Al Jazeera has operated an Arabic channel since 1996 and an English channel since 2006. | REUTERS Al Jazeera America: Will they watch?

In a matter of weeks, a new television channel called Al Jazeera America will launch with the hopes of achieving the impossible: convincing Americans that they should break from their regularly scheduled programming to watch a 24-hour, global news network owned by a Middle Eastern government.

When it goes live, the network will no doubt battle the most intense and familiar accusations of bias that have dogged its Arabic and English channels — charges that it is anti-American, anti-Israel and worse. But that’s not even its biggest problem.


What Al Jazeera America is really worried about is this: Will anyone actually watch?

“The big effort here is going to be getting people to give us a shot,” Stan Collender, an Al Jazeera spokesman, told POLITICO.

Back in May 2011, during the height of the Arab Spring, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly praised Al Jazeera, which has operated an Arabic channel since 1996 and a separate English channel since 2006.

“You feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and arguments between talking heads,” she said of the English version, issuing an indirect criticism at American news outlets.

Al Jazeera had gained national attention for running live online footage of the Arab uprisings, but one could be forgiven for having no idea what she was talking about. To many Americans, Al Jazeera was — and is — an unknown quantity. To others, it is anathema.

Though it has more than 65 bureaus around the world and broadcasts in more than 100 countries, though it has won numerous awards here and received praise from leading Democrats and Republicans, many U.S. cable providers won’t carry it. Often portrayed as rife with pro-Arab or pro-Muslim propaganda, Al Jazeera has had to spend six years fighting just to get its English-language network on American airwaves.

“Al Jazeera has had to face a decade of propaganda against them from the political right in this country, and hostility against them from the Israeli right,” David Marash, Al Jazeera English’s former Washington anchor, told POLITICO.

“There is an embedded, ongoing discomfort with Al Jazeera because of people’s internal biases about the Arab world after Sept. 11, a discomfort due to misinformation and untruths,” said Steve Clemons, the founder of the New America Foundation’s American Strategy Program and an editor at large at The Atlantic.

Frustrated at every turn, Al Jazeera took the only avenue left: It bought its way in.

On Jan. 2, the network acquired Current TV, the progressive cable channel founded seven years ago by former Vice President Al Gore. In April, it will replace Current with Al Jazeera America. The acquisition, which cost Al Jazeera an estimated $500 million, will increase its reach in the United States by almost 1,000 percent: from 4.7 million homes to 41 million, according to a network spokesperson.

But far from overcoming American opposition, the acquisition has reinforced it: The week the deal was signed, the Anti-Defamation League announced “ongoing concerns” about the network, due to its “troubling record” of giving “virulent anti-Israel and even anti-Semitic extremists access to its airwaves.” Dick Morris, the Fox News commentator, accused Current’s co-founders of “bringing anti-Israeli propaganda” to America. Further to the right, the watchdog group Accuracy in Media called for a congressional probe into the “controversial operations of the foreign propaganda channel,” labeling it a “Homeland Security threat.”

But Al Jazeera’s greatest challenge is American apathy — or, at least, perceived apathy — toward international affairs. Before the ink had even dried on the Current-Al Jazeera deal, Time Warner Cable announced it had dropped the channel. (It has since said it’s keeping an open mind.) Executives there attributed the move to Current TV’s low ratings, not Al Jazeera’s politics, but implicit in that was a total lack of faith in Al Jazeera America’s ability to improve on Current’s lackluster performance. The move cost Al Jazeera roughly 12 million potential viewers.

In retrospect, the $500 million buy-in appears to have been the easy part. Now, Al Jazeera must convince American audiences that a Middle Eastern-based news network — owned by the Emir of Qatar, and therefore funded largely by foreign oil wealth — can be both credible and compelling.

That effort is complicated by the network’s flagship Arabic channel, which is radically different from its English-language counterpart.

“There is quantum difference in style and reporting between Al Jazeera English and the mothership, Al Jazeera Arabic,” Lawrence Pintak, a former Middle East correspondent for CBS News and founding dean of The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University, explained.

“Reporters on Al Jazeera Arabic proudly wear their Arabism on their sleeve. Like much of Arab journalism, it is polemical, ideological, and emotional,” he said. “Al Jazeera English, aside from providing a vast amount of international news, is not dramatically different from watching CNN in terms of content. It is a cross-border station largely programmed by Western or Western-educated journalists.”

Al Jazeera English is editorially independent from Al Jazeera Arabic; Al Jazeera America will likewise be editorially independent from both those channels, thought it will borrow roughly half of its programming from A.J.E., according to Collender. (The network has yet to announce the details of its new programming, nor how much it will focus on domestic U.S. politics.)

The foreign policy establishment knows and respects the distinction. In 2004, when then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld called the network’s coverage of Iraq “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable,” he was referring to Al Jazeera Arabic, as English did not yet exist. In 2011, when he said Al Jazeera “can be an important means of communication in the world, and I am delighted you are doing what you are doing,” he was talking about A.J.E.

“Our experience has been that Al Jazeera English is a totally different animal than Al Jazeera Arabic, with different editorial postures,” a State Deptartment spokesperson, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told POLITICO. “Many of us quite like Al Jazeera English and the intelligent, detailed coverage it brings of places not often covered in depth on networks here in the U.S.”

But Al Jazeera’s opponents see it differently, and do not hesitate to lump the channels together.

“We see anti-Israel bias, at times crossing into anti-Semitism, across Al Jazeera’s platforms,” Michael Salberg, the Anti-Defamation League’s director of International Affairs, told POLITICO. “It’s not just the Arabic version; it seeps into the English language version, which has been available online.”

The evidence for anti-Israel bias is far stronger on the Arabic side, however. Salberg cited Al Jazeera Arabic’s broadcast of a weekly program hosted by Youssef al-Qaradawi, a Muslim theologian and televangelist who has promoted violence against Jews. In one sermon, Qaradawi is reported to have asked God “to kill the Jewish Zionists, every last one of them.”

Al Jazeera English does not broadcast Qaradawi; instead, Salberg pointed to biased reporting. Salberg said that in a report about the Palestinian effort for boycott, divestment, and international sanctions against Israel, Al Jazeera English “presented only one perspective, that of its proponents.” He also said A.J.E. showed bias when it interviewed Suha Arafat, the widow of former Palestinian Authority President, because it did not challenge her claim that Israelis were responsible for assassinating Arafat. Al Jazeera’s website, Salberg added, has featured “virulently anti-Israel” editorials.

“There is a track record of anti-Israel bias, and it’s egregious. It’s not pervasive, but it is egregious,” Salberg said.

In a press release, Accuracy In Media accused Al Jazeera of “planning to reach American Muslims, who primarily speak English, with inflammatory words and images making America out to be the enemy and villain in the Middle East,” though it did not specify what those words and images were or would be.

Collender dismissed these accusations: “Al Jazeera is not anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. In fact, it’s often been accused by some in the Arab world of being an arm of the Mossad because its coverage of events in the Middle East is not as pro-Arab as they would like,” he said. “As for AIM… Al Jazeera English has been available to Americans since 2009 and has never been considered a threat of any kind. During this time Al Jazeera English has been honored with many of the most prestigious U.S. and international journalism awards for quality and independence.”

Clemons, who has been a guest on Al Jazeera English, described conspiracies of bias as “silly,” especially in light of the biases of certain American news networks.

“I’ve debated the Deputy Foreign Minister of Israel on Al Jazeera, I’ve debated the leader of the Zionist Organization of America on Al Jazeera,” Clemons said. “Contrast that with Fox News, where one prominent anchor once asked me if I knew people at The Atlantic that he was allowed to have on his show.”

“The lines of political correctness that run in our own political news organizations make Al Jazeera look like Jeffersonian democracy,” he said.

Former Al Jazeera employees also attest to the network’s editorial independence, though they note that — like every news outlet — it isn’t perfect.

“In general, we’re talking about the kind of missteps that every news organization makes,” said Marash, who left Al Jazeera English due to editorial disagreements but still describes it as “the best news channel on Earth.” Marash pointed specifically to a time when both Al Jazeera Arabic and Al Jazeera English tended toward a pro-Saudi Arabia stance. Though Al Jazeera Arabic continues to have that stance, Al Jazeera English does not, he said.

“Al Jazeera’s coverage of Israel was always very straight-forward,” another former employee said. “Was there more coverage of the Palestinians? Sure. Should U.S. news organizations have more coverage of Palestinians? You work at a place like NBC News and you have a very domestic view; Al Jazeera tries to look at the world as if you’re at some point out in space.”

Those who have worked at the Doha-based Al Jazeera English find similar suspicions of editorial influence by the Qatari ownership almost laughable, primarily because the principle frustration among former American staffers, including Marash, is that editorial control was dominated not by Qataris, but by Brits, who hold many senior positions at the network.

Collender stated unequivocally that the Qatari government has no editorial influence on either Al Jazeera Arabic or Al Jazeera English. The former employee, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that wasn’t quite true: “You don’t see any reporting critical of Qatar,” the employee said, noting that it isn’t uncommon for media outlets to avoid aggressive coverage of their corporate owners’ problems.

For the time being, Al Jazeera seems confident about its ability to overcome past stereotypes.

“The perception is not as bad as it seems. You ask our critics, ‘Have you ever seen the channel or been on the website,’ and they so, ‘No.’ It’s an opinion formed on no facts and no research,” Bob Wheelock, A.J.E.’s executive producer for the Americas and a veteran of ABC and NBC, told POLITICO. “We’re ever going to change those people. But the people who see us, like us. The only hiccup has been that not enough people see us.”

“Those who think worst of Al Jazeera have never heard about it,” Collender said. “As more people see it, the mix and the biases that people had before are going to melt away.”

The greater challenge, that of getting Americans interested in international affairs, is another matter.

“First, Al Jazeera has to face what their competitors claim is American resistance to international news,” Marash said. “They have to overcome the fact that most viewers are unaccustomed to that.”

“Put everything else aside and you have this issue: Do Americans care about international news?” Pintak said. “Is there a niche audience out there? I would think so. I doubt it could rival the Fox News audience, but CNN has a pretty small audience these days.”

Global news networks that do broadcast in America have failed to win audiences. The demand for BBC World News in the United States is so low that BBC America has put its emphasis on drama programs. Meanwhile, networks like the Chinese-owned CCTV and Russian-owned Russia Today, neither of which has faced the backlash that Al Jazeera has, cater primarily to Chinese and Russian expats.

But Clemons is especially bullish on Al Jazeera’s long-term success in the U.S., seeing the forays of foreign-owned news channels into the States in more historic terms.

“Right now, there’s a global arbitrage reality out there,” Clemons explained. “American news media is much more inwardly focused; international stories are boutique stories. Meanwhile, new global CNN-style networks are competing for the right to tell the world story. Heavyweights like China, Russia, Brazil, and Turkey are investing bilions to write that narrative — all of which is part of the larger process of America moving from being a hegemonic nation to one that has to share power with other global players.”

“America has long been used to setting the narrative, but somehow it’s not delivering,” he continued. “These global networks will generate most of their growth externally while growing incrementally here in the U.S. market. They are buying the dregs of access, buying channels and portals that are crappy, that no one else would buy, and giving themselves the makings of larger network.”

”It’s like the bank you’d never heard of that gobbles up smaller banks, then one day founds Bank of America,” he said. “We’ll wake up one day and see that Al Jazeera has acquired a substantial portion of the U.S. audience.”