DOHA |
DOHA (Reuters) - A journalist throws open the wide front door of Al Jazeera's Doha headquarters, cell phone pressed against his ear. "They were arrested last night," he bellows into his phone. "We can't get through to the producers. All the material was confiscated, and some of the equipment was destroyed."
Inside the newsroom, the atmosphere is alive with energy. Journalists sit transfixed to their monitors, which show live feeds from central Cairo -- where hundreds of thousands of protesters are on the brink of pushing another strongman from power and where Al Jazeera crews have faced repeated police harassment and detentions. Tapes are piled high in a corner, labeled in scrawling Arabic.
"This is our story," says one Al Jazeera English journalist, who asks not to be identified because he is not authorized to talk to the media. "This is the story that proves to the naysayers of the world what we can do. We took the lead and everyone followed: CNN, Christiane Amanpour -- in spite of harassment, having our tapes stolen, people being beaten up. If you want to know about Egypt in the U.S., you're watching Al Jazeera."
Over the past few weeks, much has been made of the power of Al Jazeera, the Qatari news channel launched 15 years ago by the Gulf Arab state's Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani with the goal of providing the sort of independent news that the region's state-run broadcasters had long ignored.
It was Al Jazeera that first grasped the enormity of the Tunisia uprising and its implications for the region, and Al Jazeera which latched onto -- critics would say fueled -- subsequent rumblings in Egypt. And audiences around the world responded: the network's global audience has rocketed. During the first two days of the Egyptian protests, livestream viewers watching the channel over the internet increased by 2,500 percent to 4 million, 1.6 million of them in the United States, according to Al Anstey, managing director of Al Jazeera's English-language channel.
"This is a real turning point for us, in terms of recognition of the integrity of the product we're producing, and showing that there is a true demand for our content and information," Anstey told Reuters.
But even in its moment of triumph, questions about Al Jazeera remain. Despite its stated independence and brave journalism, the network unavoidably plays a political role. Is it, as many in the region charge, sympathetic to Islamist parties such as Hamas and Hezbollah? Does it target some Middle East regimes while treating others more softly? And what role, if any, does its wealthy Qatari backer play in all this?
Perhaps ousted Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak said it best during a visit to Al Jazeera's Qatar headquarters seven years ago: "All that trouble from this little matchbox?"
ANGER IN EGYPT
Al Jazeera, Arabic for "the island", has earned the resentment of leaders in the Arab world -- as well as the admiration of many ordinary Arabs -- almost from the day it launched in 1996.
The first Arab network to put Israeli officials on the air, the channel has also hosted guests as varied as Saudi dissidents, feminist activists and Islamist clerics. "When Israelis first appeared on our screens, people thought we were funded by the Mossad," one employee said.
In his final weeks in office, Mubarak made little secret of his anger with Al Jazeera's broadcasts of the protests against his government. The network broadcast live from Cairo's Tahrir Square throughout the 18 days of protest, despite its office being closed, journalists beaten and detained, and tapes and equipment confiscated and destroyed.
In phone calls with western leaders during the uprising, Mubarak complained about Al Jazeera's -- and Qatar's -- role in fomenting unrest, according to senior political sources in Europe. Mubarak told them he believed the emir was focusing attention on the unrest in Egypt at the behest of Iran. It's a complaint that has been made before over the years. Executives of the station dismiss the charge and say they are solely interested in good journalism.
Critics point to instances where Al Jazeera has pulled its punches as evidence of the political role it can play. Initially, the channel's coverage of Saudi Arabia -- the Arab world's leading political and economic power -- was extensive, but in 2002 the kingdom withdrew its ambassador to Doha partly in protest over Al Jazeera shows on Saudi politics. Relations between the two states were restored six years later, and observers say Al Jazeera toned down its Saudi coverage. A clash last March between the United Arab Emirates navy and a Saudi patrol vessel after a dispute over water boundaries, for example, wasn't covered by the network.
"They'd have brought on a world of trouble," said one UK-based source, declining to be named because he feared it would hurt his employment prospects.
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