DOHA: Criticised by the West for bias towards Arab and Islamic issues, Aljazeera TV Channel set up a 'quality assurance unit' in August 2004 to encourage professionalism among its 'Arab' journalists, confidential US documents released by WikiLeaks reveal.
The media in some Arab countries, however, misinterpreted the WikiLeaks' revelations about Aljazeera as evidence of the US arm-twisting the Channel.
The quality assurance unit of Aljazeera headed by a senior Sudanese journalist with half-a-dozen assistants was initially located in a villa outside the Channel's headquarters. It was abhorred by the network's scribes and was sarcastically called by some as the network's KGB.
These and other interesting details about Aljazeera's internal affairs are contained in two confidential cables of the US embassy in Doha. These cables were marked 'classified' by the then US ambassador to Qatar, Chase Untermeyer.
The whistle-blowing site made these cables public on August 30. They give details of two meetings (in October 2005 and December 2006) between the public affairs department of the US embassy and the head of Aljazeera's quality assurance unit, Jaafar Abbas Ahmed.
Ahmed was quoted as saying in the cables that Aljazeera started out with a significant number of ex-BBC reporters but this cadre shrank over the years, attracted to other channels such as Al Arabiya.
A majority of the remaining Aljazeera journalists being ex-state TV reporters, the journalistic culture they represented was, therefore, quite different from the one the network was trying to cultivate. "There is, for example, a cultural tendency towards verbosity among Arabs. Rhetoric is a cherished and respected art among them. This tendency clashes with the standard journalistic practice, which encourages reporters to avoid adjectives," Ahmed was quoted as saying. Interestingly, according to Ahmed, many in Aljazeera think that it is a mistake to allow the use of the term 'martyrs' for Palestinians killed by the Israeli forces.
"But that is an emotionally charged topic in the Arab world... and it is too late to walk back," Ahmed said of the use of the term 'martyrs' for the Palestinians falling victim to Israeli brutality.
The 2006 cable of the US embassy, though, quotes Ahmed as saying that his department has moved into Aljazeera premises and that it has made much progress in its work and it is closely monitoring the network's journalists and interacts with them frequently to encourage professionalism among them.
Ahmed was by then named the head of quality assurance for the entire network that included the newly-launched Aljazeera English Channel, of which he was all praise. "The performance of Aljazeera English is proving to be an 'eye-opener to the staff of Aljazeera Arabic Channel," said Ahmed. "He foresees considerable mutual benefit accruing to the two channels from their proximity to each other," the cable said of Ahmed.
Importantly, the cables obliquely suggest that the US embassy summoned Ahmed for questioning about the quality of reporting in Aljazeera Arabic and subtly raise the US concern over the coverage of Israeli brutality in the Palestinian territories.
© The Peninsula 2011
