Al Anstey: If you cover something it doesnt mean you are sympathetic to it Al Anstey … managing director of al-Jazeera English. The fast-growing competition between international news broadcasters for the eyeballs of the world – the battle for so-called soft power – has just got tougher. A few months after BBC director general Tony Hall announced a target of 500 million users for its international services by 2022 – twice what it has now – the English language service of its Qatari state-owned rival, al-Jazeera, is recruiting around 100 extra journalists, the news networks second major expansion drive in a year. Following cuts to the BBC World Service (now funded by the corporation rather than a foreign office grant in aid) and in an intensely competitive global market that includes RT (Russia Today) and the burgeoning China Central Television (CCTV), it will be no easy task. Its a very bold ambition, really good luck to them [the BBC], says Al Anstey, the former ITN and Associated Press executive who oversees al-Jazeera English, the seven-year-old channel which is now in 250m homes in more than 130 countries around the world. At a time when many commercial news networks are laying off staff, Ansteys channel will look to recruit across the board, both at its Doha headquarters and among its 80 global bureaux. Anstey says he will use the new recruits to boost the channels core strength of eyewitness reporting. Al-Jazeera won awards and big audiences for its close-up coverage of the Arab spring protests – including the Royal Television Societys news channel of the year award in 2012, beating the BBC and Sky News – but has also faced long-standing allegations of bias, charges Anstey rejects. Right now his concerns are closer to home and centred on the plight of three al-Jazeera English journalists held by the authorities in Egypt. Canadian citizen Mohamed Fahmy, the channels Cairo bureau chief, veteran Australian reporter Peter Greste and freelance producer Baher Mohamed were arrested last month, accused of spreading false news and being members of a terrorist cell. A statement signed by representatives of more than 50 international media organisations last week called for their immediate release and said the arrest had cast a cloud over press and media freedom in Egypt. Al-Jazeera has come under increasing pressure in Egypt since former president Mohamed Morsi was deposed, with its Egyptian outlet accused of being sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood. Anstey describes the allegations as extraordinary. The team and our coverage from Egypt upheld the highest standards of journalism right the way through. We refute these allegations wholeheartedly, he says. If you cover something it does not mean you are sympathetic to it. We have to get the message out there that journalism requires challenging all sides. The challenge to journalism as a whole is extreme. Al Jazeera has previously faced challenges in Iraq and China — effectively thrown out, says Anstey — as well as Egypt, hiring London law firm Carter Ruck last year after its Cairo offices were closed, journalists deported and one of its satellites jammed. As well as boosting its bureaux and expanding its reach in places like India and Latin America, Anstey is also looking to up his channels digital presence, online and on second screens, with interactive packages in which viewers can choose which narrative to follow. We already have the highest quality content gathered by a fantastically diverse team around the world. If you break up the constituent parts that go into a two-minute television package, what you have that hits the cutting room floor is gold dust, he says. That gold dust – longer interviews, more informal chats with the correspondent, explainers – can be tailored to different platforms and provide a much richer resource depending on which platform you are looking at, adds Anstey. Its about changing the mindset. The expansion of al-Jazeera English comes less than six months after the launch of al-Jazeera America, following its $500m purchase of Al Gores Current TV. Demonised by much of the American media – the voice of the enemy, according to former Fox News talkshow host Glenn Beck – its launch was not without a hitch, as it was initially dropped (and then reinstated) by the cable giant Time Warner. It is now in around 55m US homes, more than 10 times the figure previously achieved by al-Jazeera English. It took the DNA of us and the wider network and applied that in the context of the United States, says Anstey. When you look at the popularisation of news, the ratings-chasing and commercialisation, in America and elsewhere, it lost viewers. We are holding true to the provision of reliable information, eyewitness reporting and challenging all sides. One critic said al-Jazeera America was something entirely new to cable news: it is considered. But along with the bouquets comes a lingering suspicion in some quarters that its ownership, by the billionaire Emir of Qatar, means al-Jazeera is not free to report critically on that country, or diverge too far from its foreign policy. US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks suggested Qatar was using the Arabic channel as a diplomatic bargaining chip. Then there was the allegation, in 2012, that its director of news had stepped in to ensure a speech made to the UN by Qatars then emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, led its English channels coverage of a debate on Syria. It was a normal editorial decision, counters Anstey, who describes another speech made on the same day by Barack Obama as a good speech but not as good a news line as the emir of Qatar calling for military action against Syria. The allegation of someone from outside the channel asking or intervening was simply not the case. It was a normal editorial decision. We treat Qatar like every other country in the world. There has never been any pressure to run a particular story in a particular way. If we were to veer one degree off the integrity of our journalism, our audience would and should switch us off. Although his channel is funded by the Qatari government, Anstey insists there is total separation between church and state. Everything we do, if we want to expand, goes through a normal budgetary and editorial process, and we hold to our budget, exactly as I did when I was head of foreign at ITN, he says. When you compare our budget to the big players out there, ours is very sensible. We are looking at our revenues in order to build the proportion we are able to fund. We want to build our audience and capitalise on our viewership, but that will never jeopardise the core integrity of the content. We have a massive opportunity to build on the bedrock of what we have achieved. We need to take ourselves to the next level. Career 1990 assistant producer, producer, CBS News 1992 news editor, Reuters Television 1994 senior producer, South Asia, Associated Press Television News 1995 senior producer, East Asia and Pacific 1996 Asia editor 1997 foreign editor, ITN 2001 Washington bureau chief 2003 head of foreign news 2005 deputy director of news, al-Jazeera English 2006 director of news 2008 director of media development, al-Jazeera Media Network 2010 managing director, al-Jazeera English
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 10:35:52 +0000
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