AL JAZEERA DIRECTOR DISCUSSES GAZA COVERAGE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 DOHA 000116

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/10/2019
TAGS: PREL KPAO WE GZ IS QA
SUBJECT: AL JAZEERA DIRECTOR DISCUSSES GAZA COVERAGE

Classified By: AMBASSADOR JOSEPH E. LEBARON, FOR REASONS 1.4 (B) AND (D
).

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(C) KEY POINTS
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-- Al Jazeera Network Director General Wadah Khanfar told
Ambassador on February 10 that Israel's incursion into Gaza
was "a ready-made TV show" and that Al Jazeera had achieved
"perhaps its highest ratings ever" by relying on an unrivaled
network of correspondents and producers to broadcast factual
information and images quickly.

-- Al Jazeera attempted to put images in context and
provided a perspective on Israel with two correspondents
filing reports from there, according to Khanfar.

-- Ambassador pointed out the incongruity of the Qataris'
pointing to the Arab street as a call for action, all while
the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera's images were whipping up
sentiments on the street

-- Khanfar agreed that sentiments were at fever pitch on the
Arab street and that al-Jazeera's coverage logically
contributed to it. But he tried to counter Ambassador's
point by making (the extraneous point) that anger was high in
Indonesia and Turkey, too.

-- Khanfar believed that Arab emotions, particularly in the
Gulf, ran higher this time than during the war in Lebanon in
2006 because "HAMAS is a Sunni organization that Sunnis could
point to and say, 'Look at us, we too are resisting the way
Hizbollah (a Shi'i organization) did.'"

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(C) COMMENTS
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-- Khanfar was clearly pleased with yet another war-time
scoop for Al Jazeera. The network's unparalleled financial
resources, provided by the Qatari Government, continue to
provide the human and technical resources to operate in
difficult areas that other networks simply cannot afford to
cover so comprehensively.

-- Whatever the Qataris' involvement, Al Jazeera's Gaza
coverage has proven once again that, when its broadcasting
capabilities coincide with Qatar's active foreign policy, the
combination can be potent.

-- This is not intuitively obvious, but, to help improve the
USG's image on the Arab street, we need to step up USG
senior-level engagement of the Qatari leadership. Better
relations with the ruling al-Thani family will translate into
changes in al-Jazeera coverage that will gradually help
improve the image of the United States in the Arab street.

END KEY POINTS AND COMMENTS


1. (C) Ambassador called on Al Jazeera Director General
Wadah Khanfar on February 10 to hear his views on the
network's coverage of Gaza and share the USG's concerns about
it. Khanfar explained that Israel's incursion into Gaza was
a "ready-made TV show" that Al Jazeera could not afford not
to cover 24 hours a day. "Even some Israelis were watching
us, especially in the south," he boasted, "because we always
had the latest information."


2. (C) The Director General noted that Al Jazeera had four
correspondents and 20 producers working in Gaza before the
fighting, which created "an unparalleled network." Al
Arabiyah, by contrast, had just one correspondent reporting
regularly from Gaza and no producers, so its reports, he
said, were always packaged, whereas Al Jazeera's were live.


3. (C) "We also had four correspondents in Israel," he
stated, "and in every news bulletin, we ran reports from two
in Israel and two in Gaza." This, he explained, helped
balance perspectives. Al Jazeera introduced a new program
called "Opinions from Israel" to highlight the different
opinions about the fighting among Israelis.


4. (C) Ambassador argued that showing Israeli "talking
heads" or balancing the number of reports was no balance at
all, not when on the other side of the scale you are
broadcasting graphic images of dead children and urban damage
from modern warfare.


5. (C) Khanfar countered that "even if we had given the
Israelis 50 percent of the airtime with no images at all, the
power of the story was so great that there still would have
been an emotional response by the audience." Witnesses

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interviewed by Al Jazeera in Gaza were impossible to balance,
he said, but Al Jazeera strived to put things into context by
noting casualty numbers, and citing the percentage of homes
and buildings that had been hit throughout Gaza, not just in
one area.


6. (C) Without conceding the point, Ambassador observed that
Al Jazeera's coverage took viewers' emotions and then raised
them to a higher level through its coverage. Then Qatari
leaders would point to
the anger on the Arab street as a call to action. But
because Al Jazeera is funded by the Qataris, it forms a
vicious cycle leading to more graphic coverage, more emotion,
more demonstrations, and then more calls to action.


7. (C) Khanfar tried to counter, saying, extraneously, that
demonstrations in Turkey were the largest in 27 years, and
that Indonesians had also come out in large numbers, despite
the fact that these are not big markets for Al Jazeera.


8. (C) Khanfar denied that there was any political bent
within Al Jazeera, because "how would we decide on it, with
22 Arabs in a room?" he asked. He noted that some in the
editorial board had disagreed with HAMAS, others with Egypt,
so it was impossible to determine and implement one political
line in Al Jazeera's broadcasts.


9. (C) The Director General had an alternative theory for
the strong level of popular Arab emotion over Gaza: HAMAS,
being a Sunni organization, represented the "Sunni
resistance." Sunnis could point to HAMAS and say, "finally,
we did something, we are resisting the way Hizbollah did,"
according to Khanfar, who said that this was view was
particularly strong in the Gulf countries.


10. (C) During the Lebanon war in 2006, Khanfar claimed,
"Salafis were calling me all the time, accusing me of
supporting Hassan Nasrallah, a Shia; now they are calling me
to demand that I show more about Gaza because this is seen as
our fight, our victory."
LeBaron