ANALYSIS: Al Jazeera makes powerful new friends in US

By Andy Goldberg Mar 8, 2011, 9:32 GMT

Los Angeles - Al Jazeera has an important new fan - US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The former first lady and one-time presidential candidate sang the praises of the Qatar-based satellite news network to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week, commending Al Jazeera for providing 'real news' while its US counterparts like CNN, MSNBC and FOX News batter their audiences with 'a million commercials - and arguments between talking heads - which is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.'

The praise from the top US diplomat was an important achievement for Al Jazeera, which was founded in 1996 in Qatar but came to widespread prominence only following the terrorist attacks of 2001 when it repeatedly was the first news outlet to broadcast statements from the leaders of al-Qaeda.

But Clinton's statements were especially significant since they implied a respect for the journalistic integrity of the Arab broadcaster that's greater than those of bastions of American news gathering like CNN.

They could also give a powerful boost to Al Jazeera's attempts to broaden its scope in the US after a decade in which it was effectively shut out by the major cable companies who did not wish to support a channel that was widely seen as being anti-American.

Now Al Jazeera officials are conducting talks with US cable giants Comcast and Time Warner, aiming to get the channel's English service into the American mainstream. According to Wadah Kanfar, the director general of the network, online viewing of Al Jazeera English has spiked by 2,500 per cent since the start of the troubles in Egypt, with 50 per cent of that growth coming from the US.

Another sign of Al Jazeera's growing prestige was the appearance of Kanfar as a keynote speaker at the prestigious Technology, Entertainment and Design (TED) conference last week in Long Beach, California - a meeting that is well known for attracting some of the world's most influential and innovative thought leaders.

'Al Jazeera took the voice from these people and we amplified it, we put it in every sitting-room in the Arab world and internationally and globally through our English channel and then people started to feel that there's something new happening,' Kanfar told the conference.

By now, the role of Al Jazeera in helping to foment the recent uprisings in the Arab world has become the stuff of modern legend. For years the Qatar-based news organization has been broadcasting into millions of homes throughout the Arab world, offering its audience a modern, democratic-leaning diet of news coverage and analysis that was often in stark contrast to the propaganda spewed out by the region's state-controlled media.

In conjunction with the effect wrought by the availability of the internet and social media, Al Jazeera helped create a new mindset among the youth of the Middle East, experts say.

'In the first Gulf War there was a lot of talk about the CNN effect - that diplomacy could no longer function behind the stage,' Professor Marwan Kraidy, an expert on Arab media at Pennyslvania University's Annenberg School of Communication, told The German Press Agency dpa.

'Al Jazeera did that and then some. It not only reported on the revolution, it was a player in the event,' he said.

Al Jazeera's effect was not just as an enabler of the pro- democracy movement, Al Jazeera's Kanfar said at the gathering. The constant presence of its cameras helped safeguard the protestors. He recalled receiving a phone call one night from someone in Tahrir Square in Egypt who appealed to him not to switch off the cameras.

'If you switch off the cameras tonight, there will be a genocide,' the caller said. 'You are protecting us by showing what is happening at Tahrir Square.'

Such strident pro-democratic effects have helped change the image of the station in the US, according to Kraidy. 'Al Jazeera is now at a pivotal moment,' he said. 'It's no longer seen as Bin Laden TV or an anti-American propaganda machine, but as a legitimate and valuable news organization.'

'News organizations have traditionally benefited from conflicts,' he added, noting the boost given to Time magazine by World War II and to CNN by the first Gulf War.

'Now it's Al Jazeera's turn.'