It again seems the masterstroke of the U.S. and its allies to strangulate the al Jazeera, the Arabic TV channel, based at Doha and owned by the Amir of Qatar, a Middle East country. The channel which now has added a 24 hours English language service attained popularity or notoriety as it was used by the al-Qaeda’s terrorists as a platform. The west, longing for authenticated material about the Islamist terrorists glued to the channel. The al Jazeera too became an instant success in the Middle East countries as the coverage by the Western media was subject to the subjectivity. But the ad revenue for al Jazeera was generated from the west as the channel commanded good audiences in the Western countries. Moreover, it faced the de fecto advertising boycott by Arab countries offended by its sometime critical stands.



Perhaps its grand success proved counter-productive. The al Jazeera in a bid to internationalise its audience hired a good number of TV journalists from the rivals such as the BBC, CNN and The Fox TV. They included veteran UK broadcaster David Frost, BBC’s face in Iraq Omar Rageh, former Tribune (a Left wing British weekly) Editor Mark Seddon as a New York correspondent with special brief to cover UN stories, John Pullman, a former Editor of ITV News at Ten, Susan Philips, London based Chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Paul Gibbs, Steve Clarke, Riz Khan, the hagiographer of the Saudi Prince, Stephen Cole, who had earned the dubious distinction of breaking the strike by BBC journalists, former BBC journalist Barnaby Phillips and Nigel Parsons to name a few.



Had al Jazeera restrained itself to hire talents from the Muslim world such as Omar Rageh and Riz Khan, its popularity in the Middle East countries would have been undiminished. But, now it is at the risk of annoying its patrons among the Muslim terrorists and in particular al Qaeda who may not trust the Western faces of the al Jazeera. Once it loses its credibility among the valuable and ‘exclusive’ news sources, its audience in the west is too expected to dry up.



The sole beneficiary of such eventuality would be the U.S. who would be happy to find the Muslim terrorists without a platform.