While it has a foreign name, the forthcoming Al Jazeera cable channel in the United States wants to be American through and through.
When Al Jazeera’s owners in Qatar acquired Al Gore’s Current TV in January, they said that Current would be replaced by Al Jazeera America, an international news channel with 60 percent new programming from the United States. The remaining 40 percent, they said, would come from Al Jazeera English, their existing English-language news channel in Doha, Qatar, that is already available in much of the rest of the world.
That plan is no more. Now Al Jazeera America is aiming to have virtually all of its programming originate from the United States, according to staff members and others associated with the channel who were interviewed in recent weeks. It will look inward, covering domestic affairs more often than foreign affairs. It will, in other words, operate much like CNN (though the employees say they won’t be as sensational) and Fox News (though they say they won’t be opinion-driven).
The programming strategy, more ambitious than previously understood, is partly a bid to gain acceptance and give Americans a reason to tune in. It may help explain why Al Jazeera America’s start date has been delayed once already, to August from July, and why some employees predict it will be delayed again.
Al Jazeera also has yet to hire a president or a slate of vice presidents to run the channel on a day-to-day basis, which has spurred uncomfortable questions about whether earlier controversies involving the pan-Arab news giant are creating difficulties for the new channel.
The Arabic-language Al Jazeera was condemned by the American government a decade ago for broadcasting videotapes from Osama bin Laden and other materials deemed to be terrorist propaganda. Others have criticized the Arabic and English channels for being a mouthpiece for Qatar, though the channel’s representatives insist that is not the case. Other questions about bias persist; as recently as last week, the Al Jazeera Web site was accused of publishing an anti-Semitic article by a guest columnist.
But some Al Jazeera America staff members are already rehearsing with mock newscasts. Others are fanning out to report news stories from parts of the country rarely visited by camera crews. Still others are setting up new studios in New York, where the channel will have a home inside the New Yorker Hotel, and in Washington, where it will take over space previously occupied by ABC at the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue.
New employees are being added to the rolls every weekday from places like CNN, “Frontline” and Time magazine. “We expect to have approximately 800 employees when we launch,” said Ehab Al Shihabi, the Al Jazeera executive in charge of international operations, including the American channel. He declined to comment on the delays, but said the channel would start “later this summer.”
Since January, he and his colleagues’ overarching message to lawmakers, mayors, cable operators, and potential viewers has been that Al Jazeera is coming to America to supply old-fashioned, boots-on-the-ground news coverage to a country that doesn’t have enough of it.
A series of announcements about new hires like Ed Pound, an experienced investigative reporter, and new bureaus in cities like Detroit have bolstered that message. Public relations and marketing firms retained by Al Jazeera, like Qorvis Communications and Siegel Gale, have worked to limit opposition to the channel and increase support for its arrival.
Al Jazeera representatives seem aware that they are confronting an enormous marketing challenge. But they benefit from the public perception that they have boundlessly deep pockets, thanks to the oil and gas wealth of Qatar. Al Jazeera America has been portrayed by some as a giant stimulus project for American journalism at a time when other news organizations are suffering cutbacks. “This is the first big journalism hiring binge that anyone’s been on for a long time,” said the business reporter and anchor Ali Velshi when he left CNN in April for a prime time spot on Al Jazeera America.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/business/media/american-al-jazeera-channel-shifs-focus-to-us-news.html?partner=rss&emc=rss
