of our reporters have been there for a long time, more than 10 years, sometimes 15 years. Some of them have graduated from universities in those countries, they know the language, some of them are married to nationals of these countries, so they are part of these societies, although they are Arabs and speak Arabic. But I definitely regard them as part of these societies, so they have the knowledge and the depth to monitor and to report on events that are unfolding in front of their eyes.
 
WS: Since the beginning, Al Jazeera has allowed Israeli officials to be interviewed on the air, which broke a big taboo in Arab tele­vision. Are there other taboos that you still have to break in your coverage?
KHANFAR: I think the next phase of our reporting should concentrate on bringing hope to the new generations. Unfortunately, this region has seen a lot of blood, a lot of conflict and a lot of sadness because of many wars and many confrontations. Since Al Jazeera is widely seen by the audience, it should have programs and a philosophy of reporting that encourages hope for youth and hope that the new generation might be prosperous and open. Without that kind of hope, extremism and radical views arise and desperate people may think of various ideas that could destabilize our future.
So that is a mission that I think Al Jazeera should take into consideration when thinking of its programming in the future.