Engineering Consent: Al Jazeera Awakens the Arab World

"US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt reflected the view of many in the Bush administration when he said in March that, "my solution is to change the channel to a legitimate, authoritative, honest news station. The stations that are showing Americans intentionally killing women and children are not legitimate news sources."
One can only imagine what kind of "honest news station" he had in mind. Extreme pressure has been placed on the channel to show more positive images of the US occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, but the station refuses, saying they receive footage of startling brutality and it's their duty to show it, blood, guts and all.
This infuriates Washington and London but it's not something worrying Mahir Abdullah, senior correspondent for al-Jazeera. Speaking exclusively to Webdiary, Abdullah dismisses claims of anti-American bias:
"American politicians were full of praise for al-Jazeera when it was highlighting the shortcomings of some Arab regimes", he says. They used to say we are furthering the cause of democracy when we were critical of Arab policies and politics. We still do the same today. Nothing changed as far as we can see. The only difference is that now the American media was overwhelmed by patriotism after the 11th of September."
It's a view echoed by Arthur Neslen, former London correspondent for al-Jazeera.net. "Many al-Jazeera journalists have American passports, I'm sure," he tells me, "People unable or unwilling to distinguish between concepts of a 'country' and a 'country's foreign policy' should not be setting the terms of the debate."
Neslen sees the channel reporting multiple viewpoints, journalism virtually unimaginable in the Western media, "a willingness to take risks in showing controversial images of the horrors of war, reporting from 'behind enemy lines', critical coverage of Saddam Hussein and George Bush alike and an avoidance of the 'news pool'." "