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By sitting on a damning interview with the al-Qaida leader, the Arab network Al-Jazeera proved it's a propaganda outlet, not a news organization.
Feb 2, 2002 | One of the ongoing journalistic sideshows since Sept. 11 and the unfolding war on terrorism has been the debate about the Arabic-language cable news network Al-Jazeera. To its defenders, including many on the far left, such as the media watchdog group FAIR, Al-Jazeera was on a journalistic par with CNN and other all-news networks, just broadcasting from a strikingly different, non-Western perspective. To the U.S. government and other critics, including many mainstream journalists, it not only had an obvious bias -- describing Palestinian suicide bombers as "martyrs," for example -- but is a font of bin Laden sympathizers, riling up Muslim sentiments by making itself a virtual mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden.
So who was right?
On Thursday evening, the people running Al-Jazeera went pretty far toward answering that question.
CNN broadcast that evening what is apparently the only interview with Osama bin Laden conducted before cameras after Sept. 11 and the U.S.-led bombing missions began in Afghanistan. There have been al-Qaida-produced tapes, of course, some of which made it onto American airwaves. There was even the notorious "home video" in which bin Laden discussed his involvement in the attacks. But until Thursday, we had never seen an interview in which anyone got to ask questions and follow-ups of the head of al-Qaida.
"If inciting people to do that [the Sept. 11 bombings] is terrorism," bin Laden says on the tape, "and if killing those who kill our sons is terrorism, then let history be witness that we are terrorists." The leader of al-Qaida also reacted with a "non-denial denial" when asked whether he was behind the anthrax attacks, which were then rattling the nerves of America and clogging the delivery of mail across the country.
The tape belonged to Al-Jazeera, but the network not only refused to broadcast it, it denied its existence. Indeed, the tape only made its way onto the airwaves because CNN acquired a copy through what the Atlanta-based network calls a source "not affiliated with Al-Jazeera ... [or] any government or intelligence agency." Afterward, Al-Jazeera announced it had severed its business relationship with CNN over the airing of the tape. But according to CNN representative Christa Robinson, CNN's contract with Al-Jazeera gave the network "express right to use any and all footage owned or controlled by Jazeera, without limitation."
This isn't the first we've heard of Al-Jazeera's bin Laden video. Western intelligence sources apparently intercepted the interview shortly after it was taped and British Prime Minister Tony Blair actually read from a portion of it in the House of Commons on Nov. 14 -- though at the time it was unclear where the quotations had come from. At the time, Al-Jazeera denied that an interview had taken place -- even to CNN, to which the Qatar-based network apparently had a legal obligation to make the tape available. Later, Al-Jazeera representatives alternated between explanations, saying first that the interview was not newsworthy, and then that their reporter had been intimidated by bin Laden. On Friday, an anonymous Al-Jazeera journalist, quoted by Reuters, said that the network had held off on airing the tape because "we decided under the circumstances at that time that airing the interview would have strengthened the belief that we are a mouthpiece for bin Laden."
As a number of commentators have noted, some of Al-Jazeera's explanations contradict others; but the similarity connecting each of them is that none passes the smell test. Al-Jazeera's main argument has been the interview's lack of newsworthiness -- that highly elastic and often inconsistent standard that U.S. networks have also used to resist showing bin Laden material.
But last fall, al-Qaida produced tapes of self-serving propaganda that broke no real news. And yet Al-Jazeera broadcast each of the videos al-Qaida representatives gave it. These, by definition, are more self-serving than even the most sycophantic journalist's interview. Bin Laden answering questions from a journalist -- even an intimidated one -- can't be less newsworthy than bin Laden filmed by an al-Qaida cameraman and prepped by his spokesman.
"As a journalist, I'm mystified that they held it back," says Peter Bergen, author of "Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of Osama Bin Laden," and one of the few Western journalists ever to interview bin Laden. "The notion that this was not newsworthy is ludicrous."
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