BOB GARFIELD:
After more than three tumultuous years of preparation, and despite an 11th-hour disappointment, Wednesday marked the launch of Al-Jazeera English.
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FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
Welcome to the world news from Al-Jazeera on the very first program live from our Doha news headquarters here in the heart of the Middle East.
MALE ANNOUNCER:
In the next hour, we'll be going live to the world's top news stories.
FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
I'm Nour Odeh in the Gaza Strip, which has been brought to the brink of chaos and despair by sanctions, siege and shelling.
FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
I'm Haru Mutasa in Darfur, scene of the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
MALE ANNOUNCER:
I'm Rageh Omaar in Tehran. Could Iran's president really hold the key to peace in the Middle East?
FEMALE ANNOUNCER:
On Al-Jazeera, we'll be setting the news agenda. In this hour, we'll also be -
BOB GARFIELD:
The sister service of the Pan Arab Satellite TV Channel will be, according to its mission statement, setting the news agenda for a projected 70 million households worldwide. It will not, however, reach the U.S. subscribers of Comcast. That cable giant this week pulled out of a deal that would have given Al-Jazeera England access to its 12.1 million digital cable subscribers, leaving the fledgling channel without any major U.S. distribution. It can be seen here only via online streaming and by subscribers of the GlobeCast satellite service.

A year ago, we spoke to Arab media scholar Marwan Kraidy. He predicted difficulties for Nigel Parsons, the managing editor of the network, then called Al-Jazeera International, in getting U.S. distribution. He also predicted that the English-language vision would be quite different from its Arab sibling, which often airs inflammatory anti-Western rhetoric and videos seemingly calculated to provoke extremist reaction.
MARWAN KRAIDY:
One of the things with Al-Jazeera is that their editorial policy is still a work in progress, even Al Jazeera Arabic. They're debating it. They're working on it.

At the same time, it will really depend on how long these relatively famous journalists will stick with the network. In other words, if the working conditions are good, if they feel they really have editorial freedom to say what they want, I think there's a chance that they'll stay. And if they do stay, that will obviously attract other people with well-established names and careers.
BOB GARFIELD:
Al-Jazeera Arabic has been, if not necessarily an advocate of Islamism and Jihadism, or even necessarily being sympathetic to those causes, it's certainly been hospitable to rhetoric about them and has had all sorts of accompanying very inflammatory images.

Do you think we'll be seeing similar kind of incendiary images played over and over and over on Al-Jazeera International? And do you think we'll be seeing the same kind of rhetoric from extremists who have had access to Al-Jazeera Arabic's signal?
MARWAN KRAIDY:
I don't believe so, for a very simple reason. Consider the audience. And Nigel Parsons has already met several people in the U.S., in the administration, some business leaders. I think they're on a charm offensive to say, look, we're not Al-Jazeera Arabic. We're going to be very fair. We're going to be balanced. Give us a chance.

The other thing to think about is who are going to be the people invited as guests on talk shows? The people who would be able to speak English fluent enough to be on the air will tend to be different from those who can speak fluent Arabic. And I'm not saying they will be less radical. On the contrary, some of them will probably be more radical. But I think because the audience will be much broader, my guess is that the range of discourse will be also broader.
BOB GARFIELD:
Am I making a basic mistake by assuming that because it's an English-language channel that it necessarily is targeting Western countries like the United States?
MARWAN KRAIDY:
I think in terms of sheer number of viewers, I definitely think that Asia is going to be the main place where they will find viewers, perhaps in the millions. You know, English now is probably the lingua franca of Islam. It's definitely competing with Arabic.

If you look at the large Muslim populations of Southeast Asia and South Asia, you know, Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country. And a lot of these people speak English. And Malaysia. Pakistan. India. And so we have a huge audience right there that is politicized, that is looking for what perhaps it thinks of as an Islamic point of view, and that will definitely turn to Al-Jazeera International.

It's very likely that they will have a very large audience in addition in the West, not just Arabs and sons of Arabs and Muslims who only know English because they grew up in the U.S. or Canada or Australia, but also people in the West who are looking for alternative news.
BOB GARFIELD:
Well, Marwan, thank you very much.
MARWAN KRAIDY:
Thank you.
BOB GARFIELD:
Marwan Kraidy is a faculty member at the American University School of International Service in Washington.

Also in Washington, where he will anchor the Al-Jazeera English U.S. Bureau, is Dave Marash, the former Nightline correspondent who signed onto this new project in February, joining such prominent names as Sir David Frost and former U.S. Marine press officer Joshua Rushing, featured in the documentary, Control Room.

In February, Dave Marash told us he was joining a revolution in progress.

DAVE MARASH:
Al-Jazeera in Arabic is, I believe, one of the most revolutionary and positive influences on the Arabic-speaking, mostly Islamic Middle Eastern world in, literally, centuries. It has opened up public discourse and it has brought American standards of reporting to an area that previously had nothing but really moronically state-controlled television and news operations.
BOB GARFIELD:
Al-Jazeera in Arabic serves some 40 million Arabic-speaking viewers around the world, but mostly in the Middle East. According to Marash, Al-Jazeera aims to create the widest possible debate, and that means including the most extreme views.
DAVE MARASH:
And to us in the West, the extremes of that context seem obnoxious or worse, even intolerable. But in that region, if Al-Jazeera in Arabic were politically correct and scrubbed the extremes from its debate, it would lose all of its credibility with its viewers, who know that anti-Israeli attitudes are prevalent in the region and flat, ugly anti-Semitic attitudes are also widely distributed. The only way that I believe that they can be combated is in direct intellectual combat, and you can't do that by excluding them.

Now, Al-Jazeera International is going to be a global channel, operating from four regional bases - 11 hours a day from Doha, in Qatar, 5 hours a day from London, 5 hours a day from Washington, 3 hours a day from Kuala Lumpur. Over the course of a 24-hour day, you are going to hear globally significant news stories discussed and approached from four different regional points of view.
BOB GARFIELD:
Al-Jazeera is principally owned by the Emirate of Qatar, and your salary, I presume, ultimately comes from government coffers. How does that affect the way you're going to approach your work and do you fear some sort of political restraints on what Al-Jazeera International may be able to do?
DAVE MARASH:
In a way, that's one of Al-Jazeera's advantages, I believe, Bob. The state of Qatar has about 150,000 people in it. It has some oil, but not huge oil wealth. And the state and the emir have basically made a capitalist decision, that there are two sectors in which they are going to take their present oil revenue and try and make that a base for future revenue.

One of those sectors is the media, the various Al-Jazeera channels. The other is education, where the wife of the emir has been instrumental in setting up a large university in Qatar, expected to become, as Al-Jazeera is expected to become, a revenue-producing capitalist base, if you will, for this state.

Qatar really has one national interest, other than its economic growth, and that would be survival. Beyond that, it can hardly pretend to have real national interests, and so therefore Al-Jazeera is almost perfectly clear of any national interest or any dictated political policy.
BOB GARFIELD:
I want to ask you one final thing. You're Jewish, and you've already taken some criticism of being a self-loathing Jew, anti-Semitic, anti-Israel. You've been called "Marash of Arabia." What's it like going through this experience and dealing with that portion of the American Jewish community that thinks you're a traitor?
DAVE MARASH:
You have to just shake off what are basically hysterical, ignorant and ugly statements. I am proud to be a Jew. I believe if harmony is to be achieved between the Judeo-Christian West and the mostly Islamic Middle East, the first people who will be making steps towards peace on the Arab side are the modernizers, are the secularists, are the free market free speakers, in other words, the very people who started and backed, and, I believe, listen to and value Al-Jazeera in Arabic and hopefully Al-Jazeera International.

I'm proud to associate myself with those on the Jewish side who do seek peace and harmony, and if that offends some of my co-religionists or fellow Americans, all I can say is it's a free country.
BOB GARFIELD:
All right, Dave. Well, good luck in the new gig.
DAVE MARASH:
Thank you, Bob.
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BOB GARFIELD:
Dave Marash is the Washington anchor for Al-Jazeera English.