Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
05DOHA1786
2005-10-26 13:14:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Doha
Cable title:  

MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA QUALITY ASSURANCE CHIEF

Tags:  PREL KPAO QA ALJAZEERA 
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This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DOHA 001786 

SIPDIS

STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/25/2010
TAGS: PREL KPAO QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA QUALITY ASSURANCE CHIEF

REF: DOHA 1593

Classified By: Ambassador Chase Untermeyer, Reasons 1.4 (b&d)

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DOHA 001786

SIPDIS

STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE

E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/25/2010
TAGS: PREL KPAO QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: MEETING WITH AL JAZEERA QUALITY ASSURANCE CHIEF

REF: DOHA 1593

Classified By: Ambassador Chase Untermeyer, Reasons 1.4 (b&d)


1. (C) Summary: PAO met 10/26 with Jaafar Abbas Ahmed, the
head of Al Jazeera's Quality Assurance unit. Abbas spoke
frankly of the difficulties the unit faces in encouraging the
professionalization of Al Jazeera, including resistance and
hostility from AJ's older generation of journalists. He said
progress has been made, however, and described AJ Managing
Director Wadah Khanfar as "a source of strength." End summary.


2. (C) Jaafar Abbas Ahmed, the head of Al Jazeera's Quality
Assurance (QA) unit, is a Sudanese national with long
experience as a journalist, including work as a BBC reporter.
He told PAO he was blacklisted by Sudan for 15 years as a
result of a report on Sudan for the BBC. He began working
part-time with Al Jazeera at its inception in 1996 and set up
the channel's QA unit in August 2004. He now works full time
as the head of the QA unit, which is located in a villa in
Doha's West Bay area, across town from the AJ TV studios.
Abbas said the separation is intended to underline and
safeguard the unit's independence. Abbas also writes
newspaper columns for publications in Saudi Arabia, London,
Sudan and Qatar. He said his column was recently banned in
Sudan for six months but was reinstated a couple of weeks
ago.


3. (C) According to Abbas, the effort to professionalize Al
Jazeera is an uphill one and that although progress has been
made, "we still have a long way to go." The seven-member QA
staff monitor the AJ TV channel 24 hours a day, with focus on
news broadcasts and talk shows. Overview of the AJ website is
also in their purview but is not carried out systematically
due to limited staff resources. ("Sometimes we do a random
inspection of the website, and we find all the rules have
been completely ignored," he observed ruefully.)


5. (C) Abbas said the first step undertaken by the QA unit
after its founding in late 2004 was the promulgation of the
Al Jazeera codes of conduct and ethics. Workshops were held
for the Al Jazeera staff to introduce and explain the new
codes; since then, the QA unit has been monitoring the

channel's performance in light of these codes. Abbas attends
the weekly editorial meetings and gives his input to senior
editors and producers "bluntly, to their faces," he said. The
QA unit also issues daily reports by email on the day's
programming, and when a big event happens, the QA unit will
record BBC and CNN coverage of the same event and compare it
critically to AJ's coverage.


6. (C) He noted that his unit met with significant resistance
initially and were known informally among AJ staff as the
KGB, the CIA, the FBI or ("the best one", said Abbas,
laughing) the Expediency Discernment Council of the System
(Note: The Iranian government watchdog committee headed by
former Iranian president Hashemi Rafsanjani. End note.)
"Things have improved now," he said. "People are becoming
wary of our criticism. We have producers, senior producers,
coming over here to discuss our reports with us. We are like
a tumor -- a benign one -- that people are learning to live
with," he said, grinning. However, hostility still remains,
he said, and there are some AJ journalists who even now will
not return a casual greeting in the corridors.


7. (C) The chief obstacle in professionalizing the channel is
that "old habits die hard," said Abbas. He estimated that the
AJ staff under his purview (all those who bear the title
"journalist", which include correspondents, reporters,
stringers, editors and producers) number not more than 200.
While AJ started out with a significant number of ex-BBC
reporters, this cadre has shrunk over the years, attracted to
other channels such as Al Arabiyya, Abbas said. He added that
only a handful remains. A majority of the remaining
journalism staff are therefore ex-state TV reporters. They
may be brilliant, but the journalistic culture they have
absorbed is different from the one AJ is trying to cultivate,
Abbas explained. There is, for example, a cultural tendency
towards verbosity among Arabs, among whom rhetoric is a
cherished and respected art. This tendency clashes with
standard journalistic practice, which encourages reporters to
avoid adjectives: If a particular event is "horrific", don't
say so but let pictures and statistics show that to your
audience, he said.


8. (C) Abbas said that in his view there has been a definite
improvement in Al Jazeera's overall performance since the
QA's inception fourteen months ago. He said the newer,
younger reporters with less experience respond very well to
the AJ environment. The problem is with the older, more
experienced journalists. The QA unit has had more of an
impact on AJ's news broadcasts than it has had on the AJ talk
shows, which are the domain of AJ's more experienced
journalists. "Each of them thinks they are Oprah Winfrey.
They think they don't need guidance," he said, rolling his
eyes.


9. (C) "We at Al Jazeera need to develop our own style," he
said, pointing at a thick printout of the BBC's new style
guide lying on his desk. "There is an overlap between code of
conduct and style." For example, scenes of violence. How
should AJ air them? Close up? Or only using long shots? "What
seems gross in the US might not seem gross to an Arab viewer,
he said. "And we are an Arab channel, we focus on what is of
interest to the Arab viewer. The Arab viewer wants to see on
screen proof of Israeli brutality, so it is OK to show a dead
Palestinian child, for example," he said. "If you don't show
these things, then they think you are participating in the
cover-up."


10. (C) Abbas also talked about the controversy over the use
of the word "martyr" and the verbs associated with it.
Current AJ guidance says the word may only be used in
association with events in Palestine and nowhere else, he
said. He described how AJ sent an admonitory fax two days ago
to the AJ bureau chief in Beirut who interspersed his report
on the release of the Mehlis report with mentions of the
"martyr" Rafik Al Hariri. Many in Al Jazeera think it is a
mistake to allow the use of the word at all, even in
connection with Palestinians, but that is an emotionally
charged topic in the Arab world and one it is too late to
walk back, said Abbas.


11. (C) He said the QA unit is developing a computer system
that will allow them to access with one click the record of
every AJ journalist: How many times he has made biased
remarks; what are his repeated mistakes; how many times he
breached the code of conduct or ethics; and so on. "Then we
will have a say in the performance appraisal of the
employees, which affects allowances, annual increases, even
promotions," Abbas said.


12. (C) The difficulties faced by the QA unit are many, but
it has come to rely on AJ Managing Director Wadah Khanfar as
"a source of strength," said Abbas. "He is behind us all the
way."
UNTERMEYER