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Danny Schechter: "Is AlJazeera a Brand AND a Tribe?"

MediaChannel.org's Executive Editor, Danny Schechter sends this interesting email from Doha, at the closing of the Media Freedom forum. He cites the emerging new AlJazeera Channel as:

"The fact that a TV network can excite so many people and win their passionate allegiance is a sign that there is still some life in parts of the TV media. As the author of a new book on “The Death of Media,” that’s a welcome sign. We need more channels like it, but more than that, we need conviction and commitment in journalism. Al Jazeera has more to teach the west, than learn from it."

Read Danny's very interesting commentary about the forum, its closing speech, and about AlJazeera Channel:



NEWS DISSECTOR February 3, 2006

From MediaChannel.org's Executive Editor, Danny Schechter...

Is AlJazeera a Brand AND a Tribe?


JAZEERA ADIEU
YOUR LETTERS
DEBATING NET NEUTRALITY

DOHA, QATAR February 2/3: When the second Al Jazeera forum came to a close, it was left to the Channel’s charismatic director Wadah Khanfar to say good bye to the several hundred guests or “delegates” who trekked to Doha on the tip of the Arabian Gulf to discuss a wide range of media freedom issues.

Instead of political homilies, he unexpectedly delivered up a personal admission that he felt he was changing as a person. He said that the media world he is leading is akin to being part of a “tribe” of truth seekers that transcends nationality and national origin. He acknowledged the well-known channel he runs often feels like a cause that has grown into a community built on a shared sense of mission and a commitment to diversity. It is for many not just a news outlet but a source of Arab identity, change and personal alignment.

It has become a non-state player more respected than any politician. In fact, one speaker, Hugh Miles who has written THE book on Al Jazeera believes that if the station was a political party it might have “won” recent elections in Palestine or Egypt because is a popular force for democracy, human rights and compassion.

Journalists rarely are introspective. We usually hide behind the veneer of objectivity and neutrality. And yet as the fault lines in our profession become more apparent, as pressures grow including the kinds of threats that AlJazeera has been subjected to, this band of accomplished professionals who take pride in their work has not lost its humanity and openness to theres.

After the sessions had ended, I sat with Wadah and members of his team over a Sheratonized Thai-like meal and listened to him describe a report he filed from Mosul in Iraq right after the invasion. He was among the first to report live from that Kurdish area and watched as looters destroyed the ancient town’s great library in a fit of criminal appropriation and protest against the old regime. After he packed up his transmitter, he felt that it was not enough to describe the scene of thousands of years of Arab culture were going up in flames. He was driven to do more.

So he went back to the scene of the crime, and set up another live shot, and began just standing there on camera, appealing to the town to come out and save its cultural treasures. He read from ancient texts about that city on a hill and its rivers and many resources. He fought back his tears and prompted eyes to water in the audience. He called on viewers, many trapped at home, terrorized by gun fire and US military occupation, to do something before it was too late.

“I didn’t know who was listening or what would happen,” he admitted. “But many were glued to our reports on Jazeera and they came out, first a few, and then many, to defend their cultural treasures. They came by cars and by foot and they stopped the looting. They saved the library. They heard my appeal.”

Was that journalism or something more? Wadah says he was inspired by the ideas of the “journalism of attachment” first enunciated by former BBC stalwart Martin Bell who stood up in a similar way for Sarajevo when that city was burning. His experiences there convinced him to stand for Parliament where he later served for five years. Bell was one of the many international media people who heeded Al Jazeera’s call to make a Haj to Doha because of its small oasis of social concern in the Arabian desert and larger media desert.

Read rest of Danny's article here.

Note:Danny Schechter has given me his kind, explicit permission to re-post his articles and commentaries on my blog. However, for the sake of brevity, I have not re-posted this article in its entirety, but have posted the links for readers to view the original.

posted by Annamarie at 11:25 PM