AL-JAZEERA, the most popular news service in the Arab-speaking world, is to start an English language station, competing with CNN and the BBC in Europe and America.

Al-Jazeera International, based in Qatar and backed by the Emir, is hiring journalists and plans to start broadcasting early next year. With a healthy budget and a staff of 250, it aims to cover every big global news event. It says that it aspires to be a respected, balanced provider of news and to act as a counterweight to American and European media.

Nigel Parsons, its managing director, who is British, said: “We see ourselves as reversing the flow of information. This is the first English channel of its kind — broadcast from the developing world.”

Al-Jazeera was founded nine years ago and has a global audience of more than forty million. The original Arabic channel, founded by the liberal Emir, was close to popular opinion in the Middle East, giving it access to information in the region that other broadcasters could not match.

The channel became best known for broadcasting communications from al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. That gave it a reputation for anti-Americanism, which was fostered by Mohammed Jassim Ali, the channel’s founding managing director who was ousted in 2003.

As for the English language service, Mr Parsons said: “It won’t be an anti-American channel.” He said it was hardly surprising that the Arabic station was used by bin Laden “because it represented such a large potential audience”. He added that “al-Jazeera did not broadcast all of his tapes”. Nor would the English channel.

Mr Parsons said that the use of journalists embedded in the invading force by Western broadcasters during the Iraq war produced “a one-sided view of the conflict”. Al-Jazeera International would want to be embedded on both sides if possible, although a rather more prosaic problem was that the Arabic station was barred from Baghdad at present.

Rivals view the station as interesting rather than a threat. A BBC News executive, who asked not to be named, said: “They bring something different. We welcome them. During the Iraq war, al-Jazeera’s coverage demonstrated that the Western coverage of the conflict was too sanitised.”

Convincing Americans that the new station will be impartial, however, is going to be a battle. “Clearly the US is an uphill struggle. In some quarters there is a great misconception of what al-Jazeera is all about,” Mr Parsons said.

The Bush Administration has tried to put pressure on al-Jazeera by lobbying the Emir to privatise the network, and the idea is officially being entertained — if it does happen, a majority of shares will probably be reserved for locals. The network, though, remains dependent on state subsidy; the English-language channel is going to need handouts for the next three to five years. To counter criticism, channel bosses have been visiting opinion formers in Washington to try to convince Capitol Hill that the channel should be judged on its output. Those canvassed included Elizabeth Cheney, the daughter of Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, who is also a junior member of the Bush Administration. Among journalists the channel appears to have caught on. There have been 4,000 applicants for jobs. Regional bureaux are being set up in London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur, and the channel hopes to hire “high-profile” names. Some positions come with six-figure, tax-free salaries.

TV CHANNELS HEAD-TO-HEAD

BBC WORLD
Headquarters: London
Staff: 3,400, including 250 correspondents
Bureaux: 58
Reach: 266 million homes; 59 million a week
Start-up date: 1995

AL-JAZEERA
Headquarters: Doha
Staff: 250 correspondents
Bureaux: 3
Reach: None (Arab channel has 50 million viewers daily)

CNN
Headquarters: Atlanta
Staff: 4,000, including 118 correspondents
Bureaux: 36
Reach: 260 million homes
Start-up date: 1980

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