What's Wrong with Aljazeera?

Lately I've been noticing more and more bad reporting by Aljazeera. (I'm speaking of the English language broadcasts here.) By “bad reporting,” I mean misleading or false. Factually false, or misleading such as by using the standard media technique of omitting key facts in order to present a false picture. Also too often they adopt the mendacious terminolog of U.S. propaganda, which is verbiage designed to brainwash. (“National security” is a perfect example.)

Here are two recent examples.

On July 10^th one of their American reporters, Kimberly Halken, presented a piece on the nomination hearings for the egregious secret police supervisor James Comey for FBI director (a gig with a ten year term in office- no longer lifetime as J. Edgar Hoover, the founder of the FBI, had). She uses the officially-approved euphemism “enhanced interrogation techniques” at one point instead of the true word, torture. And the words “national security” roll off her tongue, that never-defined term that is magic, like “abracadabra” or “open sesame” or “war on terrorism” (or in the old days, “anti-communism”) that has special powers to fog men's minds and endow government gangsters who invoke it with superhuman powers. (Literally superhuman: the magic words give them power over us humans.) She also mouths the standard blather about striking a “delicate balance” between so-called anti-terrorism and “not infringing on rights.” Same thing Obama himself says every time he's caught erecting another piece of his police state, and what every other architect of repression (and their defenders) says when they're on the spot.

This is boilerplate propaganda. Halkin just bolted the chunks of mendacity in place.

Second example:

Kat Turner, another American, reported the first court appearance of surviving Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. (The 19-year-old survived despite the efforts of the police to summarily execute him when his presence hiding under a tarp in a small boat in someone's backyard was reported by the homeowner. Initially, and even later, the media kept calling it a “shootout.” But it was soon admitted that Tsarnaev was unarmed.) Tsarnaev has been in captivity since mid-April. Turner claimed that “the only obvious sign of injury was a cast on his arm.” Well maybe she's just not very observant. Even the U.S. media described a disfigured jaw, and noted his constant touching of it. Even if she was too far back in the peanut gallery to notice, she could have gotten the information from numerous other media reports. In fact, how could Aljazeera miss it? On July 11^th Aljazeera ran her uncorrected report. A small point, perhaps, but not one that inspired confidence in Aljzeera's reliability.

Worse, however, she “reported” that Tsarnaev was “injured in a shootout.” No he wasn't, Kat. There was no “shootout,” because Tsarnaev WAS UNARMED. That fact has been known for months. [1]

Now, reactionary jackasses will think I'm being “pro-Tsarnaev.” Apparently they think I should lie and say Tsarnaev had a machine gun and was holding a baby at knife-point when he was shot, to make him look as bad as possible. (And not incidentally to justify the failed summary-execution attempt. by the police.) To think accuracy- that is, faithfulness to reality- matters, must mean that I “like” Tsarnaev.

Just to briefly respond to such a brain-dead, knee-jerk reaction: I'm not even sympathetic to Tsarnaev. I think he's an idiot, a puppet of his now-dead older brother (who apparently was one of these fanatical Chechen terrorist types) who had exceedingly poor judgment (an unfortunate and common pitfall of being 19). He helped kill three people who had nothing to do with Chechnya. Because they happen to live in the U.S., apparently that makes them guilty of “waging war on Muslims,” in his mind. A dozen or so people will also have to get on with their lives minus a limb or two. Nothing concrete is accomplished to end hostility towards Muslims by such an act. (Quite the contrary.) Nor does this in any way weaken the U.S. So without material value, there is only symbolic value left to consider as a possible gain for Tsarnaev's “cause.” (I get the impression he's as unclear as to what exactly his cause is as I am.)

I can think of innumerable better ways to make a symbolic point. I think the political “message” is lost on the victims and on the American public. All they see is some vicious violence. And if this is meant to inspire other Muslims to similar acts, a lá the Al-Qaeda strategy of provoking greater conflict, that of course means more of the same, making everything worse. The Chechens have pursued a strategy of more and more nihilistic violence in Russia, and so far the result has been the razing by Russian bombardment of Grozny and the installation of a sadistic terrorist as Chechen ruler as Russian client. I'd recommend trying something else.

The point here isn't about Tsarnaev; it is about reliable, honest reporting; the point is whether we can trust Aljazeera as an information source. It has nothing to do with one's attitude towards Tsarnaev, which in any case should not guide the reporting. That would not be objective reporting, it would be propagandistic.

But back to Aljazeera: Why the pandering to U.S. propaganda norms, and worse?

Perhaps the American reporters of Aljazeera are simply too brainwashed by their experience to be more objective.

Or perhaps Aljazeera, and the Emir of Qatar, have inferiority complexes. Perhaps they crave acceptance by the U.S. media and political establishment, which that imperialist power combine defines as “legitimacy.” Perhaps Aljazeera's bosses are brainwashed into feeling that legitimacy is controlled by the U.S. power system, to bestow or deny at their pleasure. (That certainly is a big problem in domestic U.S. politics. Prime examples: the pathetic sell-out U.S. labor unions, which have been slowly self-destructing for over 60 years now, and the “respectable” environmental organizations like the Sierra Club, which are lapdogs and pets of the corporate establishment.) The craving for acceptance from the U.S. power structure, (so-called “respectability”) is existential death to anyone who wants to follow a moral path in life.

The only possible value of Aljazeera, to an American or to ANY audience, is as an alternative to Western establishment propaganda. If all Aljazeera is going to do is echo and mimic that propaganda system, because it wants to “be part of the conversation,” i.e. to try to influence Western elites by saying Hey, we're one of you! Accept us!- in that case, no Westerner has any reason to tune in to or read Aljazeera online. If it's just going to present more of the same twisted worldview of Imperialist elites, it has no value. It's just an off-brand version of the brand name propaganda entities. And since the price is the same, why buy it?

Of course, given that Qatar functions as a well-remunerated oil spigot for “the West,” is it not intimately tied to the U.S. system? And who is the ultimate guarantor of the Emir's continued hold on power? Obviously the U.S. Hence we should expect Aljazeera, being a media operation of the Emir, to be basically in line with U.S. propaganda. Perhaps the only surprise is that it has displeased the U.S. as much as it has, mainly in its Arabic language broadcasting. [If it didn't tell the truth and report on people and events and conduct interviews of interest to Arab audiences, it would be as irrelevant as U.S. Arab-language propaganda ops are. The U.S. expects Aljazeera to parrot U.S. military propaganda, an absurd demand. Had Aljazeera functioned as the U.S. military and government wanted, and been a cheerleader for the invasion of Iraq and the horrors inflicted there, it would have totally and permanently discredited itself with Arab audiences and thus made itself irredemably irrelevant in its part of the world. The moronic “hearts and minds” mentality of the U.S. military is that their crude, cynical propaganda can actually change the attitudes of the people it bombs and maims and of those who can see plain facts. They think that if only ALL media would broadcast the same bullshit and lies as U.S. military propaganda ops, everyone would be fooled. Hey, these are the cretins who are convinced the U.S. media lost the Vietnam War!]

Qatar's ultimate dependency on the U.S. would explain Aljazeera's very muted responses to the repeated bombings of its facilities by the U.S., the murder of its employees, the kidnapping of at least one of them (imprisoned at the Guantanamo Bay military gulag for six years) and lesser attacks.

In any event, the Emir just squandered $500,000,000 in oil money buying Al Gore's failed cable TV channel, in an attempt to force its way into the U.S. market, from which it has been banned by the U.S. corporations that control what Americans can see and hear. (This oligarchic media system is known as “the free press.” See what I mean about mendacious terminology?) Others have commented on the irony of global warming Cassandra Albert Gore Jr. making a personal killing of $100,000,000 from oil money. (Burning oil releases carbon dioxide, the increasing atmospheric concentration of which is raising the temperature of the planet.)

I'll bet the inhabitants of Qatar might have thought of other uses for that money. But in a Kingdom, even the oil in the ground is the personal property of the ruler.

On the other hand, Aljazeera must be doing something right in Egypt, because the military oligarchs there have so far arrested 28 Aljazeera employees since the coup of a few days ago. Meanwhile the Egyptian media is strenuously vying for the title of World's Worst Media. The horrible hacks who work for it (the opposition media has been expeditiously shut down by force by the military- but don't call it a coup!) not only have acted as enthusiastic cheerleaders for the military so far, but they shouted down and ejected an Aljazeera reporter from a press conference. Man, those vermin make the U.S. media look good by comparison! (But not very. See the loathsome David Gregory's attack on Glenn Greenwald on NBC.)

1] The U.S. media can be quite lousy too. Consider this example of exiguous, manipulative “reporting” by the CBS radio network (aired July 11^th at 6 am Eastern Standard Time). “Reporting” on Tsarnaev's court appearance, other than the fact that he was in court, there is literally no information. No mention of his injuries, no mention even of the plea entered, which was the main purpose of the hearing! (“Not guilty” was the plea, I can report, in case you relied on CBS for your info.) Instead, aside from the introductory sentence- that Tsarnaev was in court yesterday- the entirety of the CBS “report” was the opinion of the M.I.T. campus police chief (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), one of whose officers was shot and killed by the Tsarnaev brothers when they were on the lam after the bombing. The chief was in court to glare at Tsarnaev, and he opined: “He was a punk. [His emphasis.] He showed no remorse.” Not sure how Tsarnaev would “show remorse” in a preliminary hearing, but no matter. The chief hates him. I think we all could have figured that out without being told. It is rather like reporting “the sun rose in the East today.” No kidding. So there's literally no information here, nothing nobody doesn't already know or assume, but rather an attempt to generate public hostility toward Tsarnaev by feeding people the feelings and attitude of an understandably angry and contemptuous man. (Guess CBS figures the American public doesn't hate Tsarnaev enough.)

In other words, this was pure propaganda, an attempt to manipulate public opinion rather than provide information- as I pointed out, even the most basic facts of the court appearance were omitted by CBS. So they did worse than Aljazeera. Hey, maybe we do need Aljazeera after all!