Arab television’s take on the world
Thursday, May 19, 2005
am New York
Al-Jazeera, the TV news service condemned by some as an Al Qaeda mouthpiece, but welcomed by others as an overdue revolution in Arab communications, is soon to start a global channel in English. And it’s already setting up shop in the media capital of the English-speaking world, New York City.
Al-Jazeera International is bringing Mark Seddon from London to be its New York Correspondent. He’ll be accredited to cover the United Nations as well as the city.
Seddon, 42, is an army officer’s son who until recently edited the trade union-owned “Tribune” magazine. Its readership is mainly on the left wing of Tony Blair’s Labor Party. He’ll take up his post in the Fall, and the new channel should begin transmitting worldwide in early 2006.
The original Arabic station was started by ex-BBC employees, so the Brit appointment is no great surprise. The new service has an English chief executive, too – Nigel Parsons, who previously worked with Associated Press TV.
They look to “a huge potential audience” says Seddon. “In developing countries there is a great deal of interest in the work of the UN and in the vibrant democracy and culture of the United States.”
AL-JAZEERA APART, what are Iraqis watching?
They’re facing discomforting truths about their own community. In this they differ from the New York Times’ new Op-Ed Page columnist, John Tierney, who has argued for curtailing media coverage of suicide bombers.
(Tierney puts himself among striking company. Margaret Thatcher used to berate my broadcasting colleagues and myself for providing terrorists with “the oxygen of publicity”. Politicians often take that view; it’s bizarre for a journalist to do so.)
Iraqi TV pulls in big audiences with two powerful homegrown programs. One’s a blackly comic soap-opera called “Love and War” that graphically weaves bombs, shootings and kidnaps into its everyday life stories. The other, "Terrorism in the Grip of Justice", features abject, often sickening confessions extracted from captured terrorist suspects.
Add to this the kind of print cartoons that find favor on the streets – dark reflections on a violent society from sharp artists like Muayad Naama and Abdel Rakhim Yassir – and you’ll see the Iraqi public doesn’t want to bury its head in the sand.
AND AMERICA'S TV DIET? It’s increasingly a conglomerate that decides that.
In this week of network “Upfronts” – announcements of Fall schedules - the meaning is fully revealed of those clumsy old phrases explaining big media mergers, like “vertical integration” and “synergy”.
Twelve out of nineteen pilot shows considered by CBS came from Paramount Studios (- both companies owned by Viacom). Sixteen out of Fox’s field of 23 pilots came from other divisions of 20th Century Fox. Fifteen out of NBC’s field of 23 came from NBC-Universal.
And we are told the market-place ensures more competition and greater choice for the consumer.