AL-JAZEERA has a growing reputation for serious news gathering and its reporters have won some of the biggest awards in journalism. What the pan-Arab news network does not have is a significant presence in the US.
That is about to change now that Al-Jazeera is spending $500m to acquire Current TV, the left-leaning cable news network co-founded by former US vice-president Al Gore. The deal gives Al-Jazeera access to about 50-million homes. As part of an expansion, the network is promising to hire more journalists and double its number of US news bureaus.
Still, some big questions remain for Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the government of Qatar: how will it stand out in a crowded field of cable TV news channels? And how can it overcome an image that was cemented for many Americans when it gave voice to Osama Bin Laden in the years following the 9/11 terrorist attacks?
Marwan Kraidy, a professor of communication at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on Arab media, says Al-Jazeera needs to overcome the perception among some Americans that it was a "toxic brand".
"The US market has been the nut they wanted to crack, and this is why they pursued Current TV so assiduously," he says. "A small country like Qatar has very few tools to exercise global influence, and they’ve figured out that media is one of these tools."
US resistance to Al-Jazeera isn’t logical, Prof Kraidy says, because Qatar’s foreign policies "are very much aligned with US policies at the moment".
The network, which will be rebranded Al-Jazeera America in 90 days, is not likely to make its mark covering US news events. Its expanding coverage of US news may be of more benefit for its 260-million subscribers abroad.
Instead, US viewers may tune in if the news channel can jump into a big international story and repeat the success it had covering the Arab Spring in Egypt and Bahrain, says Al Tompkins, a broadcast and online professor at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school.
"There will be an opportunity for them to have some play in a world story that will unfold, and we’ll see if they can step into it and provide something no one else can," Prof Tompkins says. "It only takes a few moments of brilliant work and people start noticing you."
The deal faced an initial setback as Time Warner Cable said it would drop Current TV for business reasons, though it left open the possibility of picking up Al-Jazeera America if there is demand.
The nation’s second-largest TV operator said the network did not have enough viewers at the moment.
"As a service develops, we will evaluate whether it makes sense for our customers (for us) to launch the network," Time Warner Cable spokeswoman Maureen Huff said.
An Al-Jazeera spokeswoman said the new network aimed to present an "unbiased" view, "representing as many different viewpoints as possible". It is seeking a broad audience, starting from the base of people in the US who have already sought out its coverage online.
Even after it is rebranded, the channel will continue to be carried by DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast, AT&T U-verse and Verizon FiOS, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person spoke on condition of anonymity and was not authorised to speak publicly.
That boosts the reach of Al-Jazeera to about 50-million homes — up from the 4.7-million that could watch Al-Jazeera English, which is available to some subscribers in New York and Washington, but down slightly from the 60-million homes Current TV reached.
It also amounts to a hefty payday for Mr Gore and co-founder Joel Hyatt, each of whom had a 20% stake in Current. Comcast had a stake of less than 10%. Another major investor in Current TV was supermarket magnate and entertainment industry investor Ron Burkle, according to information service Capital IQ.
Mr Gore announced the sale on Wednesday, saying in a statement that Al-Jazeera shared Current TV’s mission "to give voice to those who are not typically heard; to speak truth to power; to provide independent and diverse points of view; and to tell the stories that no one else is telling".
Al-Jazeera plans to gradually transform Current into Al-Jazeera America. More than half of the content would be US news and the network would have its headquarters in New York, spokesman Stan Collender said.
Sapa-AP
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