U.S. versus Al Jazeera

I was recently watching a video clip from Fox News about the recent trip of the U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Syria to meet with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. First of all let me explain that I like to check in on what fox is reporting in a bid to keep in touch of what the main stream right in the U.S. thinks and is being fed. I can usually only take a couple of minutes of ‘news’ Fox style before I feel like I am going to throw up, but on this particular occasion I noticed a somewhat interesting point that was raised.
The pundits predictably took their turns bashing Pelosi for defying the President’s stance on relations with enemies, with undermining the U.S. foreign policy, by making herself a tool of anti-U.S. governments, and a long list of other complaints. Then Sean Hannity, the Fox News commentator, went on to say that groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and Al Jazeera all had voiced their support of the Pelosi trip, only further proof that she was making a mistake. I was taken aback at the list of he names provided. To the casual viewer of the program I am sure that all the names sounded familiar enough. A sinister group of organizations with what the U.S. has labeled as terrorism that have all engaged in militant action against Israel at one point or another, all that is except for Al Jazeera.
Al Jazeera is the Arabic language satellite news station that operates out of the Arab country of Qatar, an ally of U.S. I was intrigued at the inclusion of the news channel’s name with the groups that are so often called terrorist organizations by the U.S. government and mainstream media. What justification could be given for such an erroneous association of independent foreign media outlet and groups known more for suicide bombings in the West than anything else? I decided to look into the matter a bit further to see what I could find out.
It turns out that the hostility towards Al Jazeera isn’t limited to the good people at Fox News, but it also extends to the Bush Administration and neoconservative circles (surprise surprise). The station has been the target of much criticism from the current Administration and multiple strategies have been employed to weaken or destroy the capabilities of Al Jazeera to provide a voice in the region and the world that is different form the official byline emanating out of Washington. It is interesting to note the US has ‘accidentally’ bombed Al Jazeera stations 2 times now in different locals around the world, permanently detained Al Jazeera personal without charge, and contemplated attacking Al Jazeera Headquarters in Doha, Qatar. HUM, what is going on here?

Prior to Sept. 11 the U.S. government had been supportive of the role al-Jazeera played as an independent media outlet in the otherwise autocratic Middle East. This all changed after the terrorist attacks on the U.S. when Al Jazeera played videos featuring Osma bin Laden and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith defending and justifying the attacks. The U.S. government claimed Al Jazeera were engaging in propaganda on behalf of the terrorists, while Al Jazeera claimed it was simply making information available without comment or endorsement. Several western TV stations followed Al Jazeera'a lead and later showed the videos.

On Nov. 13, 2001, a U.S. missile strike destroyed the Al Jazeera office in Kabul. No one was killed but the office was destroyed and employees’ homes were damaged. This was followed on April 8, 2003, with a U.S. missile strike that destroyed the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad, killing reporter Tareq Ayyoub and wounding others. In both instances the U.S. military had precise information of the coordinates of the stations prior to the attacks, provided by Al Jazeera itself in order to prevent such destruction from happening. Both strikes have been dismissed as accidents by the U.S. government.

Al Jazeera cameraman Sami Al Hajj, a Sudanese national, was detained in Pakistan on transit to Afghanistan in Dec. 2001 and remains to this day to being held without charge as an 'enemy combatant' at Guantanamo Bay. The reason for his detention remains unknown; he simply falls into the same category as all other detainees that they constitute a 'security threat'. Although Al Hajj had a valid visa to enter and work in Afghanistan at the time of his detainment his documentation was disregarded.

On November 22, 2005 the British publication the Daily Mirror printed a story stating that the U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair had persuaded Bush from conducting bombing raids on Al Jazeera world headquarters in Doha, Qatar and other locations. The information reportedly is a record of a meeting between the two leaders that took place on April 16, 2004 at the height of the U.S. Marines and Iraqi Security Forces assault on the Iraqi city of Fallujah. Both governments have denied that the conversation ever took place but the British government refuses to publish the memo and has threatened to prosecute anyone that does. A civil servant and research assistant have thus far been charged in the U.K. for unauthorized disclosure of the memo and wait trail. The unwillingness to make available the information contained in the memo to the public is not a very convincing means of backing up the line that the conversation never took place.

Meanwhile the U.S. government in 2004 founded Al Hurra, literally 'the free one' to be a competing Arabic-language satellite TV station. This was to counter the 'bias' of al- Jazeera against the U.S. Al Hurra is forbidden to be broadcast in the US. This is because it is simply a tool of propaganda by the U.S. government and as such as it falls under the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948. The act prohibited domestic distribution of information intended for foreign audiences. This measure is included in the act for a specific reason. Information intended for foreign audiences in necessarily of a propagandic nature and it is therefore dangerous to allow the Executive Branch to have its own propaganda station operating within the U.S. At the same time this leaves the U.S. citizens in a situation where they have no idea about what kind of slanted information and content is being funded and produced by tax dollars. This originally was the focus of the VOA or Voice of America during the cold war, but has since been extended to other propaganda campaigns such as Al Hurra.

When the facts have been examined in greater detail it becomes clear why Fox News lumped in Al Jazeera with the other groups mentioned above. The U.S. government feels that Al Jazeera is a threat to it aims of conquest in the Middle East and the establishment on friendly client states in Iraq and across the region. Fox News has clearly aligned itself with the far right on many issues ranging from religion and the environment to war and terrorism. The fact that they are jumping on the government bandwagon in an attempt to incriminate and silence all voices of opposition to the brutal realities of the U.S. war machine certainly is not a surprise. What it does represent is a deliberate attempt to control and distort information for both U.S. citizens and the world in general. When media distorts what is really happening in the world and at home we are all in trouble.