Hammer and Tongs
ALOKE THAKORE
Watching Al Jazeera English, there are three things that are striking. One is that the English spoken by its reporters in the Middle East is different from the network`s other reporters who all uniformly seem to possess a post-BBC/CNN accent. Two, advertisements are largely missing. And three that the news packages and sound bites are longer than one is used to in the television business. Renamed Al Jazeera English instead of Al Jazeera International because all the network`s channels are supposed to be international, the English version is not really that different from other news channels.
The accent is a good indicator of diversity. English inhabits many a tongue and if one has to get the local voice it is necessary to get local journalists to be a network`s correspondent in that country or region. What appears on Al Jazeera English is that the network has gone local only for the region where it has its birth. For the rest, we get the `outsider`. And the `outsider` is not a Black South African in Singapore and an Indian in Nicaragua. We have those with BBC and CNN in their resumes now working for a new channel and one notable retiree even providing his imprimatur to the channel, which may be a first for a journalist on the payroll of an organization endorsing the channel with a testimonial. Stories from Bangladesh come from a Caucasian. How different than what one would find on CNN or BBC? The claims of difference are only tenable for the Middle East and that might be fine for those wanting the other side`s view in the West. But if one is looking for a channel that can seek to be global in any sense, there is little in it.
The practices of reporting, editing, and anchoring have been built over a period of time answering to commercial imperatives such as advertising and technological constraints. No channel can escape them. What distinguishes channels is access to news sources and the language in which they are transmitted. The access provides the alternate views of the events and processes that are denied to other channels. Al Jazeera`s story has been one of access. It allows those who for various reasons are either disenfranchised or feel left out of the media to air their opinions and share their world views. Equally important in that process has been the shared language. Arabic allows for a linguistic community to be formed across national boundaries. The overlay of language, religion, and a shared history made possible the preconditions that Al Jazeera in its original Arabic version was able to draw upon and catapult itself as a voice of the region.
The English version delivers this, but does so only for that region. And that is as it should. For the rest of the world it is no different than any of the channels that originate in the West. Additionally, there is a problem with the English language. It is possible that two speakers would say that they are speaking English and yet be mutually unintelligible. Ask any student in a US university who said that he could not understand the language spoken by the mathematics teacher who had an accent, presuming that the student himself had none. This is a big issue if one is recruiting for an international channel in English. For CNN and BBC it is a no-brainer. Their audience is in the home country, and the others better get used to it. But for those who would like to de-center or move the locus away from the West, there is a problem. Al Jazeera seems to have solved it with local hires in Middle East, and BBC/CNN retreads in the rest of the world. But that does not dismiss the question as to why it has to be so.
The larger question that Al Jazeera English raises is that the idea of an international channel or a global channel is antithetical to the idea of doing journalism. Journalism is always imagined keeping an audience or readership in mind. Remove the imagined community, to use Benedict Anderson`s felicitous phrase, and the idea of doing journalism is also erased. Languages enabled that imagined community; but not always. English may be a language of commerce or trade or a language that as lingua franca cuts across national boundaries. But it is not a language that necessarily makes for a shared community.
Al Jazeera English would like to believe that it is setting the agenda or is providing an alternate voice or even a non-western voice. But it remains an Arab channel in English in much the same way that BBC World is a British channel in English (ask the Irish), and CNN is a US channel in English (ask the rest of the world). Just for its own sake, one wished it would have had Arab English-speaking reporters in all parts of the world. That would have given us at least, professional routines and technical conventions notwithstanding, a different view.
Aloke Thakore is a media consultant, journalist, and teacher. He can be reached at hammerntongs@fastmail.in