VZCZCXRO2655
PP RUEHBC RUEHDE RUEHKUK RUEHROV
DE RUEHDO #0237/01 0841116
ZNY EEEEE ZZH
P 241116Z MAR 08
FM AMEMBASSY DOHA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 7732
INFO RUEHEE/ARAB LEAGUE COLLECTIVE
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 1091
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0149
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 1356

UNCLAS E F T O SECTION 01 OF 03 DOHA 000237 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPARTMENT FOR NEA/PPD AND NEA/ARP 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: N/A 
TAGS: KPAO PREL EG QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: CDA CRITICIZES ARAB MEDIA CHARTER, STRIKES BACK AT 
AL JAZEERA AT BROOKINGS EVENT 
 
REF: DOHA 154 
 
Classified By: CHARGE D'AFFAIRES MICHAEL A. RATNEY, FOR REASON 1.4 (B). 
 
¶1. (SBU) SUMMARY: As a panelist at a public event sponsored 
by the Brookings-Doha Center on March 17, Charge expressed 
the USG's position that an Arab League charter proposing to 
limit satellite channels not be used to restrict media 
freedom (reftel).  Charge said that media should be 
regulated not by politicians, but by professional 
associations and laws adopted by democratically elected 
legislatures, which are reviewed by independent courts. 
Co-panelist Ibrahim Helal of Al Jazeera agreed, speculating 
that the charter was aimed primarily at Egypt's domestic 
satellite media, while Egyptian human rights activist Saad 
Eddin Ibrahim disagreed, asserting that the charter was 
aimed mainly at Al Jazeera.  Both panelists suggested that 
the charter had the implicit backing of the USG.  They also 
accused the United States of deliberately bombing Al 
Jazeera's news bureaus in Afghanistan and killing its 
correspondent in Iraq.  Charge called such allegations 
ludicrous and offensive, and pointed out that Al Jazeera 
operates freely in the United States, despite the USG's 
concerns about its negative editorial slant.  Qatari media 
reaction to the event has been straightforward.  Al Jazeera 
Mubashir -- the network's equivalent to C-SPAN -- aired the 
event on March 19 at 1900 GMT.  END SUMMARY 
 
---------------------------------- 
MEDIA FREEDOM GOOD, REGULATION BAD 
---------------------------------- 
 
¶2. (SBU)  On March 17, the Brookings-Doha Center organized 
a panel discussion entitled, "Forward or Backward?  The 
2008 Arab Satellite TV Charter and the Future of Arab 
Media, Society and Democracy," with Charge, Al Jazeera 
English Deputy Director Ibrahim Helal, and Egyptian human 
rights activist and American University of Cairo professor 
Saad Eddin Ibrahim.  In their opening remarks, all three 
panelists characterized the Arab League charter adopted on 
February 12 as a threat to media freedom, and an 
inappropriate attempt by politicians to protect themselves 
at the expense of the public's right to information.  Helal 
allowed that there were some satellite channels "promoting 
hate and violence," which "cannot be put into the same 
category as Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya when defending media 
freedom."  Arab media outlets, however, were "too divided" 
and "should have come together before this to regulate 
ourselves and talk with each other about our standards." 
He noted that Al Jazeera had adopted and made public a code 
of ethics in early 2004, to which he said the network 
adheres closely.  The charter, in his opinion, represented 
an attempt by the Egyptian Government to crack down on 
domestic independent satellite channels, which the regime 
had been slow to recognize were skirting laws barring them 
from reporting on news by incorporating current events into 
their talk shows. 
 
¶3. (SBU)  Saad Eddin Ibrahim said he did not believe that 
the sub-standard quality of some satellite stations was 
behind the creation of the charter, but that Al Jazeera was 
the "elephant in the room" when Arab Ministers of 
Information held their first-ever emergency session to 
discuss and adopt the charter.  Arab autocrats, he said, 
"are trying once again to close the Arab mind, and we must 
do all we can now to defend the few windows that we have 
still open," including broadcast satellite channels.  Dr. 
Ibrahim encouraged people to show signs of civil 
disobedience in the days before the next Arab League 
meeting to discuss the charter, scheduled for June. 
Individuals could, he suggested, put black flags in their 
windows, or turn off their lights for an evening in 
protest. 
 
¶4. (SBU)  Speaking last, Charge described the long history 
of press freedom in the United States, beginning with 
protections in the Bill of Rights, and quoting Thomas 
Jefferson's preference of living in a country without 
government, rather than a country without newspapers if 
forced to choose, due to the vital importance of the press 
in a free society.  Charge then described how most laws 
serve to protect journalists, and how regulations of the 
free airwaves are arrived at through legislation written by 
democratically elected representatives, and reviewed by an 
independent judiciary.  The USG believes, he said, that 
media is best regulated through professional associations 
 
DOHA 00000237  002 OF 003 
 
 
which adopt codes and standards of conduct, rather than the 
whims of politicians seeking to protect themselves at the 
expense of the public's right to know. 
 
------------------------ 
SPARRING WITH AL JAZEERA 
------------------------ 
 
¶5. (SBU)  Brookings' moderator then asked Charge how the 
USG squares Jeffersonian ideals about a free press with its 
"rough history with Al Jazeera" and the fact that it 
sometimes chooses not to engage and even ban certain media 
outlets.  Charge responded that the USG had serious 
concerns with Al Jazeera's coverage of events in Iraq, 
particularly in 2003, and that we had aired these 
differences publicly.  Despite these differences, Al 
Jazeera was invited to embed a journalist with U.S. troops, 
and has always operated in Washington, DC and throughout 
America without restrictions. 
 
¶6. (SBU)  Ibrahim Helal then intervened, denying that Al 
Jazeera was allowed to embed any reporters with U.S. 
troops, and that in fact, their correspondent had to "sneak 
into Iraq through Kuwait" and was mistreated by the U.S. 
military once he arrived in Iraq.  Al Jazeera had endured 
the U.S. bombing of its bureaus in Afghanistan and the 
killing of one of its journalists, he said, so "we should 
now talk loudly about how the U.S. Government's policies 
have helped the Arab Ministers of Information arrive at 
where they are now."  Later in the program, Saad Eddin 
Ibrahim noted that "certain administration officials who 
promoted freedom a few years ago now promote stability, 
which is just a code word for stagnation."  That is why, he 
continued, "there is a feeling that Washington and Tel Aviv 
are behind this charter and why Al Jazeera has been banned 
in the United States." 
 
¶7. (SBU)  CDA immediately objected on both occasions, 
stating that any allegation that the United States 
deliberately targeted a news bureau or murdered a 
journalist is "ludicrous and offensive."  Al Jazeera has 
never been banned in the United States, he added, and it is 
available to anyone who wants to see it by satellite.  If 
cable companies choose not to carry it, that is a 
commercial decision, not a political one.  The fact is that 
Al Jazeera English is competing against a variety of 
well-established English news networks, and simply has not 
made a convincing case to cable companies that carrying it 
-- as opposed to some other station -- would be more 
profitable. 
 
------------------- 
LET'S COME TOGETHER 
------------------- 
 
¶8. (SBU)  Charge reminded the panelists that they had come 
together to discuss the Arab League media charter, not the 
USG's relationship with Al Jazeera, so the conversation 
should stay focused on that topic.  Helal and Dr. Ibrahim 
took the opportunity in response to further questions from 
the audience to reiterate their desire to see Arab media 
outlets come together to discuss a common code of ethics -- 
particularly to avoid the specter of self-censorship -- and 
for the general public to register its discontent with this 
attempt to restrict the media.  "What they are going to 
continue doing in June," Dr. Ibrahim said, in reference to 
the next Arab League meeting on the charter, "is not 
regulation, but strangulation." 
 
-------------- 
MEDIA REACTION 
-------------- 
 
¶9. (U)  Qatari media reaction was mostly straightforward 
but scant reporting in the English media, with only the 
Qatar Tribune devoting a front-page, above-the-fold article 
to it.  Arabic daily al-Raya printed a headline for an 
otherwise balanced article that focused on the differences 
aired by Helal and the Charge.  Arabic daily al-Watan 
provided overall straightforward reporting, with a 
full-page spread inside its March 19 edition. 
 
------- 
COMMENT 
------- 
 
 
DOHA 00000237  003 OF 003 
 
 
¶10. (SBU)  Al Jazeera Mubashir, the network's channel that 
provides live coverage of conferences and proceedings not 
unlike C-SPAN in the United States, recorded the event and 
then aired it on March 19 at 1900 GMT.  Post found the 
event an excellent opportunity to publicly support media 
freedom - a value it ostensibly shares with Al Jazeera and 
the Qatari leadership - while also forcefully answering Al 
Jazeera's oft-repeated charges of USG targeting of its 
people and facilities.  We were pleased to see that Al 
Jazeera had the decency to air the exchange unedited and, 
through translation, in Arabic. 
 
RATNEY