A”>lthough Kalay Maistry, al-Jazeera English’s South African correspondent, joined the Johannesburg bureau in November 2005, her first on-air broadcast, which was flighted on Arab Sat, ran only a year later.
Part of the reason for the delay, she says, was to make sure that technically every aspect of the 24-hour international news and current affairs channel, which has five bureaus in Africa, was fully operational. In that time she had to attend numerous training sessions, including a hostile environment course, where she learnt how to cover herself in volatile circumstances. The course included important tips that journalists often take for granted, such as how to gauge crowd reaction, how to ensure a quick and easy escape in a conflict situation and how to navigate a landmine-infested area safely. ‘I didn’t know that you needed at least 30kg to trigger a landmine. So if your colleagues were hurt, you could actually get out the car and feel your way through with your fingers to get to them —” she says.
For Maistry, whose 15-year career in journalism has included stints with e.tv and the SABC, this was a new experience. ‘The whole thing is about investing in people and not just having the resources to do stories,” she says.
Maistry is cagey about the reasons she left the SABC in mid-2005, soon after the arrival of the managing director of news and current affairs, Snuki Zikalala. She opts to say that she ‘had outgrown the place” and that her departure to take on the Clive Menell Fellowship in North Carolina that year (which the broadcaster had refused) was a ‘leap of faith”.
Joining al-Jazeera English has been an ‘amazing new adventure” for several reasons. ‘They do things differently,” she says.
‘The Arabic channel has been groundbreaking and, although it has been shrouded in controversy in Middle Eastern countries, it has made people focus on issues that were not given a platform. We’ve taken these same principles and taken it forward, so that it’s not just people dictating from Europe what and what not to do. We’re reversing the flow of information from South to North and it’s a privilege to be part of that experience.”
It is too early to tell if the launch of al-Jazeera English on MultiChoice last week will alter the news consumption habits on the continent significantly. MultiChoice’s DStv platform, after all, is still the preserve of a privileged few.
‘I think its impact will be quite significant, despite the fact that MultiChoice is accessed by a rich niche market both in the country and on the African continent,” says Dumisani Moyo, a lecturer at Wits University’s department of media studies. ‘You find that in the African community one person with information is connected to others and thus access does not end with those who can access a particular service.”
Al-Jazeera English is part of the Qatar-based al-Jazeera Network, funded by the emir of Qatar. In the past it has been criticised for giving a platform to al-Qaeda by airing speeches by Osama bin Laden and broadcasting the beheadings of al-Qaeda hostages.
It has been censored in Algeria, Tunisia and Canada and had a cameraman detained in Guantanamo Bay. Iran lifted a 23-day ban on the network last week after an apology. The channel had been temporarily halted for ‘insulting” Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani by questioning his leadership in Iraq. Al-Jazeera’s Tehran bureau has been banned for 14 months before for its ‘inflammatory” coverage of clashes in the ethnic Arab majority south-western oil city of Ahvaz.
Nigel Parsons, managing director of al-Jazeera English, says the channel does not air footage unless it is newsworthy. ‘We do not air every tape we receive and we have actually given much more airtime to United States leaders than we have to Bin Laden. Most news organisations would have shown the tapes if they received them and some Western news organisations have, in fact, aired footage from the Bin Laden tapes that al-Jazeera receives.
‘As far as al-Jazeera English is concerned we will judge each tape on a case-by-case basis. As our colleagues at al-Jazeera do, we are committed to showing all sides of the story,” he said.
Anton Harber, professor of journalism at Wits, says Al-Jazeera is controversial, but in a healthy way. ‘From what I’ve seen the quality [of its content] is good,” says Harber. ‘It has broken a lot of stories and can compete on a global level.”
Apart from its four broadcast centres in Doha, Kuala Lumpur, London and Washington, al-Jazeera has 21 supporting bureaus, including Cairo, Abidjan, Nairobi, Johannesburg and Harare. The network, which is the only global news service that has a bureau in Zimbabwe, broadcasts to about 90-million cable and satellite households.
Claude Colart, senior news producer for al-Jazeera in Africa, says ‘the fact that the network has more bureaus in South America and Africa than CNN and BBC combined” proves that it has the will and the budget to cover the developing world more seriously.
Locally neophyte audiences and veteran viewers alike greeted its surreptitious arrival on DStv with mixed feelings. Naeem Jeenah, of the Muslim Youth Council, says people who had been watching the Arabic version of al-Jazeera felt that the English incarnation ‘was trying to be too cautious” and mimicking other 24-hour news channels by toning down its typically ‘courageous” footage.
He was mindful, however, that the English service catered to a different audience, who were perhaps accustomed to a less maverick approach.
Yusuf Rajah, a clothing salesman in Johannesburg, was more enthusiastic. ‘On CNN or Sky it’s always just the same American type of stereotypes,” he says. ‘Since I’ve been watching al-Jazeera the last two days, I haven’t heard the word ‘terrorist’ or ‘insurgency’.
‘Another example [of its fresh perspective] is when they showed this programme about nuclear capability stats, where they were comparing different countries’ nuclear capabilities. The US came out tops. I mean it’s good to get a different point of view, not just for Muslims, but for everybody.”