This record is a partial extract of the original cable. The full text of the original cable is not available.

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 000317 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP, S/CT 
BAGHDAD FOR ERIK RYE 
NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY 
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/28/2011 
TAGS: PREL PTER KPAO IZ QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: U/S HUGHES MEETINGS AT AL JAZEERA 
 
REF: A. DOHA 104 
     ¶B. DOHA 219 
     ¶C. DOHA 312 
 
Classified By: Charge d'Affaires a.i. Mirembe Nantongo, Reasons 1.4(b&d 
) 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: U/S for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs 
Karen Hughes met February 19 with Al Jazeera managing 
director Wadah Khanfar at the Al Jazeera studios in Doha. She 
also participated in a roundtable discussion with Khanfar and 
four senior Al Jazeera staff members and recorded an Al 
Jazeera interview. End summary. 
 
Meeting with Wadah Khanfar 
-------------------------- 
 
¶2. (C) U/S Hughes, accompanied by Ambassador Chase 
Untermeyer, NEA/PPD Director Alberto Fernandez and PAO met 
Feb 19 with Al Jazeera Managing Director Wadah Khanfar. U/S 
Hughes began the meeting by noting that, as a communicator, 
she felt obligated to engage Al Jazeera, despite the 
existence of voices in Washington opposing such engagement. 
She noted that the USG has observed some improvement in the 
quality of Al Jazeera's programming over the course of the 
last year, but emphasized that serious work still remains to 
be done, particularly as regards coverage of Iraq. The US is 
in a situation in Iraq "where our sons and daughters are 
getting killed," and the USG remains very concerned about the 
creation of any environment or atmosphere that condones 
violence against Americans, said Hughes. She spoke of the 
necessity of confronting the "atmosphere of hate" and the 
need for respectful, neutral voices in the media. 
 
¶3. (C) Khanfar said he welcomed her observations. "We see 
ourselves as your partners in this, not as something to 
create problems. We are interested in stability in Iraq. It 
is clear that incitement has led nowhere."  He said that 
focus on reform has been one of Al Jazeera's pillars since 
its establishment in 1996. AJ has adopted clear standards in 
its codes of conduct and ethics and is continuing its 
learning curve. "We make mistakes, we correct them," he said. 
Referring to the monthly report from the USG he receives via 
the Embassy (Note: DIA's unclassified snippets. End note), he 
complained, "Clearly the person who writes this report is not 
a journalist. The report is politically oriented." 
 
¶4. (C) Returning to the subject of regional reform, he 
repeated: "We see ourselves as partners." All AJ's 
journalists come from a background that forced them to act 
against their professional standards in support of government 
propaganda. AJ has provided a different atmosphere in which 
these journalists can work: "We have a mission and we try to 
achieve our mission through professionalism." He spoke of 
AJ's new international bent, referring to the Al Jazeera 
forum held in Doha in February, as well as the early February 
visit of Al Jazeera's new International Board of Visitors 
(Ref A). This was the first time AJ had opened up its 
editorial policy to international scrutiny, he said. The 
Board of Visitors participated in two days of "intense" 
discussions with AJ editorial staff and the sessions resulted 
in some "great ideas," said Khanfar. 
 
AJ and terrorist-provided tapes 
------------------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) U/S Hughes noted that a key USG concern is Al 
Jazeera's airing of terrorist-provided video tapes, whether 
of Al Qaeda origin, or relating to kidnappings in Iraq. She 
asked Khanfar why AJ is the channel of choice for such tapes. 
Khanfar replied that AJ is the channel of choice for anyone 
who wants to reach the Arab world, whether it is Osama bin 
Laden, the Imam of Cairo's Al Azhar, or officials in the Arab 
world. "If you want to speak to the Arab-Muslim world you 
come to Al Jazeera. Everyone does." 
 
¶6. (C) Khanfar reviewed AJ's policies on kidnapping tapes 
(showing a few seconds; avoiding scenes humiliating to the 
hostages; muting all sound from the tapes; using anchor 
voice-over to communicate details of the kidnapping or of 
kidnappers' demands) and on Al Qaeda tapes. "We have come a 
long way on these," he said, noting that in the beginning AJ 
would air Al Qaeda tapes almost in their entirety. Now, he 
said, the channel selects only sections that are newsworthy 
and does not air long passages of religious or other 
rhetoric. Some tapes received by AJ are not judged newsworthy 
at all, he said. "We do not air all the tapes we receive," he 
said. 
 
¶7. (C) U/S Hughes pointed out that by airing the tapes at 
all, AJ is providing an enormous platform for "people who 
want to kill, not just Americans, but Christians and Jews 
everywhere." Khanfar acknowledged that the longest and most 
heated debates taking place among AJ editorial staff concern 
the hows and whys of broadcasting Al Qaeda tapes. In the end, 
however, he insisted, AJ has performed a service to the world 
at large, in that it has helped mature understanding of Al 
Qaeda's position. The channel airs only selected portions of 
the tapes, and then invites commentators to discuss the 
content and thus "Al Jazeera deconstructs the discourse of 
Osama bin Laden. We bring analysis to it, putting rationality 
in something that is not supposed to be rational," said 
Khanfar and the audience reaches an inevitable conclusion, 
which is: "Osama bin Laden's discourse is not useful, it is 
not practical. Osama bin Laden's image today is not what it 
was" before Al Jazeera began airing and analyzing the tapes, 
he said. 
 
¶8. (C) U/S Hughes took the opportunity to remind Khanfar of 
his Feb 11 discussion with Emboffs concerning the possibility 
of Al Jazeera passing copies of kidnapping tapes to embassies 
of the kidnap victims' countries (Ref B). Khanfar reiterated 
to U/S Hughes AJ's reluctance to do so because of the 
likelihood that such transactions would involve AJ in legal 
proceedings. When reminded of his Ref B undertaking to take 
the matter to the Al Jazeera Board of Directors for 
discussion of a possible policy change, Khanfar noted that 
the Board has only just been formed, referring to the 
recently announced board of the Al Jazeera Network (Ref C). 
(Note: We will continue to follow up on this issue. End note.) 
 
USG spokespeople in Dubai's Media City 
-------------------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) U/S Hughes observed that the USG has "to do a better 
job" of speaking out and staking out its position in the 
region, and described for Khanfar a plan to place two or 
three USG spokespeople on a permanent basis in Dubai's Media 
City, who would be available for comment at any time on a 
complete range of issues. She asked Khanfar what sort of 
expertise should appropriately be placed in Dubai and he 
responded that expertise on USG policy in Iraq, on the 
Israeli-Palestinian conflict, on detainees and on economics 
would be areas of key focus. He said AJ would appreciate 
having USG spokespeople "on tap", as it was often problematic 
to get timely USG comments on different issues. 
 
The cartoon controversy 
----------------------- 
 
¶10. (C) Khanfar told U/S Hughes that in his view the whole 
cartoon controversy is "playing into the hands of Osama bin 
Laden." He said the Doha-based Al Jazeera Center for Studies 
is convening a conference on March 9 which will host 
philosophers and thinkers from the Muslim world and from the 
West, to discuss and formulate a framework of understanding, 
that will take into account the cultural and religious 
diversity at play and the different "cognitive maps" the 
players bring to the issue. Khanfar said he thought the US 
stance on the cartoon controversy was "very positive. You 
understand issues of diversity more than the others do." 
Following up on this point, he told U/S Hughes that when Al 
Jazeera was designing its newsroom in the new studios, it 
sought design proposals from Canadian, German, French and US 
firms. He said the firms were asked to consider an Arab 
perspective, including the colors and concept of the desert, 
in their designs. None of the designers "got it" except the 
American firm, and it is the US design that was implemented, 
he said. 
 
Roundtable with Al Jazeera senior staff 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶11. (U) Following her meeting with Khanfar, U/S Hughes moved 
into a roundtable discussion attended by Khanfar, Chief 
Editor Ahmed Sheikh, Deputy Chief Editor Ayman Gaballa and 
senior AJ presenters Mohamed Krishan and Jamil Azar. 
Ambassador Untermeyer, R staff and Emboffs were also present. 
 
¶12. (SBU) U/S Hughes made the same points to the group as she 
had made earlier to Khanfar, emphasizing her view of the 
importance of ensuring that people have the freedom to hear a 
wide range of views and her conviction that if people are 
given a choice they will choose freedom over tyranny, 
tolerance over intolerance, and the rule of law over despotic 
regimes. She noted improvements in Al Jazeera programming, 
but emphasized that the USG still retains serious concerns 
over the professionalism of some of the channel's content, 
particularly as it relates to Iraq coverage and to the airing 
of terrorist-provided videotapes. "It is incumbent on all of 
us to confront the culture of hate, and try to have a more 
civil and respectful dialogue," she said. 
 
¶13. (SBU) The two sides of the table then spent the next hour 
debating various issues relating to problematic Al Jazeera 
coverage. The AJ team denounced the "urban myth" that the 
channel has ever shown a beheading, noting that very early on 
after the start of the era of "kidnapping" videos, they 
showed a clip right up to the moment of the beheading, but 
not the actual beheading itself, and they had never even come 
close since then. Jamil Azar, who identified himself as the 
channel's Chief Language Monitor, described the station's 
policy on the use of idioms and provocative vocabulary. Ahmed 
Sheikh complained that some of the complaints from the USG 
side concerning AJ coverage are based on faulty translations 
from Arabic into English; he also complained about CENTCOM's 
slowness to respond to requests for comment on Iraq 
operations. NEA/PPD Director Fernandez made the point that in 
December during the Iraqi elections, Saddam Hussein's former 
ambassador to the UN was interviewed as a commentator, and 
the station failed to identify him accurately, misleadingly 
labeling him as simply "a political analyst." Khanfar said 
editorial policy now forbids the use of the term "political 
analyst". (Note: The US team noted the use of the term during 
a news program that same night on Al Jazeera. End note.) The 
US team criticized the caliber of some of the people brought 
on to AJ talk shows and also asked for a copy of the 
station's formal editorial policy. Khanfar said that 
following the AJ Board of Visitors' meeting in early February 
the policy was undergoing translation, and that he would pass 
on a copy once the translation is complete. The AJ team asked 
for news of Sami Al Hajj, the Sudanese Al Jazeera cameramen 
arrested on the Pakistan-Afghan border in 2001 and now 
detained in Guantanamo; and they also complained once again 
that the USG had bombed their offices in Baghdad and Kabul 
without offering a word of apology or regret. 
 
¶14. (SBU) Although the roundtable discussion did not resolve 
any key issues, the atmosphere was cordial and all parties 
had a lot to say. The discussion ended due to time 
constraints. Following the roundtable, U/S Hughes proceeded 
to the Al Jazeera studios to tape an interview segment for 
the station's "Interview of the Day" program. During the 
interview, U/S Hughes was questioned on US policy towards 
Hamas, on her work to improve the US image abroad, and on USG 
policy towards detainees. 
 
¶15. (U) The Hughes delegation did not have an opportunity to 
review this cable. 
NANTONGO