Al-Jazeera: Arabic versus English

A fellow classmate reported in her blog that “over 75% of the Middle East headlines on Al-Jazeera right now in some way glorify the Middle East and various Arab states.” This is not the same picture Marc Lynch portrayed in Voices of the New Arab Public. He described an al-Jazeera that was much more balanced and without glorification of or for anyone. So why is there such a disparity between his account and what currently appears on al-Jazeera’s web site?

Well, there could be any number of reasons. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to look at al-Jazeera’s news coverage over time to determine how it has changed since the beginning of the Iraq war, when Lynch says al-Jazeera was extraordinarily self-conscious and very critical of its own coverage (and when most of its leaders were former BBC journalists). It would also be important to recognize the difference between al-Jazeera English and al-Jazeera’s traditional Arabic site.

I will attempt to compare and contrast the content on al-Jazeera’s Arabic site with its English counterpart at least once a week until the end of this semester.

Today, there are no articles that glorify Arab states or the Middle East on either of al-Jazeera’s pages. The earthquake in Italy was the most salient topic on both the English and Arabic sites. The only difference in coverage is that the English site is reporting that 90 Italians have died because of the earthquake and the Arabic site is reporting that 150 have died. Headlines following this first topic were the same on both sites: a Baghdad car bombing and President Obama’s trip to Turkey. The headlines appear to be very similar and arranged in the same order, so perhaps peaking into one of the articles will reveal some contrasts.

Coverage of President Obama’s trip to Turkey:

First of all, the article from the English page quotes an al-Jazeera correspondent quoting President Obama: “[President Obama] talked about the contribution of the Islamic faith in the life of American Muslims and then he personalized that message by saying 'I know because I am one of them'. It was a message that reached out to many today.” Clearly, President Obama is not a Muslim. This was bad incredibly bad reporting. Beyond that rather large mistake, the articles on both sites are quite similar. They heavily cover President Obama’s speech to Turkey’s parliament, which included discussions on Armenia, U.S. relations with Muslims and Islamic countries, and Iraq. Along with pictures, both sites also briefly discussed the demonstrations that occurred in protest of President Obama’s visit. The only difference worth mentioning is that al-Jazeera English did not not cover any mention of Turkey’s ambition to become a member of the European Union but the al-Jazeera Arabic article did.

I am quite surprised with how similar the coverage is between the two articles. Here are some excerpts: “Obama sought to strike a balance over the issue of the massacre of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire in 1915, a sensitive issue which has poisoned ties between the two allies before.” – From al-Jazeera English and:

وبخصوص قضية الأرمن أبدى أوباما استعداد بلاده لحل الخلاف بين أرمينيا وتركيا وتشجيع الأخيرة على المضي قدما في المحادثات الخاصة بالموضوع

– From al-Jazeera Arabic which (roughly) translates as: On the issue of Armenia, Obama is ready to resolve the conflict between Armenians and Turkey and to encourage Turkey to proceed in talks.