IT has been almost four years since Abdul Rahman al-Rashed set out to cure Arab television of its penchant for radical politics and violence.
It was never an easy task. But as the director of one of the leading satellite channels in the Middle East, he thinks he has made a difference.
“You have to remember, it was television that made bin Laden into a celebrity,” says Mr. Rashed, an affable, soft-spoken 52-year-old, as he sat back in the ultramodern glass and steel offices of Al Arabiya, a network here. “That made Al Qaeda, and its recruiting, and this is how violence spread throughout the region.”
Mr. Rashed does not directly accuse Al Jazeera, his main competitor, of these sins. But it is clear enough what he has in mind.
It was because of Al Jazeera, after all, that Mr. Rashed ended up presiding over Al Arabiya’s five-floor headquarters in Dubai’s Media City, overlooking a sprawling artificial lake surrounded by palm trees.
At the time he started, in 2004, Al Jazeera was still being reviled and celebrated around the world for its willingness to show videos of Osama bin Laden, what appeared to be its sympathy for Iraqi insurgents and its gory footage of Iraqi war victims. Mr. Rashed was hired to take Al Jazeera on and provide a new direction for journalism in the region.
He was an obvious man for the job. Born in Saudi Arabia, he had lived for 17 years in London, where he worked his way up the ladder of that city’s thriving Arab expatriate media community to became editor in chief of Al Sharq Al Awsat, the prominent Saudi-owned paper.
He had also gained a reputation as a passionate critic of the jihadist mind-set. Soon after taking the job at Al Arabiya he provoked anger and gratitude across the Islamic world by writing in a column in the newspaper that “not all Muslims are terrorists, but it is equally certain, and exceptionally painful, that most terrorists are Muslims.”
More than three years later, Al Jazeera is still the dominant Arab network. But Mr. Rashed says he has won the most important battle, because Al Jazeera is no longer what it was. The rules have changed.
In large part, he says, that is because Al Arabiya led the way, replacing the old, loaded terms with more neutral ones, offering a wider variety of opinions, aiming at balance. Other stations, including Al Jazeera, have begun to follow Al Arabiya’s practices. He runs through a list of changes: the insurgents in Iraq are no longer called the muqaawama, or resistance; instead they are musulaheen, or armed men. Iraqis killed by Americans are not necessarily “martyrs.” Now, they are just civilians who have been killed.
“Three years ago, most of the TV stations — and you can add to that the newspapers and Web sites — were taking one side on most issues,” he says. “They were very much for the resistance in Iraq.” As for Al Qaeda, “it was, if not celebrated by the media, then accepted, and in a big way defended by them.”
TODAY, that is no longer true. “Now Jazeera is a very soft, reasonable station when it comes to the Iraqis,” Mr. Rashed says, with an ironic twinkle in his eyes.
There are other reasons for those changes, from atrocities carried out by terrorists to Al Jazeera’s own internal evolution. But some media analysts agree that Al Arabiya made a difference.
“Our issue has always been: give a chance to understand the other point of view,” he says. “I think there is a sense now, in the Arab media, that both sides should be shown, and this is a major victory.”
In that spirit, the station has made a conscious effort to highlight the human cost of terrorism and political violence. One of Al Arabiya’s regular features is “Sina’at al Mowt,” or “The Death Industry,” which focuses on terrorism. Its anchor, Rima Salha, has received death threats from jihadists who feel she has maligned them.
Mr. Rashed acknowledges he faced resistance at first. Some reporters saw his attitude as an abandonment of Arab loyalties, though only a few quit in protest.
At the same time, critics on the outside lambasted Al Arabiya as an American vehicle. Some mockingly called it Al Hebraia, or The Hebrew, and accused it of being even more pro-American than Al Hurra, which is financed by the United States and widely dismissed in the Arab world as propaganda.
The campaign against the station “scared the hell out of my superiors,” Mr. Rashed says. Things are a little easier now: Al Arabiya has won a place for itself in the Arab world, and the soft blue look of its broadcasts — a self-conscious contrast with Al Jazeera’s red glare — is familiar across the Middle East. Surveys show that Al Arabiya is the market leader in Saudi Arabia, and it has done well in the Persian Gulf generally, though it is far less popular in Egypt, Jordan, the Palestinian territories and Syria.
The harder accusation to rebut is Al Arabiya’s Saudi orientation. Its parent company is the Saudi-owned Middle East Broadcasting Corporation, and to some extent the rulers of Saudi Arabia see it as a vehicle for their own designs. Those have included a feud with the rulers of Qatar, who until recently allowed Al Jazeera, which is based there, to show fierce criticisms of Saudi Arabia.
Mr. Rashed concedes that he has to cope with political pressure, though he does not like to talk about it. Last year, Al Arabiya heavily promoted a multipart series about Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. The first episode apparently angered members of the royal family, and the rest of the series was abruptly canceled.
“We had an internal conflict about the program, and we hope to show it in the future,” is all Mr. Rashed will say about the incident. But other members of the Arabiya staff say the program was canceled on direct orders from the Saudi royal family.
DEALING with such pressures has taken its toll.
“I’ll either be fired — I step on a lot of toes — or I’ll walk out,” Mr. Rashed says. “I’m burned out.”
Mr. Rashed has never married. Asked about it, he chuckles and invokes Yasir Arafat, who said he was married to the Palestinian cause. “I’m married to the media,” he says. “This job is 24 hours a day, seven days a week. I literally have no life of my own.”
He travels 20 days a month, he says, and works at least 12 hours a day. No complaints: he says he is “probably the highest-paid” person in the entire Arab media business.
His greatest regret, he says, is that he has not trained more young journalists. The BBC, which is restarting its Arabic-language television channel, just hired away 25 of Al Arabiya’s senior journalists, and they are not easy to replace.
Still, he is confident that Al Arabiya will continue on its present course, and that his campaign to inject moderation into the Arab political discourse has not been in vain.
“It’s not about me,” he says. “It’s about an idea: don’t try to change politics directly. Just try to change the media for the better. And I think the result will be a better Arab world.”
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