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Al-Jazeera’s D.C. Bureau Chief: “I Don’t Know What Objective Journalism Is”
Al-Jazeera, the Quatar funded Arabic news channel, may have seen its efforts to gain a foothold in the U.S. partially undone due to an interview by their Washington bureau chief Abderrahim Foukara’s interview with TIME. During the interview, Foukara was asked about Al-Jazeera’s point of view and how that fits in to what TIME referred to as the U.S. idea of journalistic objectivity.
Foukara responded:
To be honest, I don’t know what objective journalism means. The environment in which you broadcast obviously colors your coverage. If you are an American network broadcasting from the U.S., you will be broadcasting with a sensibility which may not look necessarily objective to an audience in another part of the world. And the same is true if you’re a network like Al Jazeera Arabic, broadcasting out of the Middle East. But we have to go beyond that. We should agree on the necessity to provide information in a timely manner. We cannot live in a world where a story like Egypt — which has consequences for the whole world — is unfolding and your audience doesn’t know anything about it or enough about it.
At least in the U.S. the mainstream press feigns objectivity.
The lack of objectivity from Al Jazeera was most recently evidenced by the channel’s lack of coverage of the recent brutal sexual assault of CBS reporter Lara Logan last week. As AIM’s Cliff Kincaid pointed out the Washington Post’s Dan Carpenter called Al-Jazeera’s silence “deafening” especially after all the coverage they devoted to the Egyptian uprising. While Al-Jazeera said that they were only respecting Logan’s privacy that didn’t jive with the fact that CBS News had widely distributed a photo of Logan taken just before the attack and had itself promoted the coverage of the event. It’s more likely is that reporting on the Logan attack would stick a pin the story that the uprising was all about an oppressive government and more freedom than turning Egypt into a radical Muslim country that would no longer ally itself with the U.S. or Israel.
Kincaid also noted that Al-Jazeera’s mantra is “The heart of the story. Every Angle. Every Side,” but that apparently didn’t apply in the Logan matter.
Al-Jazeera is currently in talks with Comcast, and I hope the cable giant will take a close look at the channel’s lack of objectivity before they decide whether or not to add them to their lineup but I won’t bet on it.
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About the author
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.
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5 Comments for Al-Jazeera’s D.C. Bureau Chief: “I Don’t Know What Objective Journalism Is”
Considering they have the US News media as their example, it’s no wonder that they are what they are. Then again they’re Muslim and to them women don’t count as a news worthy item. To them her attack was something she asked for.
[...] Al-Jazeera’s D.C. Bureau Chief: ‘I Don’t Know What Objective Journalism Is’ [...]
Not exactly sure about the author’s purpose. AJE’s position is not that objectivity is not standard one should seek in media. He states that defining the term, “objective” is complicated knowing that Western coverage of Muslim and Islamic events is biased.
There are any number of biases in media that would cause one to have serious concerns as such relates to the reporting of Middle Eastern and North African events. The first is that most media editors tend to take a pro-Israeli / anti-Muslim perspective on anything that affects Israeli Zionists interests. What one believes it or not, too much of the media discourage coverage of or purposefully avoid balance reports on the occupying Zionists regular murder of Palestinians, unnecessary aggressions by US forces in the Middle East, and general Western practices of destabilizing relations within foreign nations. The fact that these media feed Americans misinformation about these events disturbing. It is also dangerous.
AJE position to provide Americans with something other than a carefully scripted and filtered perspective on news. They try, for example in the case of the Egyptian Revolution, background information that not one other network to match. Similar complements may be made for their in depth reports on Walls Street and the BP oil disaster.
The AJE effort in objectivity should be applauded. Any criticism of their broadcast philosophies should be read in the content of truth. This truth is not in need of propaganda, fear, or Israeli pressures.
I happen to know a number of journalism professors and theorists who would argue that “journalistic objectivity” simply doesn’t exist. Furthermore, any informed proponent of modern journalistic theory would agree that your environment does influence your coverage. Read Kovach and Rosenstiel’s Elements of Journalism. The second principle is that journalism’s loyalty is to its citizens. Which do you think is more important to the denizens of the middle east? A political turmoil with implications for all or a sex assault with implications for an American journalist? I can certainly see where the latter would stand in the budget. Comparing the coverage of Logan’s assault by Al-Jazeera with that of western media is fundamentally flawed. Also, it’s Qatar, not Quatar. Oh yea, and jibe, not jive. Ever read an AP Stylebook? Ever heard of one?
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