AL JAZEERA ENGLISH: AN EXAMPLE OF MEDIA DIPLOMACY IN A BROADCASTING 2.0 ERA

International broadcasting and new media technologies have always played a key role in the public democracy and the development of events around the globe. Thus, the Cold War led to an increasing international broadcasting system, as both communist and non-communist states attempted to influence each other's domestic population.

More recently, the standards set by CNN in 1991 for the Gulf War television reporting with its global news-flow and its live coverage triggered a booming “fight” between major broadcasting companies to take over the flow of worldwide events, furthermore during times of conflict.

This prevailing one-way (North to South) model of information and the exposure to the main English-language TV channels dominating the international broadcasting system has resulted not only in a poor cross-cultural communication, but also in the creation of hard-line cultural and social stereotypes about the commonly referred to “the others”.

At the same time, how to bridge the existing gap between news-gathering and the audience has also become a main issue in the era of the so called “citizen journalism”. If this breakthrough happens to provide a new direction in the global discourse through the new media platforms, we will be in front of a riveting test case.

Al Jazeera English (AJE) represents this challenge.

“Giving voice to the voiceless” through media diplomacy
“Giving voice to the voiceless” reflects AJE's news agenda. This motto is also part of a large criticism aimed towards western news organizations and the North to South direction they have approached the news-gathering in the 20th century.

AJE´s reporting follows the principle that it is time for there to be a media fostering the cross-culture dialogue, for Africans to speak in Asia, for Arabs to talk to the west and for Asians to communicate with Africans. This represents a new dimension of global media and a challenge to the way news worldwide organizations have been addressing their information.

AJE has filled a gap becoming a vehicle for public and cultural diplomacy, offering other nations-states to project their voice, their policies and their representations of events in the global sphere, or shall we say “Anglo-sphere”.

Since the broadcast language is English, AJE has also allowed migrants, who find it hard to maintain the mother tongue after a few generations, to create a sense of nationhood in the distance.

At the same time, there is also a diplomatic aspect in it. The launch of Al Jazeera Arabic (AJA) in 1996, funded by a Qatari emir, put this small country on the map and part of the credibility it has as a regional diplomatic leader comes from the visibility AJA provides it with. In the same way, AJE could be argued as trying to reach the same objective on a global scale. Let's take as an example its apply for an Olympic bid in 2020 or to host the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

This demonstrates a more ambitious international agenda portraying the image of a country can come alongside a big investment in the news sector.

Bridging the gap between audience and news-gathering
Reporting is getting tougher and more dangerous, especially during a conflict or in a war zone. However it has been in the last decade when the media attention on this issue has seriously increased.

Coming up with a good story does not only depend on the professional skills of the reporter. It should not be very surprising to see how the traditional journalists are embracing potential citizen journalists to avoid censorship, intimidation or the restrictions imposed by the authorities of the country they are reporting from.

Hence when the pressure on professional reporters becomes so hard to deal with, there is an important role for public participation. Although difficult and complicated in many cases, relying on normal citizens has become the only way of getting around the lack of sources. As long as the broadcaster is completely transparent about where the material comes from we should not see any problem with it.

To make the audience participate actively in the communication process made its first appearance on AJA´s stage early on in 1996. At that time they launched the first political newsroom allowing an audience from the Arab world to call and present the Prime Minister of an Arabian country with questions.

This mentality has been in AJA programming since then and has also been featured in AJE. The embracement of this new trend should be deemed as a great chance to foster public interactivity between the audience and its politicians. However we are dealing with societies whose sense of political government is not exactly shared by the west and that have indeed turned democracy into a dynastic or monarchic regime, which in most of cases is handed down. Therefore this new trend of telling the news might not be a genuine attempt to get citizens to contribute to the news as much as it could be a way to make their “popularity” grow.


The Gaza conflict: The beginning of Broadcasting 2.0
The Gaza conflict was a turning point for AJE since they felt it could be their “cold war”. This is an analogy used to explain how CNN capitalized in 1991 the Golf War to become a global network among the eyes of everyone else.

During the Gaza squabble AJE has come to show how empowering a channel´s participatory culture will become a big challenge for news organizations in the future and how crucial is the role of multimedia.

AJE was one of the very few western English news speaking organizations to have their journalists and cameras rolling round the clock inside Gaza. In terms of credibility, it was also the moment when the American audience tuned into this channel, with an audience increase of over 600%. Whether this big jump will result in a consistent and loyal audience in the future, it is yet to be revealed.

Never before have citizens in Palestine and Gaza been so involved in the communication process like they have been in this conflict. AJE actively asked them to contribute to the news-gathering using their mobile phones, their Flip cameras, internet or twitter to integrate them into the mainstream reporting on the issue.

Events in Gaza were also the starting point for AJ Network to make some of its Arabic and English quality video footage freely available online for sharing and reuse by viewers and TV stations across the world.
The film clips were licensed under Creative Commons, the non-profit sharing system designed to protect creators' work online, and posted for use on the Al Jazeera Creative Commons Repository site.
It was the very first time a broadcaster news network had ever released quality video under a very permissive licence. Since AJE was one of the few news channel in Gaza with English speaking journalists capturing all that was going on, they could have made some profit of it selling it to other news organizations. However, they made a profound statement where the market rules took a second place and the importance of information prevailed.

AJE´s new blogging network is another step that demonstrates this news channel has come further. Written by an extensive network of correspondents The Al Jazeera Blogs provide real information also licensed under one of Creative Common´s licences. This strong emphasis on field journalism cannot but provide the reader with a real sense of insight and in depth coverage.
These are only but a few pushes to make their content more accessible and to get it out there through all existing channels. Without any kind of doubt, these are important steps that could be drawn by future broadcasting networks.

Leaps and Bounds
AJE has come on leaps and bounds since it first started.
Thanks to an ambitious online strategy, it has won over new audiences in America and elsewhere. Despite the post-9/11 criticism AJA received for showing al Qaeda videos and the Bush administration’s calling in the early days of the “War On Terror”, the use of multimedia is convincing more people, although slowly, that it is a credible news organization.
The Gaza conflict showed how new technology can be deployed to inform with the participation of the public, but why were they not so interactive during the elections in Iran or in Egypt? These questions should be better answered before we can celebrate completely the organization news media effort.
For this reason, this author considers too risky to make the statement that AJE is all about distribution, although it cannot be argued whoever wants to reach them can do it indeed.
Whether it will beat in the future consolidated international TV channels like CNN or BBC World is yet to be seen. Nevertheless their statement that news matters everywhere, not only in the Anglo-sphere, it could not have been a better way to kick off.


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