Aljazeera.net Offers Arab News To Wider Audience Through The Net

By MELINDA PATTERSON GRENIER
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL ONLINE

Like other news Web sites, the online version of Arab satellite news channel Al Jazeera has seen traffic soar since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. The largest number of visitors to aljazeera.net comes from the U.S., even though the site is in Arabic.

Launched just this past January, aljazeera.net is owned by Al Jazeera Satellite Channel and managed by Afkar Information Technology, a Web-services firm in Doha, Qatar, where both the high-profile TV station and the Web site are based.

Mahmood Abdulhadi, the site's general manager, spoke with The Wall Street Journal Online recently by telephone and e-mail about the site's mission, its content and recent controversy about some of Al Jazeera's television coverage.

Q: What does aljazeera.net cover?

A: We [cover] news in Arabic, about the Arab region mainly and the world in general. The main categories we have are the Arab world, Europe, the Americas, Asia-Pacific, Africa; economics; sports; science and technology; health; and culture and arts. We have ... in-depth analysis ... special coverage and book reviews. We have also categories for interactivity, like quick vote and discussion forums where the user can express his opinion directly without pre-censorship.

We provide the full script of Al Jazeera Satellite Channel's main programs, attached with its audio file within 24 to 36 hours from the time of the first broadcasting.

The last categories we have are for marketing and advertising.

Q: Does all the content on the site come from the television broadcasts, or does your staff generate some of it?

A: Aljazeera.net is the electronic version of Al Jazeera Satellite Channel. It is part of the same organization, using the same resources for news and information, but we are in a different type of media with new technologies and new methodology. Therefore we receive the news from the news agencies and from our correspondents and edit the stories specially for the Web site, attached with the related media items -- including the video files of Al Jazeera correspondents' news reports.

We can't take the news from the TV and republish on the Web site because the script of this news has been edited for the TV, where the pictures complete the story. We take only the script of Al Jazeera exclusive TV programs and publish it as it is, without any editing.

Practically, we found that the reporters of the TV can't help us on the Web directly, because they are busy with the camera and don't have time to edit stories for the Web site. We don't have independent correspondents for the Web site at the moment, but I hope we will have them in the near future.

Q: How large is your staff?

A: We have a 60-person, independent staff for the Web site; 36 of them are editors, journalists and researchers working 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Q: How do you find your employees? Do you recruit them from other Web sites, newspapers, magazines or television stations? Have you had more people apply for jobs at aljazeera.net since the site has become better  known? 

Mahmood Abdulhadi

A: It is very difficult to find expert and professional employees. We published the vacant jobs on the Web site and the newspapers, then we received a lot of applications from different countries. We classified [applicants] according to the job description we have, and we recruited the best of them; then we trained them for about four months technically and editorially. We still receive job applications from time to time.

Q: How has traffic to aljazeera.net changed during the past month?

A: The Web-site traffic jumped after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attack in the U.S. from about 700,000 page views a day to about 1.2 million page views.

Then it jumped to about two million page views a day in the first week after the U.S. strike on Afghanistan; and it reached about three million page views a day in the second week. More than 40% of [our visitors] are from the U.S.

Q: Right now, all the content on aljazeera.net is in Arabic. Are you thinking about doing an English-language site?

A: Yes, we are thinking about it. Recently we have received many requests from our users all over the world asking for an English version of the Web site. We are studying this request now, and we will be able to launch it within one year from now.

Q: From which parts of the world does your highest traffic come?

A: No. 1: America, the U.S. No. 2: Europe as a whole. No. 3: Arabic countries.

Q: Do you think it is unusual that the U.S. is the source of so much traffic?

A: No, it is not. It's not unusual because Internet technology [started] in the U.S. ... and is spread widely. And if you are talking about Internet technology, you are talking about European countries.

Now, when you are talking about Arabic nations, you are not talking about hundreds of millions of users, you are talking about a very small number of millions. I mean, last year, [it was] estimated [that there are] three million Arabic users for the Internet in the Arab world ...

But ... day by day, Internet technology is spreading in the Middle East and Arabic countries, and then you will have a new figure. You will have a lot of user increase, a lot of subscribers with [Internet-service providers] in the Arab countries. I think within a year or so, these figures will be changed totally.

Q: So you see the share of visitors from the Middle East rising?

A: Yes. Actually, when we planned for the Web site, we specified our audience [would be] the Arabic-language speakers everywhere in the world. ... Arabs in Europe and in the U.S. are well-educated and using the Internet a lot in most of their activities, not like Arabs here in the Middle East. But after some time, [this] will be changed.

But our message will remain as it is for the Arabic audience. Unless we have an English version; ... it would be a different message.

Q: How would the message be different on an English-language site?

A: ... When you are talking about some specialty audience, you specify your message to him: You have to talk to him according to his culture.

But in the news, particularly, the policy will be the same. Al Jazeera has been very famous in the Arab world because of its news policy, because of its media policies that depend on objectivity and freedom. That will remain as it is.

We are an Arabic-media organization, so we are talking to our Arabic audience. When we talk to the English-speaking audience in America, in Europe, in Asia, that will be something else. We have an example -- like what CNN is doing for its version to the Americans and its international version.

Q: U.S. media have been asked not to run unedited tapes or transcripts of Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders that were originally broadcast on Al Jazeera television. The American government is concerned because the tapes might contain coded messages related to possible future attacks. Do you have concerns about putting these tapes on aljazeera.net where they can be seen by anyone with an Internet connection?

A: We have, in Al Jazeera, a different point of view as a part of our policy: We deal with such items or releases as media items, not as codes or hidden messages. We deal with it with full objectivity, and this is what CNN did in broadcasting the news of the Taliban and bin Laden.

We are trying to introduce a professional media in the Arabic region based on objectivity and neutrality. We are still facing many problems because of that. Let me tell you that for a long time before the Sept. 11 attack, some of Al Jazeera's audience accused it and its staff of being agents to the U.S. and Israel because we broadcast interviews with Israeli officials, journalists, writers and commentators.

We can understand the background of these accusations because the Arabic audience does not accept such objectivity and neutrality from us, but what we can't understand [is] any kind of accusation from U.S. media of supporting terrorism and terrorists because we are trying to fulfill our policies and principles.

Q: During a recent interview on CNN's "Larry King Live," an Al Jazeera TV producer was asked why the station referred to people involved in suicide missions on the West Bank and in Gaza and Israel as "martyrs," while the people who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center towers were considered terrorists. What terms has aljazeera.net used in reporting these news items, and does aljazeera.net have any general policy or attitude about Israel?

A: We have the same policies of Al Jazeera TV. One of these policies is neutrality, so we do our best to avoid any position toward the events or to add any colors to it or any judgment.

According to this policy, we used the word "attack" to [refer to] the terror attack on New York and Washington. Also we used the same word to [refer to the] U.S. strike on civilian targets in Afghanistan.

For another example, we used the word "assassinate" when the Israeli forces killed the Palestinian leader Abu Ali Mustafa, and we used the same word when a Palestinian killed the Israeli minister Rehavam Zeevi. We didn't do like some Western media stations did when they described the second assassination as a terror act while they described the first one as just a killing.

Q: Does the government of Qatar exercise any censorship over the site, or make "recommendations" about what should and shouldn't be published on aljazeera.net?

A: Not at all, and we believe that this a major factor in our success.

Q: Have you ever had any country try to block access to the site or prevent its citizens from viewing aljazeera.net?

A: We haven't faced any blocked transmission from any country to prevent its citizens from viewing the Al Jazeera Web site. We haven't received any complains or feedback from our viewers regarding that.

Q: I would imagine that more people world-wide have access to Al Jazeera through the Web site than by watching its programs over satellite or cable transmissions. What role does the Web site play in making Al Jazeera available more broadly, and is this broader access part of the Web site's mission?

A: The live streaming of Al Jazeera TV on the Web site was a part of our marketing policy to let Al Jazeera broadcasts reach all Arabs in the world.

Al Jazeera TV broadcasts now reach most parts of the world, and we are about to revise the live-streaming policy on the Web site. We may stop it, because it reduced the number of the Al Jazeera-TV cable subscribers.

Q: How does aljazeera.net make money? Is the site profitable?

A: The Al Jazeera Web site's budget is a part of the TV budget. We've just started the e-marketing department. We think that we'll have good revenue from ads and syndication, which will make the Al Jazeera Web site a profitable one.