Kristen Gillespie, writing at The Nation, argues that Al-Jazeera has developed a pro-Islamist bias:
Dozens of hours of viewing Al Jazeera for this article confirm the charge. Whether it’s reporting the Hamas perspective from the occupied territories without mention of the Palestinian Authority’s version of events, or the fawning depiction elsewhere of Islamist parties and militias as the grassroots reflection of Arab sentiment, Al Jazeera has moved away from its ideologically diverse origins to a more populist/Islamist approach.
Marc Lynch, an authority on Arab media, doesn’t buy it, however: any changes in coverage, he writes, “ha[s] more to do with the region’s changing political realities” than anything else. He goes on: “If al-Jazeera is giving less coverage to democratic activists, that’s probably because those democratic movements have largely been crushed over the last year as authoritarian states have tightened their grip. If al-Jazeera’s coverage of Iraq is less bloody, that’s probably because there’s less violence to cover.”
I’d also add that heavy coverage of Islamist groups shouldn’t come as a surprise. In most Arab countries, Islamist parties — not secular or liberal groups — represent the only viable, organized opposition to monarchic rule. No wonder, then, that a station that likes to spit in the face of authority gives frequent airtime to Brotherhood and other Islamist figures. Whether or not Al-Jazeera deliberately favors these Islamist parties in its (supposedly “fawning”) coverage, the charge that Gillespie alleges, is a hard one to prove. Much of her criticism is directed at the station’s Islamist-leaning bureau chief, Wadah Khanfar, who replaced the secular Faisal Yasiri in 2003. Gillespie quotes a number of observers, including Alberto Fernandez, to argue that Khanfar has taken the station in a decidedly Islamist direction.
Charges about Al-Jazeera’s alleged biases are frequently thrown around from all sides, however; has there really been a noticeable change this time, or is Gillespie just picking at straws? Marc Lynch’s answer echoes my own sentiments:
Al-Jazeera’s Western and conservative Arab critics like to highlight station director Wadah Khanfar’s alleged Muslim Brotherhood and pro-Hamas inclinations, and make wild claims about the growing number of Muslim Brotherhood members working at the station. Its Arabist and Islamist critics like to point to its changing coverage of al-Qaeda (such as its controversial distortion of Osama bin Laden’s October video, which absolutely enraged al-Qaeda supporters and drew direct criticism from both Ayman Zawahiri and bin Laden himself), to last year’s appointment of a new board of directors dominated by Qataris and pro-American figures, and to the presumed urgency of getting al-Jazeera English access to the American market.
From my own viewing of the station and from talking with various al-Jazeera people, I’ve always been skeptical of both the “radicalizing” and the “pro-Americanizing” claims. Al-Jazeera has always thrived on diversity and clashing viewpoints, on generating controversy and airing heated debates about touchy subjects, and on covering the news from an Arab nationalist standpoint. From the cacophany of its talk shows, it has always been as easy to pick out examples of radical discourse and claim that they are representative as it is to pick out examples of pro-American coverage [or pro-Islamist coverage] and claim that al-Jazeera is “changing.”
All things considered, the station has always struck me as fairly balanced — not much different than other international TV outlets. Yes, they cover the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamic Action Front, and Hezbollah; but they also regularly feature respected liberal/secular scholars, American officials, and other non-Islamist figures (more of a diversity of viewpoints, I should add, that you’d see on some American TV stations — I’m looking at you, Fox News.) The frequent attempts to “expose” some underlying bias to Al-Jazeera’s coverage has, therefore, often seemed to me to be somewhat overplayed.