Abstract
This article evaluates the high-profile accusations published on Wikileaks that Al-Jazeera was used as a diplomatic tool by Qatar, with the 2002–2007 Qatari–Saudi conflict serving as a case study. The analysis is aimed at revealing whether the conflict affected Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Saudi affairs, specifically whether Al-Jazeera Arabic (N = 285) and Al-Jazeera English (N = 220) websites increased the volume of articles casting Saudi Arabia in a negative light and decreased the volume of articles casting Saudi Arabia in a positive light throughout the conflict, relative to the pre- and post-conflict periods. The analysis of Al-Jazeera Arabic reveals a very strong relationship between the tone towards Saudi affairs and timing relative to the Saudi–Qatari conflict (χ2(14) = 101.57, Cramer’s V = 0.42, p < .001), with a dramatic rise in articles criticizing Saudi Arabia for human rights violations and support of terrorism during the conflict. By contrast, the authors found no significant differences between the conflict and post-conflict coverage of Saudi affairs by Al-Jazeera English. The study indicates that the Al-Jazeera Arabic output was highly coordinated with Qatari interests, casting doubt on its claim of independence from Qatari interests.
While Al-Jazeera is widely recognized as the foremost representative of independent media in the Arab region (Al Jenaibi, 2010; Al-Nsairat, 2010; Bahry, 2001; Lynch, 2006), in 2010, Wikileaks exposed a memo sent by the US ambassador to Qatar, in which he called the station ‘a diplomatic tool for its Qatari sponsors’ (Lebron, 2009). In this document, Ambassador Joseph Lebron accused Al-Jazeera of toning down criticism of Saudi Arabia as part of a September 2007 resolution that ended the five-year conflict between Qatar and the Saudi Kingdom. The allegation regarding the Qatari–Saudi political deal and Al-Jazeera’s involvement was also made by The New York Times (Worth, 2008), which reported that the Chairman of Al-Jazeera’s Board of Directors, Sheik Hamad bin Thamer al-Thani, was present at the historic meeting between the leaders of the two countries. The New York Times article also cited correspondence with an Al-Jazeera employee who testified that Al-Jazeera management used to feed Al-Jazeera reporters with negative articles about Saudi Arabia during the conflict between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, and gave an explicit order following the 2007 resolution with Saudi Arabia not to tackle any Saudi issue without referring to senior management. In a rare live interview on Al-Jazeera (Al-Jazeera, 2009), the Qatari Prime Minister vehemently denied these allegations, stating that the station was actually a ‘source of headaches’ for Qatar, implicating it in rifts with a long list of countries including Algeria, Kuwait, Egypt, Bahrain, Jordan and the United States. The main aim of this study is to empirically evaluate the extent of the Al-Jazeera–Qatari link through a longitudinal content analysis (see ‘Method’ below) of Al-Jazeera’s output throughout the Saudi–Qatari conflict.
Indeed, despite similar allegations of an Al-Jazeera–Qatari link voiced several times in the past (Da Lage, 2005; El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003; Powers, 2009; Rugh, 2007) and various books (e.g. Lynch, 2006; Seib, 2005; Zayani, 2007) and articles (e.g. Aday et al., 2005; Fahmy and Al-Emad, 2011; Wolfsfeld et al., 2005; Zayani, 2005) dedicated to exploring the topic, the extent to which Qatar dictates Al-Jazeera’s policies remains a mystery. Former studies have relied mostly on interviews and audience surveys to identify whether an Al-Jazeera–Qatar bond exists: based on 30 interviews with Al-Jazeera staff, Miles (2005: 356) concluded that the Al-Jazeera staff indeed ‘do not stop to think for a second about the nationality of their station or its financier’. Johnson and Fahmy’s (2008) study of the Al-Jazeera audience indicates that Al-Jazeera’s Arab viewers see Al-Jazeera as independent of Qatari interests and position the station as more credible than its Western counterparts. Nevertheless, these methods fail to provide conclusive evidence regarding the existence of a Qatari–Al-Jazeera nexus, or lack thereof, since Al-Jazeera employees are, by definition, indebted to the organization and therefore unable to evaluate it objectively, and Al-Jazeera viewers have little ability to measure the Al-Jazeera–Qatari nexus. In this study, we address the issue using longitudinal content analysis, specifically analyzing whether Qatar’s interests and Al-Jazeera’s output were coordinated during periods of the Saudi–Qatari conflict, thereby approaching the question regarding Al-Jazeera’s submission to the Qatari government from an angle that is more impartial than the perspectives of employees and audiences.
The analysis examines the five-year rift (September 2002–September 2007) between Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which marks the most tense period of the conflict. Importantly, since the rift was preceded and followed by periods of reduced tension between Saudi Arabia and Qatar (see ‘Qatari–Saudi relations’ below), the circumstances allow unprecedented insight as to whether shifts in Qatari foreign policy over time affected Al-Jazeera’s coverage. Accordingly, we divided the analysis into three time periods in line with the roller-coaster that characterizes Qatari–Saudi affairs – pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict (see ‘Method’ below for exact dates) – to examine whether the five-year conflict affected the tone and volume of articles concerning Saudi affairs relative to the pre- and post-conflict periods.
While examining the Qatari–Al-Jazeera interplay, the study focuses special attention on the differences and similarities between Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English news operations. Specifically, since the Qatari Emir has invested heavily in both language versions of the station, it is imperative to examine whether they work in a coordinated manner with respect to Qatar’s interests, or whether they maintain separate agendas. Importantly, because the Al-Jazeera English television channel came on air only in November 2006, near the end of the conflict, whereas the Al-Jazeera English website (http://english.aljazeera.net/) has been operating since February 2003, we examined the online (rather than televised) coverage of the Qatari–Saudi conflict (see ‘Method’ below), comparing the Al-Jazeera English website to its Arabic counterpart (http://www.aljazeera.net/).
By understanding the nature of the Qatari–Al-Jazeera nexus, the aim of the study is to locate the Al Jazeera network within Ayish’s (2002) typology of autocratic, reformist (where the media is independent on most issues but the ruler has the final word), and commercial–independent contemporary Arab media. Since Al-Jazeera is perceived as the most prominent representative of free Arab television (Ayish, 2002; Lynch, 2006; Miles, 2005), this study illuminates the extent of media freedom in the contemporary Arab world.
Qatari–Saudi relations: A roller-coaster
Qatar is a tiny Emirate of 11,437 square kilometers neighboring Saudi Arabia, one of the Arab world’s mightiest countries. In 1981, Qatar and Saudi Arabia became part of the newly formed Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), a political and economic council of the Arab states bordering the Persian Gulf. In 1982, Qatar and Saudi Arabia further strengthened their relations and signed a bilateral defense agreement. Relations became strained, however, in September 1992, when Saudi troops allegedly killed three Qatari soldiers in an exchange of fire on the Qatari side of a border post (despite the denial of the allegations by the Saudis, who claimed that the deaths were the result of altercations between rival Bedouin tribes). In protest, in October 1992, Qatar suspended the 1965 border agreement and temporarily withdrew its 200-strong contingent from the Saudi-based GCC’s ‘Peninsula Shield’ force. Qatar also adopted new foreign policies that countered Saudi interests, such as strengthening ties with Israel and Iran, Saudi’s bitter rivals. Tension between Qatar and the Saudi Kingdom continued to rise and reached its peak before the Islamic Conference (OIC) meeting in November 2000, due to Qatar’s continuing bilateral relations with Israel, a country whose existence is not acknowledged by Saudi Arabia. Although, in March 2001, Saudi Arabia and Qatar settled their border dispute at the International Court in The Hague, tensions increased again throughout the preparations for the war in Iraq in early 2002, due to Saudi anger over the relocation of US forces from Prince Sultan airbase near Riyadh to Al Udaid airbase in Qatar.
For the Saudis, the last straw in what they saw as a series of Qatari provocations was criticism of Saudi Arabia by Saudi dissidents on a popular Al-Jazeera talk show in June 2002. Consequently, on 29 September 2002, they decided to withdraw the Saudi ambassador to Qatar and ban Al-Jazeera from covering the pilgrimage to Mecca. The rift between Qatar and the Saudi Kingdom ended only five years later, on 22 September 2007, following a visit of the Qatari Emir to Riyadh. Since then, the relationship between the two countries has improved dramatically: not only did the Saudi Arabian ambassador return to Qatar in December 2007, but Qatar and Saudi Arabia agreed to a permanent resolution of the border dispute and strengthened financial and diplomatic bonds in 2009.
Al-Jazeera’s objectivity norms and Qatari politics
Since Al-Jazeera’s inception in 1996, the Qatari government, which sponsors the channel, has publicly asserted the station’s independence from Qatari interests. Although the Qatari Emir provided Al-Jazeera’s founding team with 137 million dollars to create the channel, he declared that the money was a loan, not a grant, and stipulated that he expected Al-Jazeera to return the loan and move to private hands by 2001. Yet in 2001, when Al-Jazeera failed to make a profit and its advertising revenues covered a mere 35–40 percent of its costs (Sharp, 2003), the Emir decided to extend the loan indefinitely. According to Forbes magazine, as of 2009 the government of Qatar had invested more than one billion dollars in Al-Jazeera English and covered more than 100 million dollars a year in losses for Al-Jazeera Arabic’s operation (Helman, 2009). Despite the generous funding, the Emir persistently asserts that because Al-Jazeera’s reporters are Western-educated with work experience in major international broadcasters, they are trained to adhere to professional norms, regardless of the station’s sponsor.
In stark contrast to assertions regarding Al-Jazeera’s independence from Qatari interests, critics assert that Al-Jazeera exists to serve the interests of its sponsor, the Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, as it criticizes all but the Qatari government and regularly fails to report on sensitive matters involving Qatar, such as violations of foreign workers’ human rights in Qatar (El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003; Zaidi, 2003). The argument goes that the Emir continues his sponsorship of the channel because it functions as an excellent public relations tool for Qatar, as ‘Al-Jazeera is the only channel more famous than its country of origin’ (Samuel-Azran, 2010: 31). According to Powers (2009), the ‘micro-state’ of Qatar uses Al-Jazeera to leverage its political status in the emergent ‘global network society’ atmosphere (Castells, 1996), where a global television network can promote the national interests of its host country in a highly efficient manner. Powers claims that Qatar is able to successfully conceal its relationship to Al-Jazeera because it is a peripheral player in international politics and therefore most viewers are indifferent to its political affairs.
Al-Jazeera Arabic versus Al-Jazeera English online operations
The Al-Jazeera Arabic news website was launched on 1 January 2001, in order to address Arab-speaking countries’ demand for online news from the Al-Jazeera brand, whereas the Al-Jazeera English website was launched on the eve of the war in Iraq, on 16 February 2003, to provide English speakers with news about the war from a non-Western perspective. Accordingly, the majority (81.4%) of the English-language website’s users originate from the United States and other Western countries, while the great majority of users of the Arabic-language website (98%) are from the Arab world (e.g. Fahmy and Al-Emad, 2011).
HaLevi (2007) found that Al-Jazeera Arabic is much more aggressive in its reporting of US affairs than the ‘sanitized’ English version, as ‘the Arabic version included the language of a terror organization, while the English version was cleaned with changes and omissions, including changes to the language of direct quotes’ (HaLevi, 2007, as cited in Fahmy and Al-Emad, 2011). Similarly, Youssef (2009) found that throughout the war in Iraq, the Al-Jazeera Arabic website disseminated propagandist messages regarding Iraqi civilian casualties, whereas Al-Jazeera English presented a more balanced version of the same events. Abdul-Mageed and Herring (2008), who analyzed the structure and themes of both websites, also identified a large number of ‘systematic biases’ regarding the two websites’ coverage of political, particularly Arab affairs, specifically regarding Al-Jazeera Arabic’s alleged propensity to cover events from an Arab perspective as an attempt to satisfy its audience. By contrast, Fahmy and Al-Emad (2011) found only minor differences between the coverage of the US/Al-Qaeda conflict on these two websites.
Method
Research question
How did Al-Jazeera Arabic and Egnglsi.net report Saudi affairs before, through and after the Qatari–Saudi September 2002–September 2007 conflict?
To address the interplay between Saudi–Qatari relations and Al-Jazeera’s reports throughout the conflict, we used the method of longitudinal content analysis, which has proved highly useful in past studies in analyzing the link between political turbulences and shifts in media coverage over time (Hallin, 1994; Wolfsfeld, 2004). Specifically, in light of the rocky relationship between the two Gulf countries throughout the last decade, longitudinal content analysis offers a powerful tool for analyzing trends in Al-Jazeera’s reporting of Saudi affairs during periods of ebb and flow in the Saudi–Qatari relationship.
Sample
In line with the methodology of examining the impact of conflicts on media coverage by comparing that coverage to the coverage during the preceding and subsequent periods (e.g. Howard, 2002; Jakobsen, 2000), we examined the pre- and post-conflict periods in the Saudi–Qatari conflict. The periods for Al-Jazeera Arabic were defined as follows: pre-conflict (from 1 January 2001, the day Al-Jazeera Arabic.net was launched, to 29 September 2002, the day the Saudis evicted the Qatari envoy), conflict (from 30 September 2002 to 21 September 2007, the day of the historic meeting between Qatari and Saudi leaders to resolve the conflict), and post-conflict (from 22 September 2007 to 31 December 2008, the end of the year ensuing after the resolution). For Al-Jazeera English, the analysis began on 16 February 2003, the day the website was launched; subsequent dates are identical to those of its Arabic counterpart. This, of course, means that the analysis does not contain a pre-conflict period examination of Al-Jazeera English’s coverage of Saudi affairs.
Altogether, 969 news items were sampled: 456 from the English website and 513 items from the Arabic website. Articles were collected through a search for the term ‘Saudi Arabia’ (in Arabic: ‘
’) on the search engines of the Al-Jazeera English (http://english.aljazeera.net/) and Arabic (http://www.aljazeera.net/) websites. The unit of analysis was textual news item. Due to the fact that Saudi Arabia played only a minor role in many of these items, we limited our analysis to items that focus on Saudi Arabia (see ‘Measures’ below). Consequently, we narrowed down the sample to 285 articles published on the Al-Jazeera Arabic website and 220 articles published on Al-Jazeera English. The news items collected were coded for topic, tone, timing, and focus.
Measures
Topic
‘Diplomacy’ relates to articles dealing with Saudi Arabian foreign policy; ‘economy’ relates to articles that deal mainly with financial aspects such as oil issues, GCC meetings, etc.; ‘security’ relates to defense and the safeguarding of Saudi borders; ‘terrorism’ relates to articles about the Saudi position on terror organizations during the ‘war on terror’; ‘human rights’ includes all articles dealing with rights violations and interference with human rights organizations’ activities; ‘internal’ relates to domestic affairs such as new regulations, health affairs, the death of the Saudi king, etc. ‘Sport’ and ‘religion’ are self-explanatory. When an article dealt with two relevant subjects, we asked the coders to decide on one principal topic in line with the main focus of the article.
Tone
‘Positive tone’ was defined as an article where 75 percent or more of the body of the article portrays Saudi affairs in a positive light, such as one that covers Saudi Arabia as an attractive place for foreign investments (e.g. news agencies, ‘Saudi Arabia is the most attractive state for US investment in the region’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 8 August 2001). ‘Negative tone’ was defined as an article where 75 percent or more of the body of the article cast Saudi Arabia in a negative light, such as one elaborating on Saudi Arabia’s long track record of breaching the rights of foreign workers, with minimal or no coverage of the Saudi response to the allegations (e.g. news agencies, ‘Saudi arrests 5 intellectuals who call for reforms’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 16 March 2004). All other articles were defined as ‘neutral’.
Conflict period
‘Pre-conflict’, ‘conflict’, and ‘post-conflict’, according to the dates mentioned above
Focus
We defined Saudi Arabia’s playing a central role as ‘50 percent of the article or more dealing with Saudi Arabian affairs’.
Procedure
To minimize nationalistic bias, two Palestinian–Israeli students and two Jewish–Israeli students were selected as the study’s coders. All four coders coded all Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English articles in the sample, and were trained until sufficient reliability of a minimum 90 percent agreement was achieved on a Scott’s Pi inter-coder reliability test scale. The inter-coder reliability test was conducted on all Al-Jazeera English articles and all Al-Jazeera Arabic articles. The lowest inter-coder reliability for the relevant variables was Scott’s Pi 91 percent (for the category ‘tone’ on Al-Jazeera Arabic website items).
Findings
Differences between periods
To address the research question, a chi-square test was conducted, with conflict period as the independent variable and tone (negative, positive, and neutral articles) as the dependent variable (see Table 1). We found a moderately strong relationship between conflict periods and tone in the case of Al-Jazeera Arabic (χ2(4) = 22.13, Cramer’s V = 0.28, p < .001), indicating that it followed Qatari interests throughout the periods examined. Indeed, we see a dramatic increase in the proportion of articles critical of Saudi affairs, from 13 percent (N = 5) of articles in the pre-conflict period to 31 percent (N = 66) of articles during the conflict, followed by a dramatic decrease to a mere 3 percent (N = 1), which amounts to only one article casting Saudi Arabia in a negative light, in the post-conflict period. In a similar manner, the proportion of articles casting Saudi Arabia in a positive light decreased dramatically from 31 percent (N = 12) of articles (adjusted residual = 2.9) in the pre-conflict period to 11 percent (N = 24) of articles during the conflict (adjusted residual = −3.2), and then rose again to 22 percent (N = 7 ) of articles in the post-conflict period. We found no correlation between tone and conflict period in the conflict and post-conflict periods (χ2(2) = 4.67, ns), indicating that there were no dramatic differences in its valence towards Saudi affairs across the different periods.
Tone of Al-Jazeera articles covering Saudi affairs by conflict period (%).
Breakdown of articles’ tone by year
Table 2 examines the tone of Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera concerning Saudi affairs in the pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict periods, by year. A chi-square test was conducted, with year of publication in each version of Al-Jazeera as the independent variable and article’s tone towards Saudi affairs (positive, negative, or neutral) as the dependent variable (see Table 2). In Al-Jazeera Arabic, we found a very strong relationship between the years and the tone (χ2(14) = 101.57, Cramer’s V = 0.42, p < .001).
Tone of Al-Jazeera articles covering Saudi Arabia by year (%).
Table 2 sensitizes us to the dramatic changes in the coverage of Saudi affairs over the investigated period. In 2001, when Saudi and Qatar signed an interim border agreement at the International Court in The Hague (in March 2001), only 10 percent (N = 2) of the articles on Al-Jazeera Arabic were critical towards Saudi affairs, whereas 43 percent (N = 9) were supportive of Saudi affairs. To illustrate, in August 2001, Al-Jazeera Arabic published the results of a survey that featured Saudi Arabia as ‘the most attractive country for US investment in the region’, ranking Qatar only fifth in the region (news agencies, ‘Saudi Arabia is the most attractive state for US investment in the region’, 8 August 2001). That trend was reversed throughout the build-up to the conflict: in 2002, 39 percent (N = 11) of the articles were critical towards Saudi policy versus only 11 percent (N = 3) that were supportive in tone. The most dramatic transformation took place during the first two years of the conflict – 2003 and 2004 – when 58 percent (N = 15) of articles (adjusted residual = 2.8) in 2003 and 70 percent (N = 19) of articles in 2004 (adjusted residual = 2.5) were critical in tone towards Saudi affairs.
Specifically, during the conflict, Al-Jazeera emphasized the frequent breach of human rights in Saudi Arabia, including the intimidation of Saudi intellectuals (e.g. ‘Saudi arrests five Saudi intellectuals’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 10 October 2004; ‘Saudi arrests 5 intellectuals who call for reforms’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 16 March 2004; ‘Saudi authorities in Riyadh and Jeddah prepare for an anti-government demonstration’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 17 December 2004), as well as human rights organizations’ reports slamming Saudi Arabia for its human rights violations (e.g. ‘Saudi Arabia tries to overcome the claims of an American Human Rights report’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 3 October 2004; ‘Arab human rights organization reports on hundreds of political detainees in Saudi Arabia’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 10 May 2004). In addition, throughout the conflict, Al-Jazeera Arabic paid special attention to the US government’s criticism of Saudi Arabia’s human rights record (‘Washington will rebuke Saudi Arabia for its human rights breaches’, 3 June 2005; ‘US Congress passes a resolution for financial aid to Egypt but denies it from Saudi Arabia’, 4 October 2004). In contrast to Al-Jazeera Arabic, where neutrality was the second dominant category in 2003 and third (last) in 2004, on Al-Jazeera English neutrality was the dominant category in all the years examined, and during 2003–2004 there are no signs of Al-Jazeera English having followed the Arabic version’s trend to criticize Saudi Arabian policy.
Differences across topics concerning Saudi affairs
Figures 1 and 2 present the subjects covered regarding Saudi affairs and the tone of coverage of each of the subjects. The diagrams reveal that on both networks, diplomacy, terrorism and human rights constituted the three central themes regarding Saudi affairs during the conflict. The main differences are in the volume and tone towards Saudi affairs in regard to these topics. We found a moderately strong relationship between the Al-Jazeera versions and the volume of coverage across the different conflict periods (χ2(7) = 39.62, Cramer’s V = 0.28, p < .001).
Topic and tone concerning Saudi affairs on Al-Jazeera Arabic (N = 285).
Topic and tone concerning Saudi affairs on Al-Jazeera English (N = 220).
Regarding volume, the most important finding is the complete disappearance of articles concerning human rights and terrorism – the two subjects that featured most prominently in the criticism of Saudi affairs – from the Al-Jazeera Arabic website throughout the post-conflict period. In the same period, Al-Jazeera English published four articles on human rights affairs and six articles on terrorism concerning Saudi Arabia.
Concerning the tone, upon analyzing the relationship between articles of negative tone (articles from the conflict and post-conflict periods only), across the different subjects and the Al-Jazeera versions, we found a very strong relationship (χ2(5)= 21.86, Cramer’s V = 0.45, p < .001). On Al-Jazeera Arabic, the tone towards terrorism and human rights was highly critical during the conflict, with 27 of 40 Al-Jazeera Arabic articles on human rights being critical and 21 of 48 articles being critical of Saudi terror policy. Whereas, during the pre-conflict period, Al-Jazeera Arabic mostly focused on Saudi denunciations of 9/11, with only one Al-Jazeera article critical of Saudi terror policies, the coverage turned negative during the conflict, moving to focus on allegations that Saudi Arabia helps sponsor terror organizations such as Al-Qaeda (‘Washington blames Riyadh for hindering support for Al-Qaeda’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 2 May 2006) and Hamas (‘Hamas delegation in Saudi Arabia’, Al-Jazeera Arabic, 23 February 2006). In stark contrast, during the conflict and post-conflict periods, Al-Jazeera English mostly made reference to Saudi Arabia’s fight against global Jihad. As regards human rights breaches, a close textual analysis reveals further differences between the Al-Jazeera versions’ representation of the subject. Specifically, while Al-Jazeera English usually notes the full list of countries criticized for human rights beaches on the human rights report, including Qatar, Al-Jazeera Arabic tends to put the limelight on Saudi Arabia and often omits Qatar’s name from these lists (e.g. ‘Gulf Arabs dispute US abuse claims’, 3 October 2004).
Discussion and conclusions
By analyzing its coverage of Saudi Arabia throughout the Qatari–Saudi conflict, this study examined whether Al-Jazeera’s online news serves to promote Qatari interests. Emphasis was also placed on analyzing the differences and similarities between Saudi coverage on the Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English websites. We found a correlation between the promotion of Qatari interests and Al-Jazeera Arabic’s coverage of Saudi affairs in the pre-conflict, conflict, and post-conflict periods, but no correlation between Al-Jazeera English’s coverage of Saudi Arabia and the promotion of Qatari interests. Whereas Al-Jazeera’s Arabic website increased negative coverage and reduced positive coverage of Saudi Arabia throughout the conflict in comparison to the pre- and post-conflict periods, Al-Jazeera English maintained a balance of positive and negative articles during the conflict and only slightly reduced negative coverage in the post-conflict period.
Importantly, it was not for want of newsworthy events that Al-Jazeera failed to cover human rights violations in Saudi Arabia because 2007 was actually characterized by several high-profile stories concerning Saudi breaches of human rights that were deemed newsworthy by most other international news platforms. Perhaps the most notable of these events is the international outrage over the 2007 Saudi Shari’a court decision to stiffen the punishment of a woman who had been gang-raped, due to the fact that she had been seen in public with a man in violation of Shari’a law, from 90 to 200 lashes and six months in jail. A search on Lexis Nexis easily reveals that the story, which broke worldwide in November 2007, was featured widely on CNN and the BBC. The victim was interviewed by ABC, Associated Press, and other major media platforms, yet received no coverage on the Al-Jazeera Arabic website. Al-Jazeera Arabic similarly ignored the high-profile June 2008 Human Rights Watch report that slammed Saudi Arabia for treating its foreign workers as ‘virtual slaves’, despite the network’s tradition of publishing the Human Rights Watch annual reports every year during the conflict and the wide coverage of the report on other news networks.
Moving on to explain the differences between Al-Jazeera Arabic and Al-Jazeera English, which, by and large, revealed a correlation between Qatari interests and biases against Saudi Arabia on Al-Jazeera Arabic but not on Al-Jazeera English during the conflict, we attribute the differences between Al-Jazeera’s Arabic and English versions to the different organizational structures, goals, and audiences of these operations. Importantly, these differences strengthen previous comparative analysis studies of Al-Jazeera Arabic and English (Abdul-Mageed and Herring, 2008; HaLevi, 2007; Youssef, 2009) that also found that the structural differences and interests of these stations result in dramatically different coverage of different themes. In the context of the specific analysis of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Saudi affairs, we contend that while it has been argued that Arab viewers actually appreciate Al-Jazeera Arabic’s intense criticism of Saudi Arabia, which they see as a mark of Al-Jazeera’s ability to criticize its mighty neighbor (El Oifi, 2005; Powers, 2009), similar partisan reporting of Saudi affairs by the relatively new Al-Jazeera English would have jeopardized the new station’s ambition to gain viewership and distribution. Indeed, shortly before the 2006 launch of Al-Jazeera English, the Al-Jazeera network publicly embraced a code of ethics that adheres to strict Western norms of journalism, and recruited many former US and British journalists to demonstrate that its reporters have a proven record of adherence to Western norms of objectivity. The network also invested heavily in its Washington offices and in gaining the trust of US viewers amidst a fierce campaign from conservative groups that insisted that Al-Jazeera is a mouthpiece for terrorists.
What all this means is that while it is impossible to prove beyond doubt a causal link between Qatar’s interests and Al-Jazeera’s output in the absence of a document that reveals direct orders from the Qatari Emir to Al-Jazeera’s management, the study strongly indicates such a link. If it be taken into account, as The New York Times article asserts, that the Chairman of Al-Jazeera’s Board of Directors was present at the historic meeting between the Qatari and Saudi rulers, the study strengthens the notion that lowering the flames of Al-Jazeera against Saudi Arabia was part of the Qatari–Saudi agreement. It might be argued that the eight-year analysis of Al-Jazeera Arabic’s coverage of Saudi Arabia indicates that the station was used as a diplomatic tool by Qatar throughout the period analyzed (January 2001–31 December 2008).
The study’s main significance, then, lies in its outline of the boundaries of Al-Jazeera Arabic’s independence and objectivity, and in illustrating its persistent submission to Qatari interests over the eight-year research period. While this does not reflect on Al-Jazeera’s coverage of other issues and conflicts, it does indicate that Al-Jazeera Arabic’s adherence to high journalistic standards is compromised when crucial Qatari interests are involved. While the notion that Al-Jazeera’s objective standards of reporting are lowered when it comes to its coverage of events that involve Qatari interests has been previously expressed by several analysts (Da Lage, 2005; El-Nawawy and Iskandar, 2003; Powers, 2009; Rugh, 2007), this study is the first to establish this idea through a longitudinal content analysis.
Accordingly, one implication of the study for the ongoing debate on the extent of the Arab media revolution is that Al-Jazeera Arabic, which many perceive as the most prominent representative of free Arab media (Al Jenaibi, 2010; Al-Nsairat, 2010; Ayish, 2002; Bahry, 2001; Lynch, 2006), does not conform to Western standards of professionalism during conflicts that involve Qatar. In an important article about contemporary Middle East media typologies (autocratic, reformist and commercial-independent), Ayish (2002) positioned Al-Jazeera as a liberal commercial network whose norms contrast sharply with those of state-sponsored channels. Since then, several studies have positioned Al-Jazeera at one of either extremes of Ayish’s model: either as a loyalist station (Rugh, 2007) or, in line with Ayish’s notion, as a commercial-independent that upholds Western journalistic norms (Lynch, 2006). The present study has illustrated that, despite Al-Jazeera’s relative freedom on many political matters, the Qatari government has the final word on issues of importance to the Emir. Accordingly, we suggest that Al-Jazeera actually should be classified as a reformist government-controlled medium, and is not as free as Ayish originally suggested. Although Al-Jazeera has freedom to report on many matters and controversies, at the same time the Qatari ruler has full veto powers and effectively dictates its coverage on matters that are of importance to him.
To elaborate, according to Ayish, the reformist government-controlled model emerged in the 1990s after Arab leaders saw that Arab viewers preferred watching the Gulf War via CNN. Consequently, they understood that, in order to attract Arab viewers back to the government-backed channels and maintain their clout, they need to make Arabs believe that Arab government-controlled channels also adhere to the norm of objective broadcasting. The present empirical analysis proves that, although Al-Jazeera managed to gain the trust of many Arab viewers with its reformist style reflected in bold reporting that often adheres to Western journalistic norms, the Emir had the final word on Al-Jazeera’s output during the crisis with Saudi Arabia. Thus, the reformist government-controlled model allows maintenance of the traditional tight government hold of media in the Arab world while at the same time maximizing the clout of the proxy channel.
To conclude, the study also illustrates that the current structure of Arab media sponsorship is unlikely to allow Al-Jazeera to adhere to its long-stated ambition to imitate CNN’s reporting norms. This is not to say that Western media have not been blamed repeatedly for patriotic cheering and persistent bias. Indeed, political economists such as Herman and Chomsky (1988) assert that the structure of the media in the US means that the networks constantly depend on the government and thus marginalize dissent and serve US interests during foreign crisis. Political communicants (Bennett, 1990; Sheafer and Wolfsfeld, 2009) argue that the two-party system in the US means that the media does not challenge the government beyond the Republican–Democrat debate, while sociology scholars such as Tuchman (1978) consider that the journalistic routine means they justify their biases by adhering to objector technicalities (such as number of sources) rather than substance. However, since the US media is not sponsored by the government, even its fiercest critics make no claim that its submission to government interests is as clear-cut as illustrated in this empirical study of the Qatari–Al-Jazeera Arabic interplay.
Study limitations and recommendations for future research
The main limitation of the study stems from the technical obstacles encountered when searching for data on the Al-Jazeera website search engines. On many occasions, the search engines omitted relevant results that we were able to recover through repeated searches. In addition, the search engines often came up with different results for the same search terms. We overcame most of these obstacles by printing the results of repeated searches and crossing these results to ensure that we gathered all the relevant data. Unfortunately, repeated attempts to obtain the data through Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Doha failed.
We believe that future international political communication studies will highly benefit from the method presented here of crossing data between international relations and media coverage. While this method is challenging and makes it difficult to prove direct causation, we believe that when connections between media output and national interest are suspected, this method could illuminate the nature of relations between international news networks and their sponsoring bodies. Specifically, since the contemporary global news map is heavily populated with networks structured on the Al-Jazeera model – allegedly independent government-sponsored regional and international channels (e.g. Telesur, Dawn News, Russia Today, France 24) – this method can illuminate the interplay between international relational and international news output.
Footnotes
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.