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| Speakers: | Talal Al-Haj, U.S. bureau chief, al-Arabiya/MBC TV Networks |
|---|---|
| Abderrahim Foukara, UN bureau chief, al-Jazeera | |
| Jane Arraf, Edward R. Murrow press fellow, Council on Foreign Relations | |
| Presider: | Garrick Utley, President, Levin Graduate Institute, State University of New York |
October 7, 2005
Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
New York, NY
GARRICK UTLEY: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. If we could have your attention, please. Somebody tap their water glass.
I’m Garrick Utley. On behalf of the council and the International Academy of Television, we’d like to welcome you. Our panel members and I would like to welcome you, for the next 59 minutes and 59 seconds, to talk about and to share some perspectives from the Middle East, from the foreign newsrooms.
I’d ask you, as usual, to pleas turn off cell phones and other potentially intrusive devices, and to give you the good news that this is on the record today.
Well, you know what journalists have been going through, you know, unattributed quotes and things like this, but we’re also very much aware of the fact that, as a former foreign correspondent, that what our viewers and readers often wanted to know was not what we were reporting on a story, as important as that might be, but afterwards when we went back to the hotel and had a late-night cup of coffee or a drink, which journalists were at times known to indulge in, what we were telling each other about the real story which wasn’t being communicated, if indeed that was the case. So maybe we can share some of the experiences with my colleagues off camera—or offline, so to speak.
What we want to do is spend the first half-hour, as usual here at the council, discussing some issues with the panel and then turn it over to you for the question-and-answer or, as we call it today, the interactive period in this digital era here at the council.
And we’re really looking at two aspects. We are focusing, because of the distinguished and deep experience of my colleagues here today, on the Middle East, what is happening there, their perspectives and that of their colleagues, which are quite rich and interesting, I think, but also about the process of communication. Here we are in this world of instant satellite communication, technological wonders. They’re reporting today by satellite, Jane as you’ve seen on the screen on CNN from Baghdad lo these many years. And yet what is the message? What is the human contact? What gets through and what does not get through, and why?
So to the panel itself. On my immediate left is Talal al-Haj, who is the U.S. bureau chief for Al-Arabiya/MBC-TV in the Middle East. That’s one of the newer Arab language news channels, with growing influence and presence in that region. Like many others, he is a former BBC veteran, Al-Jazeera veteran, and born in Baghdad but a resident of—he lives both in New York and in Washington, working in both places. Glad to have you with us.
Jane Arraf is stepping in because we had two of our panelists fall out or unable to make it. Andrew Steele of the BBC, unfortunately, was caught in bad weather on the tarmac at Reagan National Airport in Washington. And Hossai Farahi had to return to Afghanistan with a family emergency she has to deal with.
So Jane has joined us in this. We’re exceptionally fortunate to have her. She’s currently the Edward R. Murrow press fellow here at the council for a year. Lucky us. But as you know, she’s a veteran journalist in the Middle East. She’s been the Baghdad bureau chief for CNN, the first, really, American television bureau chief there. For many years before that, she was with Reuters in the Middle East. She knows that part of the world. She’s been reporting on it for more than 15 years. And those who know her know of her experience. They also know that her charming Arabic has, as she says, a distinct northwestern Saskatchewan, Canada, accent to it. (Laughter.) She grew up in a small town in—of Palestinian parents—in northwestern Saskatchewan, and I guess there wasn’t much chance to perfect Arabic.
JANE ARRAF: Not a lot, no.
UTLEY: But you’ve caught up since then. Thank you for being with us.
And Abderrahim Foukara is a familiar face to you. He’s been here at the council before on these panels. He’s the U.N. bureau chief for Al Jazeera. He’s from Morocco originally, also worked with the BBC.
Let’s get to some of the questions that I think are on all of our minds. Here we are on this day, Iraq still going on, as we know, approaching the vote on the constitution. We have the president’s speech yesterday on the, quote, “war on terrorism.” We have in this city a security alert, police swarming through train stations and subway stops.
Both of you gentlemen, first, you’re obviously reporting on this. What were you telling your audience in the Middle East—Talal, start with you—about life in New York City today? And what do you think your editors and viewers—how are they reacting to this?
TALAL AL-HAJ: The alert happened at the same time when President Bush gave his important speech at the National Endowment. Yesterday they called me. “Breaking news, breaking news! We have alert in New York. Would you like to go live with us and describe what’s going on?” They were very interested.
As you know, Al-Arabiya and MBC are both Saudi-funded. Terrorism is a big issue in Saudi and the Middle East, and they wanted to know what’s going on—if it’s a serious threat, what’s happening—like everybody else.
I told them what I know. And the question that came back to me is, “Do you think is related—if they had this information, like, for a few days now, why did they come up with it now? Why not earlier? Why did they let people use the trains and transportation and wait till the evening, if it was serious enough? And is it time to coincide with the speech that President Bush gave the same day?”
This is the question that was thrown back at me. And people are skeptical; why, why, why?
UTLEY: The skepticism—I won’t use the word “conspiracy theory,” but this very important. This is a kind of a reaction that somebody at the other end, the editors, throw back at you.
AL-HAJ: Yes. Yes. So I was on the air. That’s what the anchor asked me; do you think this is related to the speech he was giving today, to give it more oomph and bring it to life to people? I mean, was it timed?
UTLEY: Abderrahim, what did you report? Or what was the reaction from your home office?
ABDERRAHIM FOUKARA: Let me first of all say that even in Andrew’s absence, you still managed to get the BBC over-represented here on this panel. (Laughter.)
But just to go back to the point that Talal has just made just now, I think the important thing for our stations, especially for us reporting on a U.S. story to an audience in the Middle East, is the extent to which the United States has become the subject of scrutiny, as opposed to the scrutinizer. And you may call it skepticism or you may call it conspiracy theory, but the fact is that a lot of the questions that were raised about yesterday’s story had to do with the fact that you actually had the president of the United States making his speech, and on the same day, later in the day, a big story broke about New York.
The question was, if that was such a big story that actually went to the heart of the security issue in the United States, why wasn’t it dealt with by the president of the United States? Why did he have to pass it on to his underling, so to speak.
UTLEY: Mayor Bloomberg. (Laughs.)
FOUKARA: Mayor Bloomberg. (Laughter.)
UTLEY: Jane, you’re in Baghdad. You’re just recently back from many years in Baghdad. You’re not there, but you talk to your colleagues. How do you imagine the Iraqis—here are the Iraqis living violence every day; even in the Green Zone sometimes they get it. So how would they react to the reports that these stations are transmitting?
ARRAF: I have to say if there was a the report about possible terror threats n New York City, they would react with some glee because that is exactly what—the feeling is in many parts of the Arab world, Iraq certainly, that New York still is getting what’s coming to it. And that’s part of the gap, I think, the perception between the coverage that people take in from the Arab media and coverage that they get from corporations like CNN, other Western news organizations, which they don’t always believe.
The wonderful thing about Iraqis and other people in that part of the world is there is a healthy amount of skepticism and, yes, conspiracy theories. So they would be watching it and saying, “Look, not even the United States is immune to this.” And that’s a large current that goes through everything that they watch.
UTLEY: It’s interesting, because what’s come up here is—conspiracy theory or skepticism is what you’re talking about, which is a natural—seems to be a reaction in an audience in that part of the world. In this country we look at a report and say, “Is it slanted? Is it pro-Palestinian, is it pro-Israel?” There’s a big debate about that; you know, CNN coverage, Fox News coverage.
So neither side, as we talk about sides, really accepts it 100 percent as is. Americans tend to say, “Is it slanted to this side or that side?” The Arab audience says, “Is there something underneath?”
Does this create a credibility problem with you as a journalist? Or does it limit you in what you can say to your audience, Talal?
AL-HAJ: To a large extent it does, yes. I try to stick—like Abderrahim has been at the BBC, we try to stick to the facts as reporters and let the viewer make up his mind. However, sometimes you do, in your stand-ups, you’re allowed, you face the camera to say a few things here and there. But for myself, I stick to the facts most of the time. And not everything you know you can say on the air. Sometimes it’s not corroborated, sometimes it’s inflammatory. So I would like to say sometimes more than I say, actually, in my reports.
UTLEY: Well, give us an example. You’re not on the air.
AL-HAJ: (Laughs.) (Pause.) Oh, I really can’t. (Laughs.) (Laughter.) I mean, for example, I just had an interview with the prime minister of Iraq and he told me things that, if I said them, they would be explosive. And I can’t say them. I would like to say them, I’ll take credit for them, they will be newsworthy; but they’re off the record. He told me it’s off the record, and I just can’t. So there’s ethics here, and also, not everything you know you can say, really.
UTLEY: In the United States, obviously, a journalist would then say, “Okay, I’ll go and I’ll make it an unattributed source and somehow I’ll couch it, but that information will get into my report.” Is that something—
AL-HAJ: The reason, actually, is our area is very explosive. And a bit of news like I’m holding back, it would make a big difference. And I’m just trying to be responsible, as well.
UTLEY: Abderrahim?
ARRAF: You’ll tell us later, right? (Laughter.)
AL-HAJ: (Laughs.)
UTLEY: Abderrahim, do you feel restraints—constraints at times, or self-censorship on your own part because of the nature of the story and the audience you’re addressing?
FOUKARA: You know, my personal view is that any journalist who tells you that he or she doesn’t exercise one type of self-censorship or another is basically telling you a fib. We all work under such difficult and delicate conditions, especially in the context of U.S.-Arab relations nowadays, that you really have to weigh carefully what you say. And I’m afraid that in the process of weighing carefully what you say to your audience, you do find yourself in one way or another censoring yourself.
I think it’s not just the issue of I should be careful that I find myself in trouble, but it’s also the issue of you know how sensitive these issues are and you have to shroud them in a sense of responsibility, which adds to your credibility as a journalist.
UTLEY: Okay. Just give us an example of a limit. You’ve used very important terms—sensitivity, potentially explosive. Without giving away any secrets, give us an example of an area or a topic where you feel there’s a limit.
FOUKARA: Well, i mean, in the case of the speech, that whole situation that happened yesterday beginning with the speech of President Bush and ending with the press conference with Bloomberg and Kelly, for me, even before people began to make that deduction, there was something dyslexic here between the president and the New York authorities. I mean, that was my first instinct. My first instinct was, if this was such a major story, why wasn’t it actually announced by the president in the country himself? But obviously, I cannot say that, because if I ask that question in one way or another, then I open the door to having to actually answer it, and I don’t have the facts to answer it, so I’d better leave it for tomorrow, for another day, until I have the facts to answer it or until the story dissipates of its own volition.
UTLEY: But you also know the audience is probably posing that question in its own mind.
Jane, let’s turn to the other side of the coin. You’re in Baghdad. You’re reporting back to the United States. And you’re speaking to two audiences. You’re speaking to the American audience, the CNN USA audience, and there’s also the worldwide audience, the CNN international. Are you aware of that distinction? Because you don’t necessarily know where your report’s going to show up. And do you feel any constraints and limits? And if so, what are they?
ARRAF: I’ve always been amazed that there are as few constraints as there have been on the reporting by a big American network reporting in Iraq at a time when the American government did not want us—didn’t want anyone to be reporting from Iraq. So the constraints are essentially that you’re going to have to keep people’s attention. If you want them to care about Iraq, if you want them to care about any issue that’s at all complex, you’ve got to make it, as you know better than anyone, really appealing to them. And that means, unfortunately, for an American audience, shorter stories, perhaps a bit simpler; I mean, not dumbing it down, by any means, but you can’t assume a level of knowledge there.
UTLEY: Okay. But if you’re in a two-way, let’s say you’ve live and you’re talking to a CNN anchor for USA, for Lou Dobbs’s show or whatever it is, and they’re asking you, “Jane, what do you think of what’s happening in Iraq?” and then an hour later you’re speaking just to the CNN international audience, being heard outside the United States, do you feel yourself or hear yourself speaking in a different way to those two audiences, not just by making it shorter or pithier, but in terms of substance?
ARRAF: In terms of substance, only to the extent that speaking to an American audience, Americans want to hear about Americans, they don’t necessarily want to hear about Iraqis. And one of the things I’ve tried to do is show them, look, these people are just like you, they want the same things out of life. So you’ve got to bring it back to that.
But I find the difference often is in the anchors’ questions. The American questions will quite often be soft questions; the anchor questions for CNN international will be quite hard-hitting, to the point sometimes of being hostile when you have guests on—which is not a bad thing.
UTLEY: So it speaks for itself.
ARRAF: Let’s turn to another aspect of communications—public diplomacy. Karen Hughes, as we know, has taken over the job, the latest in a series of people who try to polish up the American image and get the message across in a more effective way. She recently made a tour of countries in that region. What do you think—was she talking, speaking, or was she listening? And if she was listening, what do you think she heard?
Talal, what can you tell us about that?
AL-HAJ: Well, the idea, I mean, we laughed when we first heard about this trip to win the hearts of minds of Arab—no, of Muslim men; Bush women going to win the hearts and minds of—(laughter). And then I said, maybe just Muslims, leave the men out. So we sent a reporter, Nadia Bilbassy, one of my reporters, to be with her on the whole trip. And we said to Nadia, “Don’t do any reports.” Andrea Koppel from CNN was also on this trip. “Just do a little documentary about the whole thing; it’s more intriguing.” And she’s actually working on it. I just spoke to her today. She just had an interview with Karen Hughes yesterday, and she started telling me about it.
I asked her, “What do you think? Did she go and change the hearts and minds of Muslim people? Did she make them believe that the American values and democracy and American way of life is the way to go?” She said, “No, that’s how it started, but she actually listened. She did listen, and—she admitted this in the interview—she learned a lot on this trip.”
And the impression I got from Nadia is that she is really serious about what she’s doing, she is sincere and she is a hard-working woman. And I take my hat off to her. And apparently, she told the president that everybody she met on this trip was telling her that the Palestinian question is the core problem in the Middle East. It’s not Iraq; it’s really the Palestinian problem. And she conveyed that to the president, and the president told her that he is determined to create a Palestinian state, and that’s one of the things he will do. So apparently it’s a listening tool, which is a good thing; I’m happy to hear it.
However, in Egypt, talking about democracy in the Middle East, I was really intrigued to hear that in Egypt, for example, where many Arabs are accusing the Americans trying to impose their way and brand of democracy in the Middle East, not taking in consideration the culture, the differences between our people. Apparently the Egyptian opposition leaders were asking the Americans: You’re not being hard enough on the Egyptian government; you’re not really pushing hard enough, in view of the last elections that took place in Egypt.
So there are people in the Middle East, they want the Americans to act harder, stronger, pushing the agenda of democracy, spreading democracy in the Middle East, and there are people who are criticizing. We can’t win in many ways.
UTLEY: Well, let’s continue—extend that point about democracy and bring it back to Iraq. We know the efforts under way there. The vote on the constitution is coming up, and later, if that is approved, a government itself. We’ve seen the political maneuvering and game playing, if you will, over the last several days; the Americans and the United Nations getting involved to get the process on the constitution back on track.
From your perspective—Jane first—as you spent so much time there, until very recently—and also in the wider Arab world, what is the opinion vis-a-vis the approval of the constitution and the success of the political process? Do Arabs really want to see it work? Do the Iraqis really want to see it work? Do they believe in Iraq that it will lead to a—I’m not talking about pure democracy, but a stable, peaceful environment.
Jane first.
ARRAF: I think I’m hindered by the fact that I am an optimist by nature.
But I have to—and we talked about this. I think we do believe that most Iraqis do want it to work. And there’s all this talk now of civil war, spiraling downward, violence everywhere. It’s not quite like that. There is still, I think, a sense of Iraqi identity, and there is still a longing by these people to have a country where they are willing to make some compromises. The things that we’re seeing now, these terrible things, I think are politically driven and it’s not really at the level of grass roots.
Now, having said that, there’s been very little effort to explain the constitution or the political process on the part of Iraqi political leaders to the Iraqi people. There’s almost no information out there. The further you get away from Baghdad, the bigger the gap is. People don’t feel they have a government, they don’t feel they have political leaders. And at the end of the day, what they care about is security and the economy, and the constitution is a luxury.
UTLEY: Abderrahim, when you speak to your editors back at Al-Jazeera headquarters—and you’re doing that every day or several times a day—what is the sense you’re getting from how they and your audience wants to see Iraq play out? On the one hand, do they want a stable Iraq, do they want democracy? On the other hand, do they want the Americans to get a bloody nose and pull out?
FOUKARA: Let me answer that by reversing into your previous question, which is about public diplomacy and what Karen Hughes is trying to do. I think it’s very good that the Bush administration does have somebody who is trying to do public diplomacy and change the perceptions of America—perceptions in the Middle East of America. I think that’s very good. What the Bush administration is up against is the political Richter Scale, if you will, in the Middle East. And by that, I mean you could say until you’re blue in the face that you’re trying to change the perception that people have of your country in the Middle East, but if you’re working on two issues where progress, at least on one of them, has been a slug for at least 10, 15 years and that’s the Arab-Israeli question—if you’re President Bush and you’re faced with a barrage of questions in the Middle East—Why aren’t you doing something positive about this so as to help change the image that your country has in the region?—it’s not that there’s been lack of progress between the Israelis and the Palestinians—there has been—but it’s so slow to actually make it tangible in the eyes of people in the Middle East.
The same thing goes for Iraq. The Americans and the Iraqis—and by that I mean the Iraqi government—I’m sure that they’re doing a lot of things that are actually supposed to help the ordinary Iraqis get on with their own lives, including in the political process. But progress in the political process in Iraq is so slow that it’s very hard to hold it up as a model of U.S. achievement in the region, and therefore, use that as a stepping stone to improve perceptions of the United States in the Middle East. And basically, people in—a lot of people in the Middle East, unfortunately, they would rather hear that things are not going well in Iraq because they feel that the truth is that they are not. They’d rather hear that than hear an American official or an official from the Iraqi government saying, “Look, the picture is not so bleak as it’s made out to be in the media.”
UTLEY: But we’ve been discussing in this building, for 30 years or more, and elsewhere, the Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Arab conflict. Yes, certain steps forward are made. But basically, the basic dynamic, an impasse, continues to exist. If that continues to be the case, whatever Karen Hughes tells the president he should do on this issue, and the next 10 years are more or less a continuation of what we know to be the familiar pattern, what does that—does that mean the whole U.S.-Arab situation, relationship, is frozen in terms of the perceptions, in terms of the hostilities, which can feed terrorism or can feed what have you?
Talal, you’re nodding your head.
AL-HAJ: I think the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the core of all problems, most problems in the Middle East. There must be a perception in the Middle East that something’s being done. There are increments of improvement. Like today I heard that the Israeli government, for example, is considering arming the Palestinians with light arms, which is, you know, a step forward, but, you know, it’s very little. There must be a big move in the Middle East to gain the confidence.
You know, the al Qaeda supporters, they always cite the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the occupation of Iraq as the reason for the terrorist increase. There has been terrorism for many years, even before September 11th. Ten years before it was in Egypt, in upper Egypt, it was in Saudi Arabia, there was in Morocco terrorism. And it wasn’t really because of the Iraqi occupation. It wasn’t because—these people believe in one thing; the goal is not to liberate Palestine as such, or get the Americans out of Iraq, it’s to go to heaven, to paradise. And this is the way—this is the final goal, and to understand otherwise is wrong. Some people are asking for a dialogue with them. How can you speak to people who really, all they want to do is to go to paradise by dying and fighting the infidels? And I’m not taking sides here. I’m not being anti-al Qaeda, for God’s sake, you know. But this is the ideology of these people.
And in Iraq, I think there’s a problem as well of the absence of the Arab role. Arab countries are not doing enough. There’s American forces. There are not Arab forces. Arabs are not sending even their ambassadors to Iraq in the name of security fears. If everybody held back, who’s going to do something to normalize the situation? Somebody has to step in. And if the Arab countries are not doing it, who’s going to do it? The Arab countries don’t do it for three reasons. One of the reasons is that they—first of all, they believe, actually, that the resistance is legitimate in Iraq against the occupation. Some of them—and there are a few—some of them believe that it would be nice to see the Americans get a bloody nose. And the third of them, they believe this is terrorism, that these people are killing the Iraqi people, but they’re worried about the radical extremists within their countries. So the Arabs are not being brave enough to do something about Iraq. And once they start doing something, then we can speak about letting the Americans leave. Because now—as Talabani said, if they leave now, there’s going to be a big problem in Iraq, and this is a fact. But if they stay too long, at one stage they’ll have problems with the radical Shi’ites. Now they have it with the Sunnis. But if they stay long enough, their friends, the Shi’ites, they’ll become their enemies one day. So it’s really a no-win situation and we have to be very careful.
UTLEY: All right, let’s finish the round on this question. What is the scenario, what is the end game as you see as of today, from your perspectives or the colleagues you speak with in Iraq?
Abderrahim, you go first. How does this play out in terms of American presence there, in terms of what Iraq becomes?
FOUKARA: I think Talal put his finger on it very well there. I mean, clearly, people who are in a position, for example, to influence decision-making in the Arab world, and especially in the neighborhood of Iraq, a lot of them know that damned if you do, and you’re damned if you don’t.
There’s absolutely no way the U.S. could pull out of Iraq and Iraq would remain what a lot of Arabs would want it to be; i.e., one single country. But there’s also no way that a lot of people in the region would accept the presence of Iraq long term—the presence of the U.S. in Iraq long term. And including the Iranians, who, by the way, have been playing—in my eyes, have been playing a very clever game with the Americans in Iraq and bringing into that, by the way, the nuclear issue.
So Iraq has become so many different things to so many different people in the region. It’s certainly become a card to play in this game, a dangerous game, but it’s a game nonetheless.
UTLEY: Okay. But is there any alternative to damned if you do or damned if you don’t?
FOUKARA: (Laughs.) I think you—I would put that question to President Bush. (Laughter.) I really would not want to be in his shoes! (Laughs.)
UTLEY: Well, okay. Let’s put the question to Jane.
ARRAF: Oh, thanks! (Laughter.)
UTLEY: You’ve been covering Iraq since when?
ARRAF: First went there in ’91.
UTLEY: ’91. So 14 years. You’ve seen it all—or most of it. How does this play out?
ARRAF: I still have trouble believing that we are where we are. It has opened up—(laughs)—
UTLEY: (Laughs.)
ARRAF:—I know that’s not helpful. But it’s opened up this incredible Pandora’s box where it is more complex than anyone would have imagined. And that’s the problem with trying to find simple solutions. Now, I know that the solution is not to withdraw the troops immediately because that would be absolute chaos. The Iraqi forces are nowhere near ready. I think we all know that.
Somewhere in there there is a combination of political compromise, economic reconstruction, which has not yet happened, and doing something about those borders where the foreign fighters are still coming, and the security, where I think there is room that it will painfully eventually all come together. But not quite sure how.
UTLEY: And we’re not going to use the journalistic cliche: Only time will tell. (Laughter.)
We’re going to turn it over to you now and your questions. I see hands starting to go up around the room. There are microphones here. We’ll try to get as many as we can. Please state your name, be brief. Questions directed at the panel—one individual or the other, or the panel as a whole.
We’ll start right back there by the podium—by the pillar.
QUESTIONER: Thank you. Tina Bennett, Janklow & Nesbitt Associates. I noted with some surprise that there were several moments in the beginning of the comments where there was an implied link or identity relationship between skepticism and conspiracy theories. Isn’t the reverse the case? Don’t we have a skepticism deficit in our press, and doesn’t that feed into the conspiracy theories because we’ve created a vacuum where skepticism should be in this country.
UTLEY: Let’s put that to Jane because this is a very telling criticism of journalists. And I, as an ex-CNN person for a few years, one of the things I heard in the end of the ’90s, when people in the shop—and I’ll say this; you don’t have to say it, but you can pick up on it—was CNN, other news—when the whole “news channel” syndrome was picking up speed and becoming sort of the key of news communication, was CNN and these news channels becoming the “tripod network.” And that meant instead of going out and covering stories, you put up your camera and microphone on a tripod, and if Donald Rumsfeld came out to do a news conference, he realized you’d put him on the air as long as he kept talking. I mean, remember, after the invasion he talked for 15 minutes or so, and then he realized if he kept talking for half an hour, an hour, he could dominate the airwaves. And journalists became more passive, or just conduits of news. That’s using the technology in a certain way. The other part of it I think is the substance.
Do you feel that journalists, in this case of Iraq specifically, have been too soft?
ARRAF: I think that’s an excellent point. And I think there is a lack of skepticism here. The point I was making was mostly about how Arabs, and Iraqis in particular, perceive the media. And I think it’s important to remember they are not familiar with a media that does not work for someone; that isn’t connected to the secret police, that isn’t connected to a government or a political party. And that’s part of the reason why they don’t believe what they hear.
But yes, here we should be more skeptical. We should question authority. And we should ask those hard follow-up questions that are not always easy to ask in press conferences in New York and Washington.
UTLEY: And it’s sad in a way that people pointed out how journalists became sharper in the Katrina story, and why did it take an act of God? Maybe journalists felt they could be bold in the face of an act of God and how it was handled and mishandled, rather than going into real substantive issues such as Iraq or something else.
Right here; the gentleman here.
QUESTIONER: John Lamb (sp), Sidley Austin. For the two gentlemen who are alumni of BBC, I just wonder whether some of that skepticism you employed in your broadcasts yesterday when the report was Nabil Shaath’s quotation—or alleged quotation of President Bush’s remarks in the White House, supposedly, to Palestinian ministers, saying that God had ordered him to invade Iraq.
AL-HAJ: Yes, this program is—he made these comments in a BBC program that hasn’t been transmitted yet, I think.
UTLEY: You might just say what the quote was.
AL-HAJ: Well, the quote—well, I’m not exact quote, but what it means, the substance of it, that God—in a meeting with Abu Mazen and Nabil Shaath in June, 2003, the president has told them that God told him to go and fight the terrorists in Afghanistan, and that God told him to go and end tyranny in Iraq, and that God told him as well something to do with the peace, I think, in Middle East; to create a Palestinian state and give Israel security to that—I mean, not exact quote, but that’s the meaning of it.
And of course this news hit the Middle East—I’ve been reading today, this morning, some editorials in the newspapers and articles about the relation between Gaza and George Bush. (Laughter, laughs.) It seems like he has a relation like Moses did. (Laughter.) You know, he speaks and he tells—but you know, so far the White House—we haven’t heard the comment from White House if this is true or not, but Nabil Shaath has said it in this program, and the (Middle East’s further substance ?) was look how this guy is acting. He’s criticizing the mullahs and the religious fanatics in the Middle East, and he is taking his own authority from God.
UTLEY: Right here.
QUESTIONER: Thank you. Gary Rosen from Commentary Magazine. We have increasingly available in the United States now transcriptions of things from the Arab media that weren’t available years ago from services like Memory, and one thing you encounter again and again are the wildest sorts of real conspiracy theories, not skepticism, not wondering about political spin, but things about how, say for instance, 9/11 was actually a Mossad plot or was arranged by American Jews. And we see this again and again as events continue to recur, that somehow, you know, I’ve seen very differently in the Middle East. So I’m wondering as sophisticated, Western educated journalists, as people operating in a medium previously unavailable in the Arab world, do you take it as part of your responsibility to correct some of the more outlandish and outrageous things that circulate commonly and go unchallenged in the Arab media?
UTLEY: Abderrahim, why don’t you pick up on that on that and specifically this case about the—these theories of 9/11. Has that been debated on Al-Jazeera?
FOUKARA: I’m quite happy to address that. The issue of the American media and the Arab media, for me, personally, there’s always been enough blame to apportion between the two sides. And my theory is that people in the Arab world have the perception that they have of the American media, not because the Arab media are better in terms of performance or skepticism, but because there’s this idea, there’s this notion that the American media are much more deeply anchored in a democratic system, and therefore, they have much more of an obligation to be skeptical and tough on U.S. politicians. That’s number one.
Number two, the Arab media have for a long, long time been obviously much more deeply anchored in a closed system of thought than their American counterparts. And as you know, when you live in a closed system of thought or information, conspiracy becomes an adjunct of that system inevitably.
The question of what happened on 9/11, I think, was discussed at that time as a conspiracy in many of the Arab media, including my own, and it will continue to find a fringe that will discuss it within those parameters.
Let me just say one more thing about President Bush. I think he made a mistake, which although he subsequently retracted it soon after the 9/11 attacks, he used the word crusade, and a lot of people were subsequently convinced that he actually didn’t mean to start a new crusade. But there’s a strong residue of thought and conviction in the Arab world—and this probably goes back to what Nabil’s had said—there’s a strong residue of thought and conviction in the Arab world that President Bush and people around him are so religious that any political act they can actually embark upon will necessarily have a religious tone, which sort of borders on a religious crusade in the Middle East.
How do you get rid of that? I haven’t the faintest idea.
UTLEY: And of course, in turn, that can feed the religious feelings—(inaudible).
FOUKARA: That’s right.
UTLEY: But let me just start off on my question again. In Al-Jazeera programming, when these conspiracy theories on 9/11 or whatever come up, does the host of the show—does the anchor of the show say, “Okay, we know that these are out there, these theories, but that’s bunk?” Is it dismissed by your editors?
FOUKARA: I think it depends which shows you’re talking about. There not—(laughter)—there’s on—in the specific case of Al-Jazeera, for example, there’s one show which is very popular, and that’s (Arabic name for television show).
AL-HAJ: Opposite Direction.
FOUKARA: The Opposite Direction. And you know, beyond the trite title of the show, what it actually allows the presenter to do is to ask a series of questions from two opposite ends of the spectrum. He doesn’t actually answer them, but just the fact that he raises a whole series of questions in the same vein—was 9/11 a Zionist conspiracy? Why should we not believe that 9/11 was a Zionist conspiracy? And then he would flip his cap and say, “Aren’t we Arabs so stupid? What age do we actually live in to believe that the Zionists actually carried out 9/11?”
So it is within those parameters that it’s actually posited, but would anybody actually go up there and say, “Hey you guys, you know, this idea that, you know, 9/11 was carried by a bunch of Zionists, and the evidence was that no Jews actually turned up for work that day?” I’m not sure if there’s anybody doing that, and I’m not sure, quite frank—to be quite frank, I’m not sure what purpose it would serve. This is not going to change—people who want to think like that, you’re not going to change their mind.
UTLEY: Okay. Okay, lots of hands up. Over here.
QUESTIONER: My name is Anne Nelson. I’m an author, and I teach at Columbia. I just back from Jordan two days ago, and experts there were telling me that one possible approach might be to call for a regional conference, bring the Saudis, the Iranians, the Turks together, others, players in the region, and posit it as, how do we avoid the dismemberment of Iraq. Do you see any promise in this approach?
UTLEY: Talal.
AL-HAJ: Yeah, this is one of the questions, actually, I asked the prime minister when I met him here in New York during the G-8 Summit, and, yes, there is such a plan. Iraq is actually very active in doing that. They are canvassing, and they are lobbying these countries to get together. There’s a question mark on Syria. He’s—he was very critical of Syria’s role. But there are plans. I asked the Iranian president as well if they would take part. He avoided my question. He skirted and he said, you know, we will do everything to cooperate, but he didn’t commit himself to attending a conference, not yet.
But the prime minister of Iraq, definitely. They want a conference. They want to hold a conference. They’ve been lobbying the—all—he actually held meetings with the Turkish prime minister, with the Syrians. He wanted to get this thing going, but so far, I don’t hear any announcement about—to conduct leads me to believe that is not happening soon.
UTLEY: Okay. Right here, Jerry.
QUESTIONER: I’m Jerry Goodman, Adam Smith Global Television. American journalists believe they’re in a profession, although most of them work for a news gathering organization that is profit making and therefore sensitive to things that make a profit. The absurd example is the OJ Simpson trial where news goes on all around the world, but if that’s what drives up the rating, they will cover it ad nauseam. So the American news is going to follow the ratings to some extent, but I’m not aware that there are any Nielsen ratings in Arab world. Therefore, what do your editors—how do your editors govern what you cover?
UTLEY: Talal?
AL-HAJ: Actually, we are getting ratings. We get them in monthly. I think Gallup is doing them for us in Britain, and last time I spoke to my editor, he’s telling me like your competitor, Al-Jazeera, is beating us in this program, in that program. (Laughter, laughs.) And our program from Washington is doing so well—(laughs)—and they’re actually getting more. He promised to send them to me, but he hasn’t. But we are getting them regularly, and they’re done by European organizations. How do they do them? I don’t know.
UTLEY: All the way at the back.
QUESTIONER: Thank you. I’m Richard Whalen, a retired editor of Fortune. I’m impressed by how we misperceive things. And coming in to a discussion of why didn’t the president announce what was going on in the New York subways, I realize, my God, as a New Yorker, this poor fellow who said that doesn’t realize New York is much better governed than the United States. (Laughter, applause.) So—
AL-HAJ: They have better intelligence. (Laughs.)
QUESTIONER: The federal intel. (Laughter.) The cops go down in the subway, and they know what’s going on. Now, our ignorance and our provincialism, as we come to the end of a long cycle of globalism, which began in 1945 before most people in this room were born, this cycle is ending with the people who made it. As this ends, there is vast disorder and misperception, and we are misperceiving what is really going on in the Middle East. We’ve had a lesson yesterday from our president on the geopolitics of the Shi’ite empire extending from Spain to wherever, and I’d love to have your impressions of his misimpressions.
Thank you.
UTLEY: Any quick comments on President Bush? You’ve already offered some.
FOUKARA: Well, I mean, the issue of what President Bush said about that, I mean, there’s—there are clearly people in the Muslim world who would like to revive the Islamic empire, although no one is suggesting that the Islamic empire has ever been a Shi’ite order or Shi’ite in nature. I think one of the—if I may just slightly diverge from the question the gentleman has just raised—I think one of the problems—and President Bush has talked a lot about the educational system in the Muslim world and how that may have the bearing on the issues of security and the relations with the United States and the West overall.
I think one of the questions that is deeply ingrained in the educational system in the Muslim world is precisely about that. There was a dream of one day when there was one empire, basically extending all the way west through Spain, and that dream—whether the issue of Iraq is sorted out with a Shi’ite majority or a Sunni majority or if Iran ends up, you know, expanding its influence in the Gulf—it’s not going to go away. But obviously there are people who would use that for their own political ends. As in the speech of the president, bin Laden, others who want to revive, for political ends, that dream, and it’s applicable. I believe in the—(inaudible)—again, this morning, you know, about the speech and that particular comment about the empire.
Now, the perception from the Middle East, many of the (writers ?) think that he is just trying to instill fear because of his failed policies in Iraq—this is what the (writers ?) cite, not me—because of the mounting deficit, because of Katrina, what happened, what expose; and how many Americans live in one of the richest country in the world, mostly the minorities in the south, and that is—actually his speech laid the ground for a bigger war to come and to other targets, Syria and Iran; and that even the Turkish starting negotiation with you will base the way—this, again, back to cynicism and skepticism and the conspiracy theory—because the United States will need Turkey and putting pressures on the Europeans to open negotiations again—let them in the European Union because you can’t have an Islamic country excluded because of Islam while you want Turkey to help you in war against two Muslim neighbors.
So—and that the Americans have been asking to use the air base in Incirlik again—Incirlik—you would not—(inaudible). And always—(inaudible)—through that again, skepticism and conspiracy and that the president is really just pushing a message that the war in Iraq does not create a safer world, that the fight against terrorism in Iraq has created more terrorism. That’s what they’ve been saying in the newspaper.
UTLEY: Question right here.
QUESTIONER: Pete Mansoor, Council on Foreign Relations. I spent 13 months in Iraq during the formative year of the insurgency and was able to see a wide variety of media, both Western and Arab, at work. And my perception was that, although Western media didn’t always get it right, there was a lot of professional ethics exercised by the various organizations. They’d push back against each others stories. There’d be a lot more fact checking. Well, our perception of the Arab media was that not only would they repeat each other’s story, but they would embellish them at each step of the way. And I’m just wondering if our two Arab colleagues could discuss how they view professional media ethics in the Arab press?
MR. UTLEY (?): And I just made the point that Al-Jazeera, as we know, has been banned in Iraq by the Iraqi government, but Talal, do you want to address that? I mean, you have BBC backgrounds, but you’re operating in a different culture too.
AL-HAJ: Well, yeah. I mean, again, the question raised about the reporting about conspiracy theory about 9/11, I see such reports in Western media. I’ve heard official, ex-FBI director of Los Angeles. He has this conspiracy theory saying there’s no way the intelligence services in this country did not know about the plot of 9/11. I’ve heard people in this country raising questions about the intelligence failure. How did we fail? Nobody gave really good answers to that yet, and nobody paid a heavy price yet. Yes, Tenet’s gone, but still, there was a huge failure here.
I, as an Arab journalist, I try to be balanced, fair to the fact as much as I can. Of course, I have sometimes difficult times. I live in different culture. I don’t know if I can tell you the story now, but I’ll give you one example.
I reported on Monica Lewinsky. I was at the time reporting to Al-Jazeera from the White House. I was the bureau chief for Al-Jazeera at the time. I was the only correspondent. And came the Monica Lewinsky story. I mean, this is just to show you the difficulties sometimes. I’m not trying to be funny here. And why—I was asked, “Why does—the president of the United States doesn’t think he had sex with Monica, and everybody says he did?” As an Arab man speaking to Arab audience, Muslim audience, how do I handle this? (Laughter.) I said to him, “We don’t even have a good word for oral sex in Arabic.” (Laughter.)
I didn’t know what to say. And I said, “Well, because sex through the mouth is not considered by the president as sex, while other people do.” And I shrunk. (Laughter.) But I have to be factual. I had to be honest to the facts. And I didn’t know what to do. I don’t have an Arabic—good Arabic word for this. (Laughter.)
And the answer came to me is, how come he’s so popular if he does such terrible things in his office?
QUESTIONER: Right.
AL-HAJ: And my answer: because the people of America like his performance in the Oval Office. (Laughter.)
So all in all, we have problems—sensitivity, cultural. We try to be factual. We try to be honest in our reporting.
In Iraq, for example, Arabiya was allowed to report. We paid a price. We lost eight reporters. We hold the record for the people—reporters who died in Iraq. We have one reporter now in prison for three, four weeks, not being told why. We’re not being told why. He was imprisoned in Ramadi. He went in attending the funeral of one of his cousins, who was killed through an operation. He could have—
UTLEY: In U.S. custody in Iraq?
AL-HAJ: Yes, we are in—our reporter is actually now in custody by the American—and his father and his two brothers, in the wake of his cousin—where he went and attended—and he is arrested. We’re not told why.
There are five other foreign reporters imprisoned in Iraq. Reporters without Borders are asking for them to release—the American administration to release these reporters or charge them, or tell us why. You can’t apply secret evidence in a country where you’ve gone there to tell them in the first place you have to apply democracy, human rights and the rule of law, and then act differently.
We have problems in our business, and we are facing it on a daily basis. We try to be honest and to the facts, but—
UTLEY: Microphone. The lady right there.
QUESTIONER: (Name and affiliation off mike.) I have a question to you gentlemen. Why did you report back home saying there are more important stories to report from the United States than the sleaze about Monica Lewinsky? You said there’s a rating system, but I guess your network doesn’t get paid by commercials. So why don’t we report better things out of America?
AL-HAJ: It was the story at the time.
UTLEY: Yes.
AL-HAJ: It was threatening the presidency of the United States. We can’t ignore it. (Chuckles.)
UTLEY: Right here. Down here.
QUESTIONER: Patricia Rosenfield (sp), Carnegie Corporation. This gets—this is a question about choices concerning reporting. A story that is—demonstrates success in the Middle East or in the region that seems to have very limited staying power was the recent elections in Afghanistan. And I’m wondering about the choice of what’s covered from what appears to be successful transition, even limited, to democracy in Afghanistan, both in the Arab media and also in the U.S. media, and what—
UTLEY: Well, we’re going to put that question to Jane, because you know from CNN there’s CNN USA and there’s CNN International. I imagine the Afghan elections got different level of play in the two different networks.
ARRAF: Right. And you put your figure on it; it is a choice. It’s a budget choice, limited budgets, things like hurricanes and war taking up all sorts of resources.
I agree it was an amazing story, an important story. But what I’ve also found is that even though I like to think that our viewers want to see a balanced picture of everything and want to see all of those stories that do not involve war and explosions, at the end of the day, what they’re really interested in, what they’re most interested in are the dramatic things. And I don’t want to believe that, but after all this time, I think that is probably right.
Yes, it would be lovely to cover more of the elections in Afghanistan. There are so many stories out there we need to cover, so many things we need to explain, particularly to an American audience. But at the end of the day, it is a choice, and very often it’s a financial choice for news organizations.
QUESTIONER: But, you know, I’m also interested in the Arab audience as well, because this something that seemed to be successful—
UTLEY: Did you report the Afghan elections?
FOUKARA: On Al-Jazeera?
UTLEY: Yeah.
FOUKARA: Yeah, of course. They did. I mean, the issue is not whether you reported the—I think you’re right; it’s not whether you reported the story or not. It’s what point of view you reported the story from. And you know, whether it’s Afghanistan or Iraq or something else, I mean, these are—Afghanistan, by the way, I should just say, parenthetically, Afghanistan as a country in the Middle East, up until possibly 9/11, wasn’t on the radar. People didn’t even consider it a Middle Eastern country. But after 9/11, that’s changed. And whether it’s the war in Afghanistan or, more recently, the elections, yes, it got a fair play on Al-Jazeera.
But again, we just keep going back to that point of where you actually anchor your story. And the story in most media in the Middle East is that, look, this is four years after 9/11, and the country is still in political turmoil, and there’s increasing violence, not just against U.S. forces but also against NATO and other people operating in the country.
Now, that may not necessarily be the image here of what’s going on in Afghanistan, but I think many—some of the important main media in the Middle East—that’s basically the idea that they’re putting forth.
UTLEY: Time for—just for a wrap-up question. One question here, sir.
QUESTIONER: Herbert Levin (sp). During the turmoil about who actually won George Bush’s first election, there was a lot of discussion, including in this room, as to what his foreign policy might be. And it was, I think, generally observed that it would be a continuation of his father and Scowcroft’s realism.
Then when he made his appointments, it was the neocons, Kristol and The Wall Street Journal and so forth. And a lot of publicity reading the translations of the Arab media were Iraq would be democratized, and this would spread throughout the Middle East. Well, the neocons are now totally disreputable and proven totally wrong. They’re out of it. And this administration is groping around as to how to get on to something else.
Does this problem with our ideology and conceptual framework for policy towards the Middle East come through, or is this something which is really rather hard to report and is neglected in your reporting?
UTLEY: Was it a monolithic America that’s involved there, or is it a Bush policy America?
Talal—you’re—I’ll let you answer that.
AL-HAJ: No, we report the actual appointments of the people you mentioned, with disappointment. We were hoping to—continuation of the Clinton efforts or the realism of the—Bush the father.
The Middle East as a whole, the perception has been taken there that Bush policy in the Middle East has been disastrous. They see it as heavily slanted towards Israel and in support of Sharon. And the conference that he held with Sharon at the White House with the letter of guarantees, that was a big blow for the hopes of Palestinians and Arabs.
We are still—you see, the thing about the Arab people, they believe that America is—the United States is the answer, is the key to the solution in the Middle East and the only broker, be it honest or not—(chuckling)—but only broker that can solve this problem in the end. And they still hope that somehow this administration will deliver on its promises. But they don’t see it as putting enough pressures on Israel to deliver the real results on the ground, bits and pieces, like the withdrawal from Gaza hailed—we’ve seen CNN covering it, showing the suffering of the Jewish people being removed. Many people in the Middle East looked at it, “What about us? We suffered, too. Nobody carried that in television. Yes, we sympathize with these people. Okay, they’ve been living there. But in the end, this is occupied land.”
So there is a lot of—
UTLEY: Let me just wrap up the hour, again, extending this point. We’ve been talking about policy, issues, conflicts, some of which go back decades, and we’ll be discussing, perhaps, unfortunately, decades to come.
But let’s go back to the technology and your craft. With the technology today, the instant communications, the pictures, the sounds, the impact and the intimacy that we are all familiar with, we’ve discovered that we don’t live in a global village but in countless villages connected globally.
And I think the most discouraging thing that we’ve heard today as a leitmotif has been, despite this closeness and this intimacy, the traditional—and I will use the word, perhaps incautiously—tribal instincts or cultural instincts are still there; that you see it one way, we see it another way. It goes back to the Vietnam War, television’s so-called first war, where the pictures in the 1960s, if you were a hawk, you said, “Well, it’s too bad we’re burning the village, but that’s what we’ve got to do.” If you were a dove, you said, “That’s a moral outrage.”
To what extent do you think television, technology is going to bridge these gaps, is making the gaps worse?
Right down the line. Start with Abderrahim.
FOUKARA: I think—let’s look at it this way. If you had a decision to make between putting President Bush, yesterday, for example, on air in the Middle East, and not putting him on air, there’s something—whatever decision you make, there’s a positive and there’s a negative. If you didn’t put the story on air, some people would argue it was like—well, this is the president of the United States making a major speech. And we’re talking about lack of channels between the United States and the Arab world. That was clearly one of them. Let the people watch the president and decide for themselves. That’s great. That’s connectivity.
The flip side of the argument is that some people who are not receptive to the president or to his philosophy as a president will actually seize upon the speech to say, “See? This is exactly what we’ve been telling you.”
So it connects you, but at the same time, it disconnects you.
UTLEY: Jane, does it bring people together or keep them apart?
ARRAF: I think potentially it does bring people together. It’s the reason—it’s part of the reason, as you know, that CNN was founded; this vision that if people just understood each other, they wouldn’t be fighting so much.
During the war, I chose not to be embedded, and I had the incredible luxury of having my own satellite truck. (Laughter.) And we could go around along the frontlines, and I would go into—for instance, do live feeds from a cave where there were people hiding and bring that to the living rooms of America. And it was unimaginable.
And now the technology is getting better and better. And if we use it properly, and if there’s an audience, it’s a great thing.
UTLEY: Talal, we can do all these wonderful things, and yet you were the first to say today there are the skepticism, sometimes the conspiracy theories. Are we—does technology bridge or break down the human—
AL-HAJ: It’s definitely a bridge. I mean, we need more intercommunication between nations and people to understand how the other people think and have a dialogue. And the more we understand each other, the less fearful we are from each other. There’s no doubt about that.
But for example, the speech yesterday, the president himself criticize the media, saying there are elements that incite in the media, you know, meaning my good friends, for example, in Al-Jazeera—
FOUKARA: Or my good friends at Arabiya! (Laughter.)
AL-HAJ: (Laughs.) I think, you know, both of us are in the same ship, although they like us for the time being.
To be honest, this is one thing that gets on my nerves. When the Arab media criticize or—I mean, a job of a journalist is to be critical; it’s not to sing the praises of this or that. Or we are cynical about this or that; it’s we are inciting. If this happens in this country, it’s First Amendment, you know. And you can’t have it both ways, guys. (Chuckles.) You know, what’s good for you is good for us. We are—we should be allowed to speak our own mind. We are not encouraging anybody to kill anybody. I mean, we’re just being critical.
And in this country, even right wing are allowed to—there’s hate literature, but yet you can’t touch them, because—First Amendment right.
But when it comes to us in the Middle East, you apply different standards. And this is seen as double—this is the problem with the whole American policies seen as double standard. What’s good for you must—should and must—should be good for us. Like in Iraq, I mentioned the case of our journalist. If a journalist is arrested in this country, he should be told within a day or two, a week, what’s the problem, or his—in our case, it isn’t. And there’s not only Arab journalists suffering in Iraq in the hands of the American forces.
American forces so far—I don’t know if you know that—killed 15 journalists by mistake, and yet the Committee to Protect Journalists is criticizing the administration of not looking into the—and investigating thoroughly these killings. And they’re not even applying the standard they’re recommending themselves to protect the media in Iraq. And I’m sure Jane knows that better than I do.
So you—the problem is double standard and what is perceived. And the perception is dangerous. And if we—but about the bridge, I think communication is really important, and—
UTLEY: It doesn’t remove—the obstacles are there.
With that perspective on the Middle East, from the Middle East, which is what this session is all about, we’re going to bring it to a close. We thank you. We thank you. Have a good afternoon. (Applause.)
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