Al Jazeera Shunned, Intimidated in Western Capitals |
Iason Athanasiadis
With US-led troops running into fierce resistance on Iraq's battlefields, pressure is being brought by Western organisations and news media on Al Jazeera.
Incidents have included the banning of Al Jazeera television's financial correspondents from the New York Stock Exchange, the summoning of the channel's Paris bureau chief by France's broadcast watchdog and discriminatory behaviour by several US-based Internet servers.
In the most extreme example so far, Ammar Sankari and Ramsey Shiber, the channel's finance correspondents in New York, were banned from broadcasting their daily market reports from the city's Stock Exchange and asked to return their passes.
"It seems that due to their cutback on scheduling broadcast slots, they don't have enough spaces and have asked us to turn in our passes momentarily," Shiber said on Monday. "They said that it's hopefully a temporary thing and we'll be able to work together in future."
By Tuesday, Shiber had been notified that the suspension was 'indefinite'.
Sankari, the reporter in question, could not name any other news organization that had also been banned, echoing Shibr's statement that in seven years of doing the financial report, this has "never happened".
A spokesman for the stock exchange quoted in NDTV.com said that the NYSE is giving broadcast slots to broadcasters that focus "on responsible business coverage".
AOL, Yahoo and Reuters have all refused to run advertisements for Al-Jazeera's new, English-language service citing different reasons. Yahoo put the decision down to 'war-related sensitivity', Reuters ruled the decision out on the grounds that Al-Jazeera is a competitor, while AOL offered no reason.
In France, the country's Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) summoned Michael Kik, the Al Jazeera representative in Paris, to defend the decision to broadcast the Iraqi pictures of dead and captured American servicemen.
Kik argued that the criticism smacked of double standards, saying "For 10 years, pictures of Palestinian prisoners have been shown all over the world, and in the Gulf everyone has been watching images of Iraqi prisoners kneeling in humiliation," in reference to recent controversy over Al Jazeera's coverage of the war.
"Why just me? Why aren't the representatives of other international channels who broadcast pictures of Iraqi prisoners being summoned as well?" he asked.
The current controversy stems from the channel's decision to air images of dead and captured US servicemen. The coverage elicited an angry response from a sensitive Pentagon. Lt General Abizaid, the second-in-command of US General Tommy Franks, accused Al-Jazeera of being a 'hostile media' and labeled the images 'disgusting'.
"I am very disappointed that you'd show such pictures of our servicemen," Abizaid said. "I don't think these pictures will affect the steadfastness or morale of our people."
Akamai Declines to Assist Al-Jazerra Site
April 04, 2003
The Associated Press
The Web site of Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera was refused assistance this week when it sought help from Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., in dealing with hacking attacks and massive interest from Web users. "We think it's political pressure," said Nabil Hegazi, deputy managing editor of Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site.
Akamai rents out a network of 12,600 servers that help customer Web sites deal with unexpected traffic, hacker attacks and Internet bottlenecks.
In a prepared statement, Akamai said it "worked briefly this week with Al Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their websites," but decided not to continue the relationship. Akamai would not comment Friday on why it broke off the collaboration.
Al-Jazeera drew intense interest and criticism after it carried Iraqi TV footage of dead and captive U.S. soldiers. U.S. television networks had decided not to air footage of the corpses. Al-Jazeera later honored a U.S. request to stop until families could be notified.
Its English-language Web site was brought down by Internet attacks soon after it debuted last week, and the Arabic page was unavailable for long periods as well. Hackers calling themselves the "Freedom Cyber Force Militia" later diverted visitors seeking the English site to a page with a U.S. flag.
Al-Jazeera said this week that steps were being taken to protect its servers against hackers. The English-language page was back online by Thursday evening U.S. time.
Web portal Lycos reported that Al-Jazeera's site was the most sought-after on the Internet last week.
Al-Jazeera is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. It has received funding by Qatar's government but is an unusually independent voice in the Arab world.
Its reporters were banned from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week, but the exchange has indicated that it might be willing to reconsider its decision.
Thursday 03, April, 2003
With US-led troops running into fierce resistance on Iraq's battlefields, pressure is being brought by Western organisations and news media on Al Jazeera.
Incidents have included the banning of Al Jazeera television's financial correspondents from the New York Stock Exchange, the summoning of the channel's Paris bureau chief by France's broadcast watchdog and discriminatory behaviour by several US-based Internet servers.
In the most extreme example so far, Ammar Sankari and Ramsey Shiber, the channel's finance correspondents in New York, were banned from broadcasting their daily market reports from the city's Stock Exchange and asked to return their passes.
"It seems that due to their cutback on scheduling broadcast slots, they don't have enough spaces and have asked us to turn in our passes momentarily," Shiber said on Monday. "They said that it's hopefully a temporary thing and we'll be able to work together in future."
By Tuesday, Shiber had been notified that the suspension was 'indefinite'.
Sankari, the reporter in question, could not name any other news organization that had also been banned, echoing Shibr's statement that in seven years of doing the financial report, this has "never happened".
A spokesman for the stock exchange quoted in NDTV.com said that the NYSE is giving broadcast slots to broadcasters that focus "on responsible business coverage".
AOL, Yahoo and Reuters have all refused to run advertisements for Al-Jazeera's new, English-language service citing different reasons. Yahoo put the decision down to 'war-related sensitivity', Reuters ruled the decision out on the grounds that Al-Jazeera is a competitor, while AOL offered no reason.
In France, the country's Higher Audiovisual Council (CSA) summoned Michael Kik, the Al Jazeera representative in Paris, to defend the decision to broadcast the Iraqi pictures of dead and captured American servicemen.
Kik argued that the criticism smacked of double standards, saying "For 10 years, pictures of Palestinian prisoners have been shown all over the world, and in the Gulf everyone has been watching images of Iraqi prisoners kneeling in humiliation," in reference to recent controversy over Al Jazeera's coverage of the war.
"Why just me? Why aren't the representatives of other international channels who broadcast pictures of Iraqi prisoners being summoned as well?" he asked.
The current controversy stems from the channel's decision to air images of dead and captured US servicemen. The coverage elicited an angry response from a sensitive Pentagon. Lt General Abizaid, the second-in-command of US General Tommy Franks, accused Al-Jazeera of being a 'hostile media' and labeled the images 'disgusting'.
"I am very disappointed that you'd show such pictures of our servicemen," Abizaid said. "I don't think these pictures will affect the steadfastness or morale of our people."
Akamai Declines to Assist Al-Jazerra Site
April 04, 2003
The Associated Press
The Web site of Arab satellite news channel Al-Jazeera was refused assistance this week when it sought help from Akamai Technologies Inc. of Cambridge, Mass., in dealing with hacking attacks and massive interest from Web users. "We think it's political pressure," said Nabil Hegazi, deputy managing editor of Al-Jazeera's English-language Web site.
Akamai rents out a network of 12,600 servers that help customer Web sites deal with unexpected traffic, hacker attacks and Internet bottlenecks.
In a prepared statement, Akamai said it "worked briefly this week with Al Jazeera to understand the issues they are having distributing their websites," but decided not to continue the relationship. Akamai would not comment Friday on why it broke off the collaboration.
Al-Jazeera drew intense interest and criticism after it carried Iraqi TV footage of dead and captive U.S. soldiers. U.S. television networks had decided not to air footage of the corpses. Al-Jazeera later honored a U.S. request to stop until families could be notified.
Its English-language Web site was brought down by Internet attacks soon after it debuted last week, and the Arabic page was unavailable for long periods as well. Hackers calling themselves the "Freedom Cyber Force Militia" later diverted visitors seeking the English site to a page with a U.S. flag.
Al-Jazeera said this week that steps were being taken to protect its servers against hackers. The English-language page was back online by Thursday evening U.S. time.
Web portal Lycos reported that Al-Jazeera's site was the most sought-after on the Internet last week.
Al-Jazeera is based in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar. It has received funding by Qatar's government but is an unusually independent voice in the Arab world.
Its reporters were banned from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange last week, but the exchange has indicated that it might be willing to reconsider its decision.
Thursday 03, April, 2003