January 14, 2005|By Ellen Gamerman | Ellen Gamerman,SUN STAFF
WASHINGTON - No Al-Jazeera sign will hang outside the network's new offices on K Street. Instead, staffers will enter "Peninsula Productions," the channel's American video production company. Experience has shown them that the Al-Jazeera name tends to attract the wrong kind of attention here.
As a result, the controversial satellite network that is the dominant news source for the Arab world has learned to play a political game worthy of its Washington address: It is keeping fairly quiet about the $7 million Washington digs.
Inside its newsroom, Al-Jazeera is brimming with D.C. ambitions. As early as next month, the 24-hour network will open a gleaming new bureau and studios. The renovation speaks to its grander goal: to expand Washington coverage, double its staff and make D.C. a hub for Western news.
"Given the importance of U.S. politics in the [Middle East], especially after the Iraq war, you're talking about the U.S. now almost being a regional power," said Hafez al-Mirazi, 47, the Washington bureau chief and a former Voice of America and British Broadcasting Corp. reporter who has covered the capital since 1984. "Given the military presence in Iraq, add to that the Arab-Israeli conflict and also the political reform agenda that the Bush administration addressed, it makes any discussion from Washington really very relevant to what our audience would care about."
Al-Jazeera staff members describe a bold new blueprint: The bureau plans to increase its current coverage - a lineup of news packages and a weekly public-affairs program - to include a four-hour nightly news broadcast, shifting the anchor desk to Washington while the news cycle slumbers at the channel's home base in Doha, Qatar.
In addition, the Arabic news service is adding a separate staff for a new English-language channel, Al-Jazeera International - an attempt to rival CNN International and BBC World Service - which will anchor much of its coverage from Washington after its expected debut this fall. Someday, network executives hope, when Americans are in a hotel room in, say, Atlanta, they'll be clicking from CNN to Al-Jazeera.
Washington also is expected to contribute to network spin-offs, such as proposed Al-Jazeera children's, sports and documentary channels.
Much of the appetite, though, is for U.S. politics, a reflection of how large the United States looms in the Arab world. The Arab network plans up to five hours of continuous coverage of President Bush's inauguration Jan. 20 and will cover the balls that night. Last year, during the political conventions, Al-Jazeera aired 14 hours from each party gathering.
While many news organizations are cutting their Washington bureaus, Al-Jazeera is growing. Before the Sept. 11 attacks, the network employed just four people here; now, 20. Soon, the Arabic- and English-language D.C. staffs are expected to total more than 70 people, dwarfing its London office and other bureaus outside the Persian Gulf region.
For now, though, the only signs of the D.C. expansion are the construction workers finishing the new bureau and an armed, SWAT-style guard hired last year by the building's management to stand watch by the expensive first-floor studios.
In al-Mirazi's office, a photograph of the bureau chief interviewing national security adviser Condoleezza Rice sits on the bookshelf, near The 9/11 Commission Report and Let's Roll, the 9/11 tale of the passenger revolt aboard Flight 93. Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, about U.S. imperialism, sits on the desk.
Sense of solidarity
Inside the Al-Jazeera newsroom, it's all bustle. Reporters translate sound bites from U.S. officials and tape Arabic voiceovers for their stories. The offices are strewn with typical D.C. bureau detritus - think an abundance of C-SPAN mugs - and the soon-to-be-replaced studio has a handwritten "On Air" sign taped to its door.
Staff members slide between Arabic and English, trading stories during smoking breaks. Their solidarity seems more than friendship born of a cramped newsroom. The staffers, mostly U.S. citizens of Arab descent, unite in the belief that their work is judged unfairly.
Reporter Wajd Waqfi is close enough to the State Department's press secretary that he calls her "Gigi." But when reporters at his briefings question Al-Jazeera's role - alleging that it over-covers terrorist groups and uses graphic images for propaganda - she's suddenly the face of the network and the room feels combative.
"Some of these colleagues, you can tell from the kinds of questions they insist on asking at the State Department, you wouldn't want to get so close to them," said Waqfi, a 33-year-old Jordanian-born American.
