Mission Al-Jazeera

Mission Al-Jazeera
Author: Josh Rushing
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2007-06-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0230605079

Blending his riveting personal story with innovative ideas about how to win the war on terror, former marine turned Al Jazeera reporter Josh Rushing addresses all the issues he was not allowed to talk about when he was in uniform. If we are to win the war on terror, Rushing explains, we have to interact with the media at home and abroad in order to control the way we are perceived. By refusing to appear on Al Jazeera, Western leaders allow people who disagree with the current administration to represent the West to the Arab world in a skewed, negative way. By taking readers inside Al Jazeera, Rushing offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the controversial news channel and shows how the West can harness it to its advantage, relay a positive message to the Arab public, and hear what it has to say in return.

Mission Al-Jazeera

Mission Al-Jazeera
Author: Josh Rushing
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2007-06-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9781403979056

Blending his riveting personal story with innovative ideas about how to win the war on terror, former marine turned Al Jazeera reporter Josh Rushing addresses all the issues he was not allowed to talk about when he was in uniform. If we are to win the war on terror, Rushing explains, we have to interact with the media at home and abroad in order to control the way we are perceived. By refusing to appear on Al Jazeera, Western leaders allow people who disagree with the current administration to represent the West to the Arab world in a skewed, negative way. By taking readers inside Al Jazeera, Rushing offers a unique behind-the-scenes look at the controversial news channel and shows how the West can harness it to its advantage, relay a positive message to the Arab public, and hear what it has to say in return.

The Culture of Al Jazeera

The Culture of Al Jazeera
Author: Mohamed Zayani
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 305
Release: 2017-09-29
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1476612013

In the mid 1990s, the emir of Qatar conceived the idea of a satellite channel that would further the progressive image he hoped to establish for his small Arabian/Persian Gulf state. At the same time, a short-lived partnership between the BBC and a Saudi company had left a handful of BBC-trained Arab journalists and broadcasters up for grabs. That was the inception of Al Jazeera--a satellite channel which changed forever the face of Arab broadcasting with its uncensored news and bold talk show programs. The September 11 attacks on the United States and the war on terrorism vaulted Al Jazeera to international prominence but also turned it into a source of controversy. Despite the controversy--or perhaps in part because of it--in less than a decade the channel has transformed itself from an obscure regional news broadcaster to a multi-channel, multi-lingual, multi-service global enterprise. This book's in-depth look at Al Jazeera examines whether its global success reflects particular organizational strengths. It explores whether Al Jazeera is merely a fad thriving on the thirst for free speech in the Middle East, or a new medium whose success will be sustained by its organizational culture and model. This work delves deep into the culture, workings and challenges of this powerful media organization to provide insights on its achievements, its future, and the true measure of its success.

Chasing New Horizons

Chasing New Horizons
Author: Alan Stern
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 364
Release: 2018-05-01
Genre: Science
ISBN: 125009898X

Called "spellbinding" (Scientific American) and "thrilling...a future classic of popular science" (PW), the up close, inside story of the greatest space exploration project of our time, New Horizons’ mission to Pluto, as shared with David Grinspoon by mission leader Alan Stern and other key players. On July 14, 2015, something amazing happened. More than 3 billion miles from Earth, a small NASA spacecraft called New Horizons screamed past Pluto at more than 32,000 miles per hour, focusing its instruments on the long mysterious icy worlds of the Pluto system, and then, just as quickly, continued on its journey out into the beyond. Nothing like this has occurred in a generation—a raw exploration of new worlds unparalleled since NASA’s Voyager missions to Uranus and Neptune—and nothing quite like it is planned to happen ever again. The photos that New Horizons sent back to Earth graced the front pages of newspapers on all 7 continents, and NASA’s website for the mission received more than 2 billion hits in the days surrounding the flyby. At a time when so many think that our most historic achievements are in the past, the most distant planetary exploration ever attempted not only succeeded in 2015 but made history and captured the world’s imagination. How did this happen? Chasing New Horizons is the story of the men and women behind this amazing mission: of their decades-long commitment and persistence; of the political fights within and outside of NASA; of the sheer human ingenuity it took to design, build, and fly the mission; and of the plans for New Horizons’ next encounter, 1 billion miles past Pluto in 2019. Told from the insider’s perspective of mission leader Dr. Alan Stern and others on New Horizons, and including two stunning 16-page full-color inserts of images, Chasing New Horizons is a riveting account of scientific discovery, and of how much we humans can achieve when people focused on a dream work together toward their incredible goal.

Al Jazeera English

Al Jazeera English
Author: P. Seib
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2016-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1137015748

Although Al Jazeera English has yet to receive to receive the attention accorded to its Arabic-language elder sibling, it is in many ways the more interesting of the two. It seeks to redefine global news coverage by focusing on areas that are traditionally neglected by most news organizations, and its potential audience is many times larger than that of the Arabic channel. This will be the first book to thoroughly examine this channel's coverage methods, effects on its audience, and its place in the world of mediated geopolitics.Al Jazeera recognized that if it was to expand its worldwide influence, it could not do so wholly in Arabic. And so, in 2006, it launched Al Jazeera English, the first English-language news channel to be headquartered in the Middle East. With its principal broadcast centers in Doha, Washington, London, and Kuala Lumpur, the channel faced the task of proving itself to be more than a curiosity and just a junior version of the all-news English-language channels such as the BBC or CNN. After several years of operation, Al Jazeera English seems well on its way to defining its place in the market. The breadth of its coverage, particularly its emphasis on reporting from the global South, has distinguished it from many of its competitors. Thorough coverage from the Middle East and from Africa provides a perspective that other major satellite channels have rarely offered their audiences. Initially, Al Jazeera English was available to 80 million cable and satellite households. It was, however, accessible by only a small number of viewers in the United States (mainly those accessing it through several online providers) primarily because of political reasons. Whatever the political back-story may be, gaining access to a larger global market will depend on audience demand. If Al Jazeera English does a better job of covering major stories, particularly in the Middle East and the global South, than other channels do, and if its competitors find themselves saying, "As Al Jazeera English reported today . . .," news consumers will eventually demand access. This book will examine these political issues and will also analyze the channel's audience base, particularly in Africa and South Asia. The book will also offer evaluations of Al Jazeera English's defining moments to date - its reporting during the 2008-2009 war in Gaza (written by Palestinian and Israeli scholars), and its coverage of the "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy in 2010. The volume will also consider Al Jazeera English in the context of public diplomacy and the growing significance of diasporic populations.

Al Jazeera and Democratization

Al Jazeera and Democratization
Author: Ezzeddine Abdelmoula
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 182
Release: 2015-03-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317518470

Al Jazeera and Democratization analyses the increasing role of the media in political transformations with a special emphasis on the Arab world. Taking the Al Jazeera media network as a case study, the author explains how engaging the public and providing platforms for open debate and free expression contributed to the emergence of a new vibrant Arab public sphere. The launch of Al Jazeera in 1996 was a significant event that led to subsequent changes both in Arab media and politics. Among these changes, the Arab spring is certainly the most remarkable. This unprecedented phenomenon has already resulted in political change in a number of countries and is expected to generate a democratizing wave and reshape the face of the region. The Arab spring provides us with a telling empirical example where the interplay between media and politics is manifest. The public sphere that has emerged out of this newly communicative environment has undoubtedly played its role in the current political transformations. In this context, Arab democratization is no longer an abstract, it is rather a developing process that needs our attention and requires concerted scholarly efforts. Highly topical, this book provides a fresh theoretical perspective on Arab democratization in light of the Arab Spring, and is essential reading for researchers and students of Middle East Politics, Media Studies and Democratization.

Al-Jazeera and US War Coverage

Al-Jazeera and US War Coverage
Author: Tal Samuel-Azran
Publisher: Peter Lang
Total Pages: 178
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781433108648

"Ever since its launch over a decade ago, Al-Jazeera has influenced broadcast journalism globally and transformed the Arab television news sphere. Its coverage of wars and conflicts in the region has earned the pan-Arabic news network many admirers and a few powerful adversaries, as Tal Samuel-Azran's book ably demonstrates. This is an empirically strong contribution to the literature on the politics of global news."---Daya Thussu, Professor of International Communication, University of Westminster, London --Book Jacket.

Al-Jazeera’s “Double Standards” in the Arab Spring

Al-Jazeera’s “Double Standards” in the Arab Spring
Author: Zainab Abdul-Nabi
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2022-12-14
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 3031142799

This book finds that Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain and Syria has conformed with Qatar’s foreign policy, throughout the last decade (2011-2021). Al-Jazeera Arabic adopted Qatar’s “double standards” policy in both countries in the beginning of the Arab Spring, framing Bahrain’s protests as a “sectarian movement,” while depicting the Syrian armed conflict as a legitimate “revolution” (2011-2013). The book observes that when ties between Qatar and Bahrain worsened during the 2017 Gulf crisis, Al-Jazeera Arabic has shifted its coverage from being “pro-Bahraini regime” to “pro-protesters,” focusing on violations and giving voice to activists (2014-2021). The book concludes that the lack of “Peace Journalism” framing in Al-Jazeera’s coverage of Bahrain’s uprising and Syria’s chemical weapons attacks has represented “claims” as “facts,” and justified military action against Syria. It also reveals distinctive differences between Al-Jazeera Arabic and English, with the former lacking “objective reporting standards,” and using more sectarian language than the latter.

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara

Midnight on the Mavi Marmara
Author: Moustafa Bayoumi
Publisher: OR Books
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2010
Genre: History
ISBN: 1935928007

31 May 2010: Israeli commandos attack the six boats of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters bringing humanitarian relief to the beleaguered Palestinians of Gaza. Within minutes, nine peace activists are dead, shot by the Israelis. Scores of others are injured. The 700 people on board the ships are arrested before being transported to detention centres in Israel and then deported. Within hours the international community denounce the attack. Here, a range of activists, journalists and analysts piece together the events that occurred.

Fridays of Rage

Fridays of Rage
Author: Sam Cherribi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2017
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0199337381

Fridays of Rage reveals Al Jazeera's surprising rise to that most respected of all Western media positions: the watchdog of democracy. Al Jazeera served as the nursery for the Arab world's democratic revolutions, promoting Friday as a "day of rage" and popular protest. This book gives readers a glimpse into how Al Jazeera has strategically cast its journalists as martyrs in the struggle for Arab freedom while promoting itself as the mouthpiece and advocate of the Arab public. In addition to heralding a new era of Arab democracy, Al Jazeera has become a major influence over Arab perceptions of American involvement in the Arab World, the Arab-Israeli conflict, the rise of global Islamic fundamentalism, and the expansion of the political far right. Al Jazeera's blueprint for "Muslim-democracy" was part of a vision announced by the network during its earliest broadcasts. The network embarked upon a mission to reconstruct the Arab mindset and psyche. Al Jazeera introduced exiled Islamist leaders to the larger Arab public while also providing Muslim feminists a platform. The inclusion and consideration of Westerners, Israelis, Hamas, secularists and others earned the network a reputation for pluralism and inclusiveness. Al Jazeera presented a mirror to an Arab world afraid to examine itself and its democratic deficiencies. But rather than assuming that Al Jazeera is a monolithic force for positive transformation in Arab society, Fridays of Rage examines the potentially dark implications of Al Jazeera's radical re-conceptualization of media as a strategic tool or weapon. As a powerful and rapidly evolving source of global influence, Al Jazeera embodies many paradoxes--the manifestations and effects of which we are likely only now becoming apparent. Fridays of Rage guides readers through this murky territory, where journalists are martyrs, words are weapons, and facts are bullets.