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So allow me to begin by asking of Anthony Shadid: with the US Department of Defense's control of news and information through embedding, how did you manage to win a Pulitzer Prize when many felt too constricted by DoD to produce good news?

Anthony Shadid: I guess looking back on the coverage during the war in particular, I felt myself to be pretty much in a bubble, to be honest. I was not embedded. I was with about fifteen other American journalists in Baghdad as the war happened. I was kind of pushing myself to actually read what other newspapers were writing, much less to deal with public statements or the Pentagon spin at any one time during the war. So I felt pretty free. The concerns I had to deal with were controls imposed by the Iraqi government. I had a minder who, looking back, was probably the worst minder in the history of the Iraqi government. He let me basically do whatever I wanted. I was very lucky in having him. So I felt that I got a break during the war and my minder was, like any source that you would cultivate, you would try to encourage him to help your agenda, which was to get out as much as possible, to speak to people, to understand what was going on in Baghdad at the time. You could cover the war as a war; you could cover the war as a backdrop. You could cover a city under siege, and that was my goal. I felt pretty lucky to do that.

One point I do want to bring up, maybe later as time goes on, is this question of embeds and non-embeds. I think this is going to become a more and more important question for journalists in war zones, in places like Iraq and places like Israel and Palestine. I do worry about our role as noncombatants in the months and years ahead. I think we've already seen alarming signs of this, vis-à-vis journalists in the Israeli government, in the West Bank and Gaza, and journalists in the US military in Iraq right now.

David Chambers: Let me follow up with that – it actually goes right into my next question. Having been on the front line, what did you feel DoD's purpose was ultimately with embedding? How effective did you find embedding? In that sense, I'm asking both in terms of what you perceive to be DoD's purpose and in terms of your own desire for quality reporting.

Anthony Shadid: What is the goal of journalism? The goal of journalism is to try to get the most unadulterated access as possible. If embedding is going to secure that from the military's perspective – in other words, as a journalist, if you're going to be able to see things that you would not see otherwise and you can negotiate the controls and restrictions the military is going to put on, I think I'm all for it.

My problem with embedding is that it gives you one side of the story. I think the stories often ended with the embedding. I want to be careful what I say, because I was in Baghdad, I was not seeing embedding work, I was not seeing the product of it all that much. But my sense was that the stories ended with the embedding. In other words, the stories ended with the reporting on the military. Iraqis were often voiceless; they were often nameless. Often they would approach reporters and say two or three words that they knew in English and that was the end of their voice and the coverage. I think that's not good journalism.

Then you could say the opposite side was where I was, in Baghdad, and I was reporting only Iraqis. I had very little access to the military and very little access to what the military was up to at that point. So the same criticism could probably be lodged against my coverage out of Baghdad at the time.

The best is when we can do both sides of it. I recall one story in June, after the war, when Tom Ricks, our military correspondent, was following the troops and then I followed a hundred meters behind talking to Iraqis as they passed. To me, that was one of the best examples of journalism that can hit both sides, where Tom's embedded in a certain respect and then I'm behind, getting the reactions in real time. I thought we did have both sides of the story, whatever "both sides" means. But it's a rare occurrence. I think we're seeing more and more, the security situation the way it is in Baghdad, that embedding is the only way that information – for Western reporters – is being gathered. I don't think that's a good trend.

David Chambers: Let me ask you one final question, a long one. How is it that you, an American reporter – and let's not forget, of Arab descent – managed to win a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on the plight of the Iraqi people, when Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya and other Arab news television channels were castigated by the US government for reporting on the plight of the Iraqi people? Is there some Orwellian plot afoot in which some animals are more equal than others? Or do you see something else, that maybe a picture is worth a thousand words and that your print stories went somehow under the radar or were more palatable because they weren't moving pictures?

Anthony Shadid: It's an interesting question. I never really thought about it, to be honest. Let's face it – I'm a Western reporter and I write for an American audience. That's the way it is. Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera are Arab networks who broadcast for an Arab audience. I think there's a lot to be said for that. I wonder what CNN or Fox, what their coverage would look like if they were reporting in the Middle East for an Arab audience, given their very keen awareness as to what their audiences' tastes are and what their audiences' expectations are. I think we ought to sometimes think about it in that perspective.

My coverage was different. It was for an American audience, and I do write for an American audience – that's my goal. I try to maybe bring about a different perspective or try to bring about stories that aren't going to be written otherwise – I do. But the bottom line is that we are writing and broadcasting for two very different audiences.

David Chambers: I wonder what it would be like if CNN and the others were still broadcasting without Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya.

Anthony Shadid: I think that's a good point. That's one thing that strikes me, being in Baghdad. An Arab journalist can criticize the Washington Post, somebody from the Washington Post can criticize Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya – those criticisms should be made. I guess what I saw in Baghdad is that they were colleagues, and I think some of the most remarkably brave colleagues that I've ever come across. They've been killed, and a lot of people have been killed for those networks there – people that I knew. Let's face it – CNN or Fox or MSNBC or anybody else would not be having the footage they have out of Fallujah or Najaf without those networks being there. They took risks that a lot of us weren't willing to take, and I think they should be given credit for that.

David Chambers: Thank you. For both Norm Pattiz and Hafiz Al-Mirazi, I'm going to ask the same set of questions. For this commercial part, I'll ask Hafiz first, if I may. How does your government-owned TV channel, Al-Jazeera, attract audiences in a region rife with stiff competition? I ask you this from the seemingly hard-boiled commercial perspective, because on the bottom line, even governments who want to win the hearts and minds of people need to see numbers when assessing their success. So whether a channel or a network is government-owned or privately owned, tangible success in television means just one thing – as we say in show biz, it's eyeballs – viewers. We're talking about free-to-air channels, like Al-Jazeera and hundreds of others available in the Middle East due to the crisscrossing of satellite footprints over the region.

Before you answer, let me actually specify that a bit. If you don't know, I understand the answers for this. But more specific, what research, if you know of any, has your channel – what has Al-Jazeera identified as most important for your viewers in terms of what I would think would be five typical components of any channel – news, talk shows, general entertainment, sports and film? Could you prioritize those areas?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I would say at least news and talk shows – news would come first and then talk shows would be second for Al-Jazeera. However, we have so many other channels or brands for Al-Jazeera – there is Al-Jazeera Sports Channel, that already launched a few months ago and really has a wide audience and a strong audience, especially coverage for the Olympics -- the victory that the Iraqi team did over there, that was amazing for people to watch on Al-Jazeera, something very positive coming out of Iraq after the war.

To answer your question about private versus public, I would say that we are broadcasting to a very savvy audience. An average farmer in a village would be able to distinguish or learn, because of the long term of government censorship, manipulation, government control of media outlets – they learned how to listen to maybe three versions or three different broadcasts. They would learn about Amnesty report by listening to what the Libyan radio station said about Syria and Amnesty, and then go to Syria and see what did the Syrian radio say about Libya and Amnesty, and put three or four versions, as if they are news editors, together in order to get the story. So they learned to know and deduct whether you are government puppet and the government influenced it or not, regardless of the title – are you a public sector, independent board, you name it – trustee or government-owned. This is the story for us.

For example, in many Arab countries you would find privately owned newspapers. Yet, the government in these countries appoints the editor-in-chief for what is supposed to be a privately owned newspaper. They have that example of the BBC. It's a good example for credibility in the Arab world. Of course, the perspective is a little bit different, because it's coming from the West or Europe.

So Al-Jazeera started to be on a path in which we wanted to be totally commercialized, private, but after five years of getting subsidy from the government of Qatar. After five years, we found out that most governments in the Middle East were either intimidating their own private sector not to advertise in Al-Jazeera or themselves – as mainly public sector is the base of the economies over there – they would not advertise on Al-Jazeera. So it deprived us from being totally relying on commercial. So we are still continuing to rely on public subsidies from the government of Qatar, but the message that we broadcast, we tell people immediately and make them distinguish that this is an independent network, whatever you name it.

David Chambers: Could you describe roughly then – do you have any idea what percentage your station then does fill airtime with content, in terms of news, talk show – 90 percent news?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Yeah, I would say 90 percent news.

David Chambers: And talk shows?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: And talk shows. I would say, I can't categorize it totally, but I would say that we have at least on a daily basis a ninety-minute talk show, then we would have news on the top of the hour. Six of them would be thirty to forty minute newscasts, long hours. Then one news hour would be one full hour of news. Then you would have the live coverage anytime that you would have an important event, whether President Bush is speaking at the UN or a major speech. For example, last week when we covered the – two weeks ago, when we covered the General Assembly proceedings and the speeches for heads of state. The first day was President Bush speaking. After him immediately was the Emir of Qatar, who supposedly is owning Al-Jazeera, or his country is subsidizing Al-Jazeera. Al-Jazeera broadcast President Bush's speech and then just did not carry anything, any minute even or a footage, of what the Emir of Qatar is saying, although he's an Arab Muslim leader. Maybe we were not balanced and we were not nice with him, but this is what decides our coverage, is what we feel is newsworthy.

David Chambers: Just a few bottom-line questions. Do you know how many viewers your channel commands in the Arab world compared to total viewers or viewing households? Who does your research and how reliable do you feel those numbers are?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I don't have exact numbers or information about research and how it is done. I would say in general – these numbers are estimates, unscientific, mainly based on surveys to people who are watching and different independent survey projects – part of it also relying on the ownership, or survey deciding the ownership of satellite TV in the area. If you don't have a satellite dish or satellite television, you won't be able to watch Al-Jazeera. Given the fact that Al-Jazeera is broadcasting in most of the Arab world, just free-to-air, sometimes you cannot say that this is a Nielsen group where they are actually watching you.

However, the estimates, we're talking about 40 million viewers for Al-Jazeera all over the world. It could be more, but I would say 40 million would be a comfortable one.

There is also a survey done recently by an independent group in Saudi Arabia, where Al-Jazeera is banned – it will be there but has a large audience – not in Saudi Arabia, by the way, it's in many Arab countries we are not allowed to be there as reporters, because the people choose most of the time – even here in Washington – to shoot the messenger because they hate the message. Over there, the Arab Advisors Group last September found out that 90 percent of people in Saudi Arabia, for example, owned satellite television. Then they would go and say that Al-Jazeera has 82 percent of viewership in Saudi Arabia – people who are watching news. Eighty percent of Saudis who are watching news are watching Al-Jazeera. Seventy-five percent went to Al-Arabiya, which is a Saudi-owned network. The report is saying that Al Hurra, the US government-funded and controlled TV, is watched by the least. They are given here, I believe, 20 percent. As for trustworthy, the audience in Saudi Arabia gives Al-Jazeera 69 percent, gives Al Hurra 17 percent.

David Chambers: Do you know for Al Arabiya, how much they said?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Yes, for Al Arabiya, 70 percent in Saudi Arabia, one point ahead of Al-Jazeera for the Saudis.

David Chambers: Norm, welcome from Los Angeles.

Norm Pattiz: Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

David Chambers: Can I ask you the same sort of questions? How does your government-owned TV channel, Al Hurra, attract audiences in a region rife with stiff competition – again, even if governments want to win hearts and minds, they need to see the numbers. More specifically – and you're from the biz side, so you may have more specific numbers than Hafiz might, as a newsman – what has your research identified as most important for your viewers? What are you showing airtime-wise on Al Hurra?

Norm Pattiz: First of all, I'd like to say to my friend Hafiz – I'd like to say it's good to see you, but it's good to hear you. I think you made a mistake by not carrying the Emir's speech. The Emir was out here in Los Angeles about a week and a half ago and he gave me this really neat pen. I think if you had carried his speech, he probably would have given you something equally as nice.

Let me just say this. Let me talk about the research first. I believe that Al-Jazeera's audience is significantly higher than 40 million people. What our research shows is that Al-Jazeera is in such a position of strength that it's actually one of the few symbols of Arab unity. It's almost an icon in the region. It is thought of by its viewers as being the quintessential presenter of truth in the region. So one cannot underestimate the power and importance of Al-Jazeera, which I think also brings a tremendous amount of responsibility along with it.

In terms of our launch of Al Hurra, the reason why Al Hurra even got funded was because of the success of Radio Sawa, our radio network, which preceded it by about two and a half years. What we found with Radio Sawa was by using proven Western broadcasting techniques to attract an audience, we could in fact deliver five or six hours of news a day to an audience that was significantly bigger than our predecessor service, which would have been the VOA Arabic Service. The VOA Arabic Service reached less than 2 percent of the region, not only because of the programming but also it was distributed on shortwave and a very weak medium-wave signal out of the island of Rhodes. When we launched Radio Sawa, we launched it as a youth-oriented radio network, going after the thirty-and-under audience, which represents the bulk of the population in the Middle East. We used a heavily researched blend of Arabic and Western popular music to attract an audience, and then delivered that audience to our news and informational programming, which would otherwise probably not be interested in tuning us in. The research on Radio Sawa was so strong over the two-and-a-half-year period of time that going ahead and launching a television network to take advantage of the area where over 90 percent of the population indicates they go to primarily for their news and information wasn't a really big stretch.

In terms of Al Hurra viewership right now – believe me, we have no illusions about how difficult it's going to be for an American-sponsored television station – I would object to the reference of us being American-sponsored and controlled, at least as it implies that we are government-controlled, because we are not. Maybe that's a good time to mention that the Broadcasting Board of Governors, on which I serve, is an independent federal agency composed of private citizens – four Democrats, four Republicans – and the secretary of state sits as an ex officio member on the Board, usually represented by the undersecretary for public diplomacy, with one vote out of the nine votes that the Board has. One of the primary objectives and missions of the Broadcasting Board of Governors is to serve as a firewall to protect the independence of our journalists from influences from the State Department or the White House or Congress and what have you, because without being able to develop credibility with our audience, there's just no chance that an American-sponsored radio or television property can be successful anywhere in the world, let alone the Middle East.

But in terms of actual numbers, it's interesting that you mention that, because we've just gotten back numbers within the last couple of days on Al Hurra and Radio Sawa viewer and listenership in the Middle East. Throughout the Middle East, we surveyed twelve different countries in the Middle East. This was done by A.C. Nielsen. A few months ago we did a survey that was contracted with Ipsos Stat, the French firm that does a significant amount of ratings research in the region. It's amazing how much the A.C. Nielsen information correlates with the Ipsos Stat information.

In terms of weekly viewership right now, what we're looking at is in places like Egypt during an average week, we reached 12 percent of the satellite-viewing audience; Iraq, 31 percent; Jordan, 29 percent; Kuwait, 33 percent; Lebanon, 20 percent; Morocco, 22 percent; Saudi Arabia, 24 percent; Syria, 29 percent; and UAE, 20 percent, which is an average of about 25 percent according to Nielsen. Ipsos Stat had us at about 29 percent. So that does not really differ much from what Hafiz mentioned about the study that was done, I think, in Saudi Arabia. In terms of viewership, it's about the same.

But the one area where there is a significant difference is in terms of reliability and credibility of news. The Ipsos Stat study showed that of viewers of Al Hurra, 53 percent of the Al Hurra viewers found our news to be anywhere from somewhat to very reliable. What the Nielsen survey is showing is that 66 percent of our audience that watches Al Hurra finds the information and news and talk shows and so forth reliable and credible.

Frankly, we know we've got a long way to go and a lot of hurdles to overcome, but to be perfectly honest, I think we're well ahead of the game and I think we have established an audience and that we are a player in the media scene.

David Chambers: Excellent, thank you. I'm going to turn to Jehane, then. We're talking bottom-line commerciality here, commercialism in the industry. I want to ask you straight off – why did you work for MTV Unfiltered and then produce a politically saturated documentary like Control Room?

Jehane Noujaim: First of all, let me apologize for my lateness. We were running around Washington, DC, getting the clips that we'll show in a little bit of the film, Control Room, which is about Al-Jazeera and Central Command during the war.

MTV is actually a great place for people who are learning, young people who want to make shows and television and get their stuff on the air a week later. You have the difficult job working there of trying to create something which is both interesting to you, intelligent to you, and appealing to a mass audience at the same time, an audience of sixteen- to twenty-five-year-olds, which can be a challenge, and I think it doesn't always work.

The show that I worked on, I have to say, was what I considered to be the draw to me for working at MTV. It was a show called Unfiltered. We sent out cameras to kids across the United States and they filmed their own stories. We would coach them through their stories and they would figure out what kind of stories they wanted to tell. Our most interesting story was, of course, about parents, because kids – you can't do a show on parents unless you have the kids on the inside really revealing everything about their families. So that was definitely the funniest, most interesting show. So it was really democratic filmmaking, or the closest that you get to it, because they'd send the stuff back and we'd work with them editing it, and really it was basically putting viewers' stories and thoughts on the air. I tried to convince MTV for a long time to do an international Unfiltered and to send out cameras to kids in crisis situations across the world, to give the youth population in the United States a better view of what other kids their age are dealing with. Often, even though their lives are so incredibly different, a lot of what they're kind of dealing with as sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds are sometimes the same kind of issues. So that show in particular was, I thought, an interesting show to work on. Then when the show was cancelled, I moved on to making Control Room. I was offered In Style and all this stuff, but I didn't continue at MTV.

Actually, after MTV, I left to make a film called Startup.com, which was about two Internet entrepreneurs, two best friends from high school who set out to start an Internet company. I thought it would be a film about two guys becoming rich and the end result would be them ringing the bell on the stock market, and our last scene would be on yachts in the Caribbean, it would be a happy ending. Watching personalities and what happens to them when their whole life changes that way. But it didn't turn out that way – as many of the films you make, when it's a documentary. You start out with one idea in your head and you end up with something completely different. So that was Startup.com, it came out in theaters and it did well.

Then I worked on a couple other ideas. One idea was actually following the campaign that Charlotte Beers was running when she went out to the Middle East and hired a couple advertising agencies out there, and I knew some of the advertising agencies that were hired. I thought it was quite interesting, this whole advertising to win the hearts and minds of the people. The project didn't go very far. So that was stopped after a couple months.

Then Control Room kind of came about. I've always been very interested in Al-Jazeera because when I grew up in Cairo, I grew up with pretty much state-run television. When I returned to Egypt – I'd go back every summer, my family lives there – I remember coming back in 1997 and you'd see everybody was crowded around television screens in coffee shops and satellite dishes were all over, blanketing the city. You started to realize that people were tuning in because there were these debate shows and issues being talked about that had never been talked about before. Once people see, okay, this is being talked about on television, we can start talking about these issues and debating these issues. To me, that's really the first step towards more democratic thinking.

So I thought it would be something that would be very much celebrated in the United States. Soon after September 11, when it started to become – you started hearing about it as "Taliban TV" and the mouthpiece of Osama bin Laden and all of this – I really wanted to find out who were the people behind it. At the same time, as Hafiz was saying, the channel was not liked by many leaders in the Arab world. So that's really why I tried to go to – it's why I went to Qatar to make Control Room. I thought it was interesting – Central Command was fifteen minutes away, so you had all of these people from different perspectives reporting on exactly the same event. If you want to be in the thick of it and really try and understand what's going on, it seemed to be the place to be.

David Chambers: One last commercial question and then I want to come back to you and ask for a presentation. One of my favorite artists is Peter Gabriel, who seems to be able to make a pop album and then a very personal and often extremely obscure album back to back. He's been very successful at doing that over the years. Do you feel that you paid your commercial dues by going with MTV, and that opened you up to more commercially riskier areas, like indie films, and riskier topics like Control Room? Or did you think that Control Room might in fact prove to be a commercial success, thanks to the controversy that was nearly guaranteed by casting half the set with characters from Al-Jazeera? Or something else altogether?

Jehane Noujaim: Did I pay my commercial dues? I think that you have to – watching kids' shaky cameras for months on end, it makes you want to put a camera in your own hands again. So that was definitely a motivation. I think you have to go back and forth between feeling – sometimes you feel stifled in what you do and that motivates you to go out and do something where you want to have complete freedom. It also means not getting a paycheck and not knowing whether you're going to make a film that's going to go anywhere, and maxing out your credit cards and getting all your friends to do favors for you. It goes on and on. But in the end, if you really believe in the project you're working on, I think that you also tend to bring on people who, if they're passionate about the story that you're trying to tell, they ultimately are rewarded in the end.

This is the case with Control Room, actually. Most of the people who worked on it had no experience in making films before. They just felt like there was so much in the US that we were not seeing on mainstream television and here was a channel that was being demonized in the States, and once seeing the people who were behind the channel, they thought, here are these guys that are exactly like us. We should be bringing these viewpoints over to the United States. Even our third character was a military press officer, who was a very likable guy and somebody that was very much trying to understand the other side. He took on the job of – he had to explain the US position to the Arab press. He also was explaining the US position to the French press, so I think he was really looking for all of the people that were going to question what he was saying. But he was an interesting character because he was a complicated character. I wasn't interested in finding people to follow who I felt you could predict exactly what they were going to say, which fit along with the stereotypes that people have. I think with both the military press officer we followed and the Al-Jazeera reporters, they're complicated, inspiring, surprising people that make for an interesting film.

I've rambled so much I forgot the second part of your question.

David Chambers: That's okay. Actually, since you have made it here – Jehane has very kindly brought down the as-yet-unreleased DVD of Control Room and she'd like to share a few clips with us. So I'm going to turn it over to our director.

[Excerpt from Control Room]

David Chambers: That was an interview with Jeffrey Steinberg, with Al-Jazeera's executive producer then criticizing his sidekick and confessing right afterwards that he'd happily take a job with Fox if he was offered.

Jehane Noujaim: He was joking, I think.

David Chambers: I don't think he was joking, because of his children.

Jehane Noujaim: The first part people get is a joke, the Fox News stuff. But the second part in there about his children – it's interesting, I asked him later, why not Canada or someplace in Europe? He said, the US right now is a very powerful force in the world and it's important, if my children are to understand the power system and how it works, that they're educated within it. That's somebody who's – Samir, I think, is a brilliant man. He wants the best for his kids.

But I think the main point of that scene was that the situation is very complicated. Listening to the news here and seeing how the feelings towards the US are portrayed in such a black and white way, and that just doesn't exist. The feelings toward the United States are complicated. I, as an Egyptian American, have very complicated feelings toward this country, as many people I know in the Middle East do. I think that there's admiration for many things that the US stands for, and I really felt that should be thought about here in the United States. How do you work with somebody rather than just saying this is how they feel about us, this is why they hate us? There's so much you can explain and do in an eighty-five-minute film. It's very difficult to go into all of the details. But if an audience was able to get a glimpse of the fact that this is a complicated situation, then I felt like it was one step forward.

David Chambers: I'd like to ask you one last question, Jehane, and then let the others present as well. Do you perceive a media war between the Arab world and the US? Certainly there have been some bitter words between various folk on both sides, as it were. Do you see a media war? Why do you think it's there? Can we get rid of it? Is it a longstanding thing? What does it all mean?

Jehane Noujaim: Media war between – you mean between the Arab press and the US press?

David Chambers: Yes.

Jehane Noujaim: I didn't experience that at all at CENTCOM when I was there. I thought actually the Al-Jazeera guys were kind of the stars at CENTCOM, everybody wanted to kind of know what they were thinking and meet them because they'd heard so much about them. So I didn't find that there. At the same time, I know that Samir came to the United States for the first time and was watching television – we were showing him some of the programs about Al-Jazeera that was done by some of the press – and there was one program that I think said about four times that Al-Jazeera is anti-American. He was very upset by that, because he's actually had very good relationships in Qatar with the people that he's met.

So I think when people are meeting on an individual basis, there's some really interesting conversations that are had. I don't know what happens between those friendly conversations, where there seems to be understanding, and what ends up being on these programs about Al-Jazeera, which are much more black and white and Al-Jazeera is anti-American and that kind of thing. But I don't know if I'm the best person to answer this question.

David Chambers: Certainly an interesting viewpoint. Anthony?

Anthony Shadid: If there's a war that's going on, I don't feel part of it at all. It's interesting, when I think back to the war itself, a few weeks before the war started – I must have written five or six letters to Al-Jazeera trying to get permission to work out of their bureau in Baghdad. I figured that with all the journalists concentrated in the Palestine Hotel, I would be more in danger facing the Iraqi government, would be more of a target, but I might be able to get a little bit beneath their radar screen working out of the bureau. I didn't get permission in the end, and given what happened, that it was bombed by the US military during the war, I'm thankful for that point.

But I guess it does kind of go to the point that I see – working in Baghdad, I see them as colleagues. My bigger concern, rather than a war or conflict somehow between the Arab press and the Western press, is that I see journalists on one side and – how do I put it? – officialdom, authority, government on the other. I'm worried about trends I see going on, in particular in Iraq. I'm worried that this idea of being embedded or not embedded is going to become more and more dangerous for us as journalists. With all the protections that are afforded as an embedded journalist, that we're more vulnerable, and I think we're seeing that increasingly in the past months. We see what we see going around the West Bank and Gaza, many journalists have – I mean, I was hurt there, other journalists have been killed there. An Israeli military that doesn't take a lot of precautions in dealing with the journalists. While journalists being killed in Iraq, I don't want to say it's been intentional on any side, I just see a certain recklessness on both sides, by the American military and by insurgents toward reporters there who are increasingly being treated as combatants. I think we're responsible for that, at a certain level. I think we've increasingly hunkered down. We're driving around in armored cars. We have armed guards. Some journalists have even armed themselves. We're contributing to that very blurring of the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, and I think it's coming from all sides. To me, when I look at journalists – Western journalists, Arab journalists – I think journalists themselves are becoming increasingly vulnerable, and that worries me.

David Chambers: Norm, you and Hafiz are here representing – and I didn't mean to imply anything beyond saying government-funded – satellite television channels. Where do you sit on this? Obviously, if both Al-Jazeera and Al Hurra are funded by their respective governments, then there's a potential conflict of interest. Whether or not there is one is actually what I'd like both of you to address in particular, although I'm very interested in hearing anything else you have to say on this. On the one hand, you have a government funding a satellite television channel. On the other hand, you have a desire and a goal of unbiased, independent news coverage. How do you, as head effectively, I would say, of Al Hurra, avoid this conflict?

Norm Pattiz: First of all, I think it's very important to understand what the mission is of US international broadcasting. It's been the same thing for the last sixty years. We are not in the propaganda business. We are not in the psychological operations business. We're not part of the Defense Department. We had nothing to do with the Charlotte Beers campaign. Our mission is the same as it's been since Voice of America went on in the early days, sixty years ago, which is to promote freedom and democracy through the free flow of accurate, reliable and credible news and information about America and the world to audiences overseas. To be, in so many words, an example of a free press, which has been an American tradition. Some people might argue about that today with the advent of the twenty-four-hour news cycle and satellite and cable TV stations, but traditionally that's been the American stance – First Amendment rights, free press.

Consequently, when I was first asked to join the Broadcasting Board of Governors by President Clinton, and I was sworn in in November 2000, and then subsequently I was reappointed by President Bush – but when I was first asked to be a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, since I was the only broadcaster on the Broadcasting Board of Governors – all private citizens, but I was the only broadcaster at the time – that's now changed – I was asked to be the chairman of the Language Review Subcommittee. That's the committee that determines how we spend our resources across the sixty-plus languages that we broadcast in all over the world. One area in particular stood out to me, not because of what we were doing but because of what we weren't doing, and that was the Middle East. When you took a look at the fact that we were only broadcasting seven hours a day of Arabic-language programming in a one-size-fits-all approach to the entire region, broadcast on shortwave – which practically nobody listened to – and a very weak medium-wave signal out of Rhodes – I reported that back to the Board. The Board said, congratulations, Norm, you're now the chairman of the Middle East Committee – go fix it.

So I got on a plane with some staffers and we went to the region. It wasn't difficult to assess what the climate was. This certainly isn't the case with all media outlets in the region, but for a large part of the media in the region – mostly the government-controlled media in the region – what you've got is hate-speak that's commonplace on radio and television, incitement to violence, disinformation, government censorship, and – even more onerous – journalistic self-censorship. So it was within that environment that the Arab street was not only getting its impressions of US policy, but of US values, of our democracy, of our people, of our pluralism – everything that had to do with the United States.

So we didn't view it as engaging in a media war, which was the basis of your question. What we wanted to do was be able to compete in the marketplace of ideas and – clearly having a different perspective than Middle East media – present a view of the news and events that were taking place on the ground and a view of America that would have a different perspective.

We were greeted, prior to the launch of Al Hurra, in the Arabic press, before we ever went on the air, with just a very negative press commentary – this was going to be an operation of the CIA, it was going to be a Zionist conspiracy, it was going to try and pollute the hearts and minds of Arabic youth. It was just overwhelmingly negative. I am very pleased to say that we are getting a better shot from the street than we are from the press, and that the numbers – as I mentioned before – are indicating that we are now a serious factor in the media scene. But we have tremendous hurdles to overcome.

I didn't really get a chance to answer your question earlier on about the nature of our programming. We are primarily news and information-driven, but we're not all news and information. About fourteen hours of our programming day is news, information and programming – talk shows, dialogues, roundtables – that are produced by our Al Hurra news staff in Washington, DC and around the world, and especially throughout the Middle East. The balance of our programming contains documentaries, magazine shows on entertainment, fashion, food, sports, health and fitness, travel – to give a wider perspective. The research really does indicate now that we're starting to find a unique broadcasting position among the satellite TV channels, where we are thought of as not 100 percent news and information, such as Al-Jazeera and Al Hurra[sic], but news and information with a variety of other programs that our audience finds interesting. Because it's very important for us, in order to be successful, that we just don't hone in on the news and information audience, but that we try and reach a larger audience profile in order to promote the kinds of programs that we have on the air.

We've also used Radio Sawa very effectively, I think, to promote the existence of Al Hurra, which is one of the reasons why Radio Sawa has a strong listening audience, Al Hurra has a strong viewing audience.

But just to finish up, I don't view this as a media war, even though I come from the radio business in the United States – radio wars are just part of the business. But when we're talking about radio wars, we're talking about two rock and roll stations fighting for the same audience. So I'm not necessarily concerned about what the term "media war" conjures up. What we want to do is present our perspective and compete in the marketplace of ideas.

David Chambers: Thank you very much. Just to follow up with that if I could – Hafiz described Al-Jazeera's government funding dependence and desire for independence. Can you describe Al Hurra's setup? There is an entity called the Middle East Television Network. What is Al Hurra in relationship to that and what is government-funded? Is there anything semi-independent?

Norm Pattiz: It's all government-funded. It's all funded by the taxpayers of the United States of America. It is noncommercial. As a commercial broadcaster all my life – and incidentally, I'm still the chairman of Westwood One, unless somebody's getting ready to deliver me a notice that I don't know about –

David Chambers: I beg your pardon.

Norm Pattiz: That's all right. But as a commercial broadcaster all my life, I've been waiting my entire career to program something that was commercial-free, so I'm delighted. It is a definite advantage not to have commercials in terms of attracting audience. It gives us an opportunity to run short newscasts in programs that are not primarily news and expose our audience to news and information when normally they would be being exposed to commercial announcements.

Excuse me, I went off on a trend. Remind me of the question?

David Chambers: Just looking for an outline of what Al Hurra is compared to Middle East Television Network and so forth.

Norm Pattiz: Middle East Television Network is a grantee organization set up by the Broadcasting Board of Governors in the same way that Radio Free Europe is a grantee organization, Radio Free Asia is a grantee organization, the Martis are a grantee organization. What it means is it's not a government organization in the same sense that VOA journalists are government employees. It's a grantee organization. Under the Middle East Television Network are Al Hurra television and Radio Sawa. So it's a separate grantee corporation but that is supervised by the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

David Chambers: I'm not familiar with that situation. Can you explain that further? What is a grantee? Are people – they're not government employees?

Norm Pattiz: It gives us – they're not working directly for the United States government as our journalists at Voice of America – excuse me, I misspoke. Radio and TV Marti are. It gives us a greater flexibility. A lot of the work rules and things that exist in our government organizations like Voice of America and the Martis and so forth don't allow us the kinds of flexibility that are pretty necessary in a broadcast organization. It would have been very difficult to get Al Hurra launched in five months like we did, within the constraints of the government bureaucracy.

David Chambers: No comment. So in that case, your employees are effectively semi-independent or operating basically as private commercial, but they are paid by the US government.

Norm Pattiz: They're not commercial in any sense. The standards for their journalism are the same. The mission is the same. Everything is the same, with the exception of some of the work rules.

David Chambers: I'm sorry to press that, but I am going to follow up immediately with Hafiz. As you go to describe a bit of the media war from your perspective – certainly as the "Taliban TV" network – I wonder if you could explain then, are Al-Jazeera employees, employees of the government of Qatar?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Let me first inquire what would is the standard and rule here for equal time. Do I have – is it ten minutes for the US government view and one minute for Al-Jazeera? Let me know before I start. What is the rule of the debate here? Can I answer first to what has been raised before I get into the business of Taliban?

David Chambers: Take your time.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Because there are two important questions that you raised, and Norm very eloquently answered on his side.

For the media war, just to give a very short answer, I don't think there is a media war, and we should not have a media war, in the context of what they're talking about as wars. But there's no wonder people talk about media war, because for me living in Washington for about twenty years under four presidents, I believe this is the first president to identify himself as a war president. So no wonder, of course, for people to use everything as under war – media war, pizza war, whatever.

We're not in a war. Also, Al-Jazeera and the government of Qatar – when they subsidize Al-Jazeera or fund Al-Jazeera, they also maybe subsidize part of the US military presence in Doha. The Central Command is over there. So there is not two parties in a war of terrorism against each other. The case is not there at all.

But we have to distinguish between two things here. It is not fair to consider Al-Jazeera and to put it on the same level of Al Hurra and say both are government-funded – even for the audience who would listen to Al-Jazeera would immediately tell you, "Excuse me." But look at the development. BBC – and Al-Jazeera is modeled after BBC, at least for the five years – we hoped after that to be modeled on CNN, totally commercialized – but it's modeled after the BBC. Nobody would consider BBC as government-funded or government-owned, but would understand the development of broadcast in these areas in Europe and for the BBC, and in the Arab world. This is the big difference for people to realize. This is why the Egyptian to Al Hurra, among the viewers, among people over there, because in the Arab world, when you have Al-Jazeera, even subsidized by the government of Qatar but with an independent message, independent board of directors, independent editorial line – people consider that progress. They consider that we're moving in the right direction, that we would get into privatization somehow with this Al-Jazeera, when they get commercials from everybody and government stops intimidating advertisers and lets Al-Jazeera totally independent from the government of Qatar or any other government.

While on the side of the US, here is the sad case – there is a regression, not progression. Here is a tradition that we would like to promote for the whole world, about non-government control or funds or interference in media. The US law does not allow Al Hurra or Radio Sawa to beam into the US. This is a bad product, based on the US legislators. You beam it outside but not for me, because this is government-tainted product. The media, the government cannot get into the media.

Norm Pattiz: [laughter]

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I could stop for some actual sound. So that is the main difference, is that if Al Hurra and Radio Sawa is kosher, why not feeding your own audience – Arab Americans here and others – the same product? But this is the same -- TV Marti, Radio Marti, all of that stuff. When you tell me about independent board that is governing Al Hurra – with all respect to them, this is the same independent board that is investigating Abu Ghraib prison. When you're talking about 66 percent reliable –

Norm Pattiz: Oh, God.

David Chambers: You'll get time, Norm.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: -- 66 percent credibility, some people found 66 percent credibility in the Arab world for Al Hurra – I am sure that if we rely on the same people, they will find also 66 percent of WMDs in Iraq, the same people who found 66 percent credibility of Al Hurra.

I hope Al Hurra will develop and I hope Al Hurra will succeed, because as someone who cares about freedom of the press in the Arab world, I need real competition. But we don't want it to just sugarcoat things and say it is working and it is fine. We have problems, of course. We have to work on it. The development in the Arab world should be total privatization and real privatization, not just someone owning a newspaper and the minister would get for him an editor-in-chief. Real privatization. If the US is promoting the values of non-government and uncensored media – in the survey that I read, by the way, I made a mistake. I said that Hurra has in Saudi Arabia 20 percent. It's 16 percent. CNN has in Saudi Arabia, in that one survey, 12 percent. So why do we promote a government-owned media for the Arab world while we're telling them we are working for freedom of speech and we'd like the government to get out of the media business? This is the main problem of Al Hurra.

Norm Pattiz: Can I answer that?

David Chambers: Hold your thought, please, just one second. I'd like to sort this out a little bit. One, I want to take up this pizza war business right after this, Hafiz, okay?

Hafiz raises good questions. As Jehane pointed out, all this is a bit more complicated, and I'd like to see if I can sort this out before Norm answers this, and others. One issue he raises is that the Broadcasting Board of Governors and its predecessor, the International Board of Broadcasters, do have a standing rule – please correct me, as a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, Norm – that all these transmissions are sent out and are not allowed to be beamed back into the United States, although there is of course Internet access, at least for VOA – actually, I haven't checked on Radio Sawa.

Norm Pattiz: Yeah, it's on the Internet. This is an old law from the 1940s, I think. It's called the Smith-Mundt Act. The reason that it was created wasn't because people were afraid of hearing what it was we were putting out – they didn't want government-funded broadcast operations to be in competition with commercially run broadcasters in the United States. To be perfectly honest, I think it's an outdated rule and there is some strong sentiment within the Congress, some members of Congress, to get rid of it, and I think that would be a good thing.

David Chambers: You support that?

Norm Pattiz: Absolutely. But to say that –

David Chambers: Especially if we hear CNN is actually doing worse in Saudi than Al Hurra – although you should be very happy.

Norm Pattiz: Listen, you're talking about 16 percent credibility where A.C. Nielsen in Saudi Arabia talks about reliable or somewhat reliable, 63 percent. That, of course, depends upon whether you're asking people who have actually watched the channel or people who just heard of the channel. Like, 90 percent of the press who were telling the people what the channel was going to be like before it ever got on the air. So I've got my research, you've got your research.

David Chambers: You had other points you wanted to respond to.

Norm Pattiz: Sure. The fact that we are not controlled by the administration, that we are not pushing the administration line, should be very clear just by watching the station. When you watch the station, you realize that we are right in the middle of a presidential election here in the United States. We are giving plenty of coverage to the Kerry campaign. The idea that our programs are unbalanced would be very hard to defend – I mean, would be easy to defend based upon people who are actually watching and not people who are talking about what they think it ought to be. We clearly understand that in order to break through and establish the reliability and credibility that we need, we have to be balanced in our approach.

When Al-Jazeera first started, the thing that separated Al-Jazeera from the rest of the crowd was they broke the cardinal rule that existed in media in the Middle East, which was, one Arab government does not criticize another Arab government. Except, of course, the government of Qatar. That resonated with the Arab street and they loved the fact that there was a station that was criticizing regimes and situations in other Arab countries that needed to be reported on. That has now morphed into something else. I think that there's a lot more responsibility that goes with being Al-Jazeera today than existed at the time they were launched over nine years ago.

We've only been in this game a few months. Already, we're reaching about 20 percent of the satellite viewers in the region on a weekly basis. That is a very large number. You're talking about estimates of between 70-90 million people who have access to satellite television. That's a large number. When you combine it with the number that we're reaching on Radio Sawa, one could arguably say that we have an audience that's in the 40, 50, 60 million area on a weekly basis. That is a good thing. Nobody is told that they have to watch our station. They can turn it off and they do. Radio is a different medium. Radio, people tend to listen to radio – they tend to listen to their favorite stations to the exclusion of other stations. Television is completely different. It's a medium of programs and people tend to watch a lot of different television stations. We're not trying to put Al-Jazeera out of business. We're not trying to put Al-Arabiya out of business. We couldn't if we wanted to. But what we are trying to do is share some of those viewers and present a different perspective to compete in the marketplace of ideas, and what could possibly be wrong with that?

David Chambers: Excellent. However, let me ask this, following up from Hafiz again. What is the paradigm, then, for Al Hurra? Al-Jazeera, he says, is modeled on BBC, but it is interested in going 100 percent private in terms of funding. Does METN intend to go private? What is your working model?

Norm Pattiz: Well, no, and I'll tell you why we're not going to go private and why I doubt that Al-Jazeera will ever go private, and that has more to do with marketplace issues than it does anything else.

Al-Jazeera, the last estimate I saw, has about $12 million a year in advertising revenue. I realize that there's probably a lot of pressure on advertisers not to advertise on Al-Jazeera, but that's still the fact. In the Middle East, there are very few commercially successful television broadcasters, pan-Arab television broadcasters, in the region. LBC comes to mind and maybe a few others. But the marketplace does not support, at this time, a commercial model. So consequently, international broadcasters like the BBC, like the French, like the Netherlands, like the Germans and like the United States through Al Hurra, are commonplace throughout the region.

You know, if CNN broadcast in Arabic, maybe there would be no need for us. If there were other commercial broadcasters who broadcast in Arabic, maybe there would be no need for us. But there isn't a commercial model that will sustain that type of broadcasting as it exists now or, in my opinion, for years to come.

David Chambers: But there has been talk, and I know of several players in the region who've been considering a CNN-Arabic, and there is a CNBC of Arabiya based in Dubai. How do you assess those? Should they prove successful, would you seriously consider shutting down Al Hurra?

Norm Pattiz: First of all, it's not my decision to make. I think if Al Hurra proves to be successful in terms of its ability to attract an audience, its ability to be thought of as reliable and credible – and also, we haven't been able to determine this yet with the research on Al Hurra, but in the case of the Radio Sawa service, we've been able to even determine that listeners to Radio Sawa have a more positive view of the United States than do non-Sawa listeners. Some people will say that's just because the people who would tend to listen to Radio Sawa would be more pro-American. But the answer to that is that the numbers don't work. When you take a look at the research about anti-American feeling or the popularity of America throughout the region, by Pew and others, there just aren't enough people that would make the needle move. But in the case of a service like Radio Sawa, where among its target audience of thirty and under, in many areas we reach over 50 percent of that audience, in some areas significantly higher. For us to have, by a margin of 2-1, listeners who say that they have a more positive view of the United States of America than non-Sawa listeners is a real statement.

So as long as we're able to complete our mission, which is to present fair, balanced and accurate news and information, and at the same time, by presenting a different perspective, improve the feeling of the population about the United States – not just our policy, because we're not in the business to promote policy, we're in the business to present policy, and all sides of that policy – discussion of the pros and cons of that policy – our mission is to promote freedom and democracy. So as long as we can do that and accomplish that, then I think we'll have a longstanding mission. At least, I believe that the economics will make it so.

David Chambers: It seems like going after the numbers and looking at this commercially may have been the right approach to this panel. You want to reply directly to Norm?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: No, I'm just worried that had the Edwards-Cheney debate run the same time yesterday, Cheney would have come winning. No, we are not in a debate here. I'm just saying, and also for the benefit and out of respect for my other co-panelists – Anthony, I admire his work very much and I would love to hear more from him, as well as from Jehane – I don't want to get too much into the Al Hurra versus Al-Jazeera.

Just two or three remarks. We could sit here and spend hours talking about who is more fair and balanced than the others. Of course, nobody can take that from Fox News. So this is the first thing. You're not going to listen to Hafiz from Al-Jazeera or you should not listen to Norm Pattiz from Al Hurra – go and ask your State Department people in embassies and people who are gauging the Arab reaction in reality and find out what is going on. I think people are doing that already and have done that already, and we know that.

The only problem – we are not debating Al Hurra for any reason. Some people in the Congress, that I believe many people from Al Hurra and the BBG are keen, especially today, to reach out to them and to sell them that project, the only reason that they told them there is anti-Americanism in the region – the problem is the media and Al-Jazeera and others. If we can get our message through over there, everything will be dandy and rosy and wonderful. This is a wrong premise. So we have no right to take taxpayer money – including my money – to support something that is based on a wrong assumption and a wrong premise, which is that once we broadcast to them in Arabic and we control the message, everything will be fine and people will be moving around in Arab streets raising American flags. It's not going to solve the problem. Good for Al Hurra, good for anyone who could get more money from the Congress – because everybody's getting that money, why not Al Hurra? Halliburton and the others, so why not Al Hurra?

Norm Pattiz: Oh, man. That's rank.

David Chambers: Fair time.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I’m not saying so – I don't want to waste the audience's time. I’m just saying, leave the assessment of the achievement to people that are not hired by Al-Jazeera or not hired and paid by Al Hurra.

Norm Pattiz: Hafiz, you're a journalist! How can you possibly make a connection between Al Hurra and Halliburton? Come on.

David Chambers: That's a new ship. We can sink it or float it.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I will wait for that for the next book by Bob Woodward. Maybe he will give me something about that.

David Chambers: This is interesting, because all four panelists have now said that there is no media war. Certainly there's a pizza war, we know. Okay, let's accept this. We have four experts here. There's no media war. Media, however, has changed things dramatically, there's no doubt. The instantaneousness not just of – it's not the transmissions, it's the events that are shown. We see things as they are happening. When American officials before the war were criticizing Turkey, as we were trying to leverage the Turks or have the Turks agree that we could use their country as a landing spot and a moving forward spot for the Iraq War, we criticized them rather openly. I couldn't help but feel the entire time that most of the American politicians involved had no concept of the fact that what they said wasn't going to the heartland out there in America, but was going out worldwide, right to Istanbul and right to Ankara, and just irritating the hell out of the Turks, without realizing how that was just undercutting the diplomacy that was supposed to be going on behind the scenes.

So let's leave that aside and let's think about the content. I think one of the most interesting remarks I've heard over the past two or three years in this changing media, with the problems that have cropped up since 9/11, is a different take on what many people say about Al-Jazeera. I think the Al-Jazeeras, if I may – and I'm borrowing here from a colleague of mine, Claude Salhani, who's the international desk editor for United Press International – it's not just that Al-Jazeera and others are critical of Arab regimes. I really agree with Claude on this. The most amazing thing that's happening, very quietly, and I really want to hear everyone's comment on this, is that they are showing American government officials before Congress, being accountable. Supposedly this doesn't happen in the Middle East. So whatever we say in terms of Al-Jazeera, perhaps Al Hurra being critical and so forth, where is the action, if you cut through all the media buzz? I agree with Claude and I ask you, Anthony, first, whether you agree. I think the action is in this act. It's the 9/11 Commission. Maybe I should start with Hafiz and ask, how much coverage did that get on Al-Jazeera? Norm, as well. What do you think, each of you, is the impact on the Arab world and whether or not this or something else is likely to win the hearts and minds?

Anthony Shadid: I keep coming to this – it's strange to be back in Washington after spending a year in Baghdad. It's almost disorienting, to be honest, this question of hearts and minds, this question of public diplomacy. An almost arrogance of our perception of fair, balanced and accurate is somehow the definition of fair, balanced and accurate in the rest of the world. I just don't understand it. As a journalist – I don't want to focus the attention on me by any means, and I'm not an analyst, I'm not a pundit, I'm a reporter – my goal as a reporter is to listen, not to tell people that they're wrong, not to tell people what they should think, but just to listen. When you come back here, that's not the sense. That's not the sense of public diplomacy.

I guess that's just the point I wanted to make. Unless we understand that there are multiple perspectives out there – that one person's fairness is another person's disingenuousness, one person's balance is another person's bias, one person's credibility is another person's mendacity – we're not going to get anywhere with this. We're going to put out as many voices as we want to and we're going to hit deaf ears, because the fundamental disillusionment and disenchantment we saw in Iraq had nothing to do with media betrayal, had nothing to do with Al-Jazeera, had nothing to do with Al Arabiya. I would wager a large amount of money on that fact. It had to do with the failure of the occupation there. If that's a political way to describe it, so be it, but the occupation didn't work. It did not work and that's what created the disillusionment and disenchantment in Iraq. Unless we accept that and try to understand what was the actual dynamic on the ground and how the dynamic contributed to sentiments, I don't think we're going to get anywhere with this debate.

David Chambers: Do you agree that foreign policy should be the driver in this and not public diplomacy?

Anthony Shadid: I don't know what the answer is, and I won't claim to know the answer. I do know that when I work as a reporter and when I hear people, when I listen to people, I know it's less perception and more policy. I do know that. When you're on the ground reporting these stories in Baghdad or in Iraq, it's inescapable.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I agree, and I have always said, even jokingly sometimes, that the idea of starting public diplomacy in the State Department – we have always had very good relations with the people in the media office or the Near East – Frank here is taking care as a new one in that position – before 9/11. Coordinating, getting American guests on Al-Jazeera, covering issues. But when you say that I'm going to use public diplomacy or marketing techniques in order to sell a product to people, people immediately start to be suspicious about that, especially in the post-9/11 environment and the tension on both sides. When Secretary Powell appointed Charlotte Beers, I remember he said at the Congress hearing at that time, if she could manage to sell Uncle Ben's Rice, she would be able to sell US policies or whatever to the Middle East. Really, my reaction was, there is a difference between marketing Uncle Ben's Rice and marketing Condi Rice policies. It's just totally different products and you can't use the same technique.

Norm Pattiz: Let me ask you this. I think Al-Jazeera has done a marvelous job of using Western and worldwide broadcasting techniques to present its on-the-air image and to market its own product. If you want to talk about the kind of marketing techniques that are used, I remember being back in Washington a few months ago and I was watching Al-Jazeera on our monitor, because we all monitor each other, and I was watching a promo – it was a news promo.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Unfortunately, we don't monitor you, by the way, Norm. At least in Washington, you're not allowed to be in Washington, so unfortunately we don't monitor you.

Norm Pattiz: Why don't you go over and sit down with some of your friends over at the State Department that you're talking about? They can see it and I'm sure they'd let you come over and have a look at it.

But the point is, here's what I saw on the promo. This is your marketing. Our marketing on Al Hurra promotes freedom and democracy and those kinds of values. Here's what your marketing showed. It showed the Sheikh Yassin funeral. It showed demonstrations of large groups burning and stomping on American and Israeli flags. It then immediately cut to a group of Orthodox Jews praying at the Western Wall, and then it immediately cuts to scenes of Israeli soldiers in conflict with Palestinian youth. That was not reportage. That was the promo that was promoting your news department over the course of several days, over and over again.

David Chambers: But are you saying that those aren't news events, and that they didn't happen?

Norm Pattiz: No, I'm not saying they're not news events. But if you want to talk about trying to influence your audience and market your product, what you are doing in this particular case is you are marketing to your core audience and you're doing it in an inflammatory way. If that's the kind of marketing that you guys are comfortable with, so be it. I think that people in the region ought to have another choice that they can choose to watch or not choose to watch. I don't see how our being there presenting another point of view and a different perspective could be anything but positive.

David Chambers: Norm, certainly another voice is another voice and always welcome, particularly from this democratic country.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Let me just make a comment. The Sheikh Yassin killing, for example – we don't have also to go to the extreme and deny facts. When Fox News, CNN, Al-Jazeera, Al Arabiya and all over the world, people interrupted their programming to carry footage and news of the assassination of Sheikh Yassin, the founder of Hamas, as newscasts, regardless of where you stand on the guy – do you know what Al Hurra was broadcasting to the viewers? A cooking show of how to make sausage, I think pork even.

Norm Pattiz: That's absolutely not true.

David Chambers: Please, because that has been reported a lot.

Norm Pattiz: No, no, no. It's not true.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I might be confused. Was it a show about monkeys? Or a cooking show?

David Chambers: Hold on. Let's get back on track here. Let's get back to the content. Al-Jazeera has shown the American accountability, is that correct?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Yes.

David Chambers: The 9/11 Commission hearings?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: All of that.

David Chambers: Was that shown on Al Hurra?

Norm Pattiz: Of course. As a matter of fact, if you look at the report of the 9/11 Commission, there is a section on broadcasting where it says that the Broadcasting Board of Governors has done some very promising projects in the Middle East and in Afghanistan and Iran, and that the Broadcasting Board of Governors has been asking for more money and that it should get it.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Let me just correct you here, Norm. Al-Jazeera covered the Condi Rice hearing in the Congress answering about the charges of Richard Clarke. Al-Jazeera covered the Richard Clarke hearing and the Rice hearing. Al Hurra covered only Rice answering Clarke and did not cover and carry live the Richard Clarke hearing.

David Chambers: So you would state that Al-Jazeera has –

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: No, we are balanced.

Norm Pattiz: So?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Here you have Richard Clarke accusing the White House of something, you don't carry it live on Al Hurra, only Rice answering.

David Chambers: You're claiming that you carried longer portions of the Commission hearings. Is that a fair statement, Norm?

Norm Pattiz: I don't know. Let me just say this. We are not an all-news and information station. We are news and information-driven. But that's fourteen hours a day of our programming. We have other programming on the air. We're not just interested in programming to people who watch Al-Jazeera. We're interested in programming to a broader audience.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: What's wrong with the Richard Clarke hearing?

Norm Pattiz: Listen, I give you complete authority to determine what it is, out of the Washington broadcasting bureau, you broadcast on Al-Jazeera. We'll leave our news professionals and our media professionals – I'll give them the same authority to do what it is they do for us. That's what we do. We hire professionals and we let them do their jobs.

David Chambers: Hafiz and Norm, do you both agree that showing things like congressional hearings of US government officials accounting for themselves, for the US people, is an important part of both stations' missions?

Norm Pattiz: Absolutely.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Very important.

David Chambers: So you both feel that that is a strong message to the Middle East?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: It's a strong message and a subtle message. Sometimes you don't have to say – when Al-Jazeera covered the conventions in Boston or New York, you don't have to say, this is democracy in action – especially in Boston, where the Democrats were almost bashing or at some point criticizing the president. This is a subtle message. Even when you cover things that might look embarrassing for government censors in radio or TV, from a US point of view, like a scandal, like the Monica Lewinsky scandal – when the US was so embarrassed by this dirty laundry going out, I think it's the opposite. It is a wonderful thing. People might make jokes, but at the end they say, look at them. They are discussing everything. We don't know how many wives our rulers have and they are counting how many spots on Monica's dress. That's amazing.

Norm Pattiz: Aside from counting the spots on Monica's dress, you're absolutely right. We run two prime-time news hours in prime time, two full hours of prime-time news, one early in prime time, one later in prime time. We run a talk show, we run a debate show. We certainly cover the happenings in Washington. As a matter of fact, the indication in our research is that the one area that we clearly have higher rankings than other broadcasters in the region, especially indigenous broadcasters, is on our coverage of events in the United States. I think one would expect that.

But if we're going to have the credibility that we need, we have to show democracy in action, warts and all.

David Chambers: That is my basic point, that deeds definitely speak louder than words. Tony, I hope we've given you really good questions for going back to Baghdad. Anthony is going to be heading back out in three weeks. Maybe we'll see that in a story coming up soon. Is that something you're going to be interested in, in talking to Iraqis back in Baghdad?

Anthony Shadid: Yeah, I think it's probably an under-covered – at least in the Western press right now, it does seem to be the under-covered subject. No fault to the journalists there necessarily – I think security conditions are deteriorated to such a point that reporting has become very difficult.

David Chambers: Jehane, you started all this with Control Room. I think you have another clip you'd like to show us. I have to say, a lot of the questions that came in were even more incendiary, actually by quite a bit, than some of the discussion that's gone on here today. We are already close to wrapping up. So if you'll please allow me the moderator's privilege, I'm going to let Jehane actually close this with the final clip and with some final comments.

Jehane Noujaim: Are we going to totally ignore the audience questions?

David Chambers: I don't know if we could get out of here today if we started answering them.

Jehane Noujaim: The second clip focuses on the military press officer. Again, in an eighty-five-minute movie, it's very difficult to address all of the issues that are going on. But this one, I think, addresses what Anthony was saying about perspective. It's all about perspective. There's no right or wrong. It was a moment where I was following Lieutenant Josh Rushing, who has said things since the war, talked about how what Al-Jazeera does do is it does show the tragedy and the guts of what was happening. In the United States, we weren't seeing that. We weren't even seeing coffins coming back. He said, and he got into trouble for saying this, that people need to know what they're sending our troops out to do. When I show this clip, it's very much about perspective and how his perspective kind of started to change. I think for all of you guys coming to the Middle East Institute, you've obviously thought a lot about these issues, so the film probably operates on a more – these are issues you've thought about before. But the idea was to get this film out to a general population and people that haven't thought about these issues and have been constantly getting all of their news only from mainstream news. I think it has really affected people to see somebody who's a military press officer, who went into this as a patriot, very supportive of the US efforts in Iraq, felt like this was the right thing that he was doing, and then he started, just by being in contact with the images coming back, with the Jazeera reporters, with another perspective. In only a couple months, his views start to change. I thought this was very interesting to see.

[Excerpt from Control Room]

David Chambers: I have to share with you all, I did invite Lieutenant Josh Rushing to be with us here today. He is under orders not to speak to the public until two days from now, so unfortunately he couldn't be here to speak today.

[Audience member requests extension of panel to answer questions from the audience]

David Chambers: Happily so.

Jehane Noujaim: Just in terms of Josh Rushing, he is leaving in two days, he's leaving the Marines. The DVD of the film with his commentary on everything that he was thinking and feeling at the time will be coming out October 26, and that has commentary from the Jazeera reporters as well as footage from Baghdad a year later, when the uprising in Fallujah happened. So that's coming out soon. That's my little plug, but it's not only a plug. I think there's some very important information on it.

David Chambers: That's wonderful, because that was one of the questions asked. Tony, could you tell us about – this question says – as I said, they're a bit fiery – how useless Hi magazine is? From the field of course, since you've been out there.

Anthony Shadid: How useless is Time magazine?

David Chambers: Hi magazine.

Anthony Shadid: Oh, I'm not familiar with it, I'm sorry.

David Chambers: Says so much. Norm, since you may be out of here earlier than anyone –

Norm Pattiz: I was just going to say something about Hi magazine – it's not our project. It's a State Department project that was started under the Charlotte Beers regime and it's a magazine that I think is sold on magazine stands throughout the Middle East.

David Chambers: I totally understand that disclaimer. Did Al Hurra show mass arrests in New York outside the Republican Convention?

Norm Pattiz: To be perfectly honest, I don't know. My assumption would be that we covered the conventions completely and that was probably part of our programming, but I can't – that would be a better question to ask to our news director.

David Chambers: Hafiz, do you know how much was shown, by any chance, on Al-Jazeera?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: On Al-Jazeera, we had big coverage for the RNC and DNC both, the only Arabic-language network that had a skybox, a studio, covering from there most of the events, including of course some of the arrests outside. But yeah, we have done both.

David Chambers: And you were on hand for both.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Yeah, of course.

David Chambers: Does Al-Jazeera have a code of ethics for its journalists?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Yes, we have adopted recently one. Before that, since most of the reporters were coming from the BBC Arabic television – that was an experience that didn't last for a while – and they already have the same guidelines that they were trained to have and to practice over there. Al-Jazeera didn't care much about adopting its own, most of the staff and editors coming from other news organizations with its own tradition, but then because of so much controversy about whether we allow that or we don't allow that, a few months ago Al-Jazeera adopted its own code of ethics, that is very similar to the ones that are adopted here in the US – for example, the Association of American Broadcasters.

David Chambers: A question about Al-Jazeera operations in Iraq. The office remains closed, is that correct?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Maybe until Norm's friends here in Washington will –

David Chambers: Yeah, thank you for that.

Norm Pattiz: I'll call Enron, maybe they can help.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Please call.

David Chambers: So we have actually improving relations right here at the Middle East Institute. How is Al-Jazeera still covering the situation on the ground in Iraq without anyone on the ground? How do you get coverage of any explosion or anything else happening in the country?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: That's a wonderful question, because it would immediately answer to those people that say Al-Jazeera or their cameramen were there while a bombing was taking place or set out, or with the terrorists. We rely, like many other countries where Al-Jazeera is not allowed to be in – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Algeria sometimes or not, Tunisia sometimes or not – on news agencies' footage. And on the news agencies' footage coming out of Iraq that Al-Jazeera put for the last two months, thank God nobody is accusing us of taking this footage itself. It's on Associated Press Television, Reuters and others. In addition to telephone interviews and people from outside. Almost on daily basis, we try to ask Iraqi government officials to comment. Although sometimes we know that they are going to say no, we keep trying to get their point of view or get someone who is sympathetic to that point of view or understanding of it, and do it. Or carry live most of Prime Minister Allawi's appearances. When he was in Washington in the Congress, the joint session, we carried live his speech. When he was meeting with the president in the photo op and conference, we carried it live. Although sometimes we put after that a promo of closing Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad immediately after we carry it live, just to remind our audience.

David Chambers: For Norm, two questions. First, is it true that there is a planned major overhaul for Al Hurra in the upcoming year? I believe that's in term of personnel.

Norm Pattiz: Not that I'm aware of.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I hope they would have one, because one of the complaints –

Norm Pattiz: Was that question for me or was that question for Hafiz?

David Chambers: It's a free and open society here. Is it true that a State Department representative is at Al Hurra 24-7 to monitor broadcast?

Norm Pattiz: That's completely ridiculous. As I said before, a huge responsibility of the Broadcasting Board is to act as a firewall between the independence of our journalists and specifically the State Department and other institutions. So that's complete hogwash.

I would like to say one thing, since I think my satellite feed ends in a couple minutes. I have great respect for the government of Qatar. As a matter of fact, Sheikh Hamad bin [Khalifa] Al-Thani was the first in the region to give us permission to have an FM frequency to broadcast Radio Sawa in the Middle East. As I said, I have a pen from the Emir.

One has to realize that the government of Qatar has to do quite a Kabuki dance. On the one hand, they're the US' closest military ally in the region and the location of Central Command. That's not going to make them popular with the Arab street. Al-Jazeera does.

David Chambers: A question for the Arabic speakers on the panel. Let's start with Anthony and Jehane. Can you comment on the performance of American spokespeople in Arabic-language news broadcasts? In the questioner's experience, they rarely seem to understand their audience and don't come across very well.

Anthony Shadid: I hate to pass on these questions, I just watched so little TV when I was in Baghdad. I did see that there was an Arabic speaker that was with the CPA pretty much throughout – Charles Heeley, he was a British diplomat – although I think he left maybe six months before the formal end of the occupation. I found him relatively effective. He made an effort. He tried to engage Arab journalists there.

Jehane Noujaim: I actually hate to say it, but I haven't watched that much TV. When I was in Qatar and at CENTCOM, the spokespeople were all speaking in English and being translated. So since then, I'm not sure.

David Chambers: Hafiz, I bet you watch a fair amount of television. I think also this question may relate as well to high-level American authorities, which again, probably Anthony and Jehane didn't watch very closely. What's your impression?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I think it's important and it's beneficial to have an Arabic speaker, an American official or American spokesman. But it is not as important as maybe some people emphasized. We had Christopher Ross, for example, Ambassador Ross, and his Arabic was wonderful, one of the best Arabic I have ever heard from a formal American diplomat or official. Yet by hiring him and making him a State Department official, that took from him the advantage and from us of reaching him immediately after the president's speech or Colin Powell's speech to make a commentary, because he had to go for a clearance, he would like to know the line, all of that. He became a bureaucrat. So sometimes it's much more efficient for you to get the former Foreign Service people who are familiar with Arabic, have a distance between you and then, and let them sometimes criticize you, even 10 percent. Because if they support you 100 percent, they would really look like Bush-Cheney campaign spokespeople. I don't think that even would be convincing in Arkansas, let alone in Cairo or Baghdad.

Bassam Haddad: Mr. Chambers? I am Bassam Haddad from the Arab Studies Journal. I must ask, before Mr. Norm leaves, what is it that everybody is ignoring, the most flagrant contradiction, and that is Al Hurra is trying to promote democracy in the Arab world when it's funded by the same institution that is funding authoritarian regimes in the Arab world. Somebody needs to ask this question and have Mr. Norm answer it. That would help a lot on the credibility of Al Hurra.

David Chambers: Norm, were you able to hear that at all?

Norm Pattiz: No, I wasn't.

David Chambers: Bassam, would you like to step up and ask? The question is, again?

Bassam Haddad: Mr. Norm, how can Al Hurra talk about promoting democracy in the Middle East and everything that comes with it, the whole package, when it is funded by the same institution that is funding authoritarian regimes in the Arab world, and we will not name them, because we are out of time.

Norm Pattiz: Quite simply, we're a separate agency of the federal government that is made up of private citizens. We are not in the policymaking area. That would be like trying to say that the BBC is not credible anywhere around the world because they are funded in part by the British government.

Let me explain, if I can, because I think I'm just about out of here, the magnitude of what we've been able to accomplish in a short period of time. If you take a look – if we're talking about reaching maybe 15-20 percent of the region after a few months, compare that to what networks like Fox and CNN and MSNBC reach. When you're talking about 15-20 percent of 170 million people that are over the age of fifteen, you're talking about a very big number. Fox, which is generally thought of as the most watched cable news network in America, in prime time nightly reaches an average audience of 1.5 million. CNN reaches 1 million. MSNBC reaches 600,000-700,000.

So I think the accomplishment we've been able to obtain here, to deliver, has been important. We still have many hurdles to overcome. If we are perceived as reliable and credible, we will have a place in the media scene there. So far we're making good headway – I don't want to say good progress, I'm a Democrat and it will make me sound like the president. But we are making good headway and hopefully we will continue to do it. But we'll only do it by being reliable, credible and balanced, even if it makes US institutions look bad.

Bassam Haddad: Could you try it from your own money instead of our taxpayers' money?

David Chambers: Let's pass on that. Norm, I know you've got to go. I'd like to, if we could, thank Norm Pattiz for being with us here today.

Norm Pattiz: Thank you very much.

David Chambers: We'll let him sign off and we will continue our panel. For Jehane and Anthony, aside from a change in US foreign policy – and this again shows the interest in hearts and minds, or at least how well that message itself has penetrated the US – what do you think is the best way to win hearts and minds in the Arab world, via media?

Anthony Shadid: I don't know the answer to that. I know it's a pass, and I use it sometimes as a reporter – the best thing about being a journalist is that I can say what other people are saying rather than say what I say.

Jehane Noujaim: That's the good thing about being a filmmaker as well. When I started the Charlotte Beers project, it all came down to – basically, I spent two months following the people that she'd hired in Egypt to go around to all of the colleges and universities asking, what do you think of the United States? What makes a terrorist, what makes a freedom fighter? The issues all came down to policy. It all came down to the funding of authoritarian regimes, the Israeli-Palestinian situation, these basic issues in the Middle East. I saw how on the top of the sheet that was given to the people that were doing these focus groups, it said, I know it's going to get to Israel-Palestine, I know that it's going to get to – we know that it's going to get to this, we know that it's going to get to this, but we want to steer it in other directions. But it did come down to policy. I don't have any other solutions.

David Chambers: For the panel, an interesting observation. This person found Al-Jazeera to be popular but Qatar not necessarily so much, for a variety of reasons. Could any panelist comment on why that may be?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Just emphasize the distinction between both – if Al-Jazeera would be a government-influenced TV station, we would have followed the same path and the same policies of the government of Qatar. If there is that big difference between them, you should make it as an example or as evidence that it's totally two different entities and one is not influencing the other.

David Chambers: Three years after 9/11, many Arabs – perhaps a majority, this writer says – continue to doubt that bin Laden was behind the 9/11 attacks. Many espouse conspiracy theories about CIA or Mossad involvement. The latter includes the belief that 4,000 Jews did not show up for work at the World Trade Center on the morning of the attacks. Has Arab media contributed to shaping such beliefs?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I think when you talk about Arab media, we have here to distinguish between many things. The same way when we talk about Anthony Shadid's wonderful work or Washington Post work in covering the war, that there is a big difference between the US print media coverage of the war and the electronic media in general, or television. You see the same difference in the Arab media as well. You would find tabloid publications and newspapers promoting whatever kind of rumors that might be there. You will find serious news organizations, as in the case of Al-Jazeera, that they would, for example, carry the speech of President Bush to the joint session immediately after 9/11. After that, I was carrying it live, and I talked to someone, a commentator, an Arab American, and I told him, President Bush mentioned how many Israelis killed in New York and that should be an answer to those people who are promoting such nonsense and rubbish. That was there on Al-Jazeera. You would have a talk show on Al-Jazeera where someone would pick up the phone and make these kinds of allegations, but in our serious news coverage you would have someone saying no, that's nonsense, or at least inviting people to make their opinions. So it's always very important to distinguish and not talk about a monolith that's the Arab media, the American media.

David Chambers: Just a quick question then, to lay aside some rumors perhaps – is there a start date now for Al-Jazeera in English?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Should be November '05.

David Chambers: This year?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Next year. I don't know under whose administration at that time in Washington.

David Chambers: If we want to engage in the marketplace of ideas in the Arab world and exchange views and open channels of communication and understanding, wouldn't it be better if we co-produced programming with Arab stations rather than piping the material from Al Hurra? Unfortunately, Norm isn't here to say this, but I don't actually think that was towards him. Hafiz, and others as well, what do you think? Do you think it would be more successful as a tactic? I believe this is under discussion on several Hill panels, I believe at least in Foreign Relations. Would it be better to co-produce news rather than have it piped out by BBG through Al Hurra?

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: Since Norm is no longer with us, I would refrain from commenting on Al Hurra, although I have a lot.

David Chambers: As a general practice.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: I wouldn't say rather than, but I would say in itself it's a good idea, that instead of reinventing the wheel and have your own network and try to do it and all that stuff, fund through different foundations good-quality programming about America, American life, all the things that you would like to emphasize to people about American society. Make it available for networks and make conditions that for the distributor you have to make sure that the network that would play that would have at least 70 percent audience or viewership, based on independent polls or whatever. That really would do it. You don't need to do more than that. The foreign press center here that is run by the State Department are doing a wonderful job. They are allowing us, for example, giving us videotapes of whatever the press conferences that we miss, all kinds of services. This is government, but they are working to help the Arab media cover the event by themselves. It makes a difference when you are there covering it and say it is Al-Jazeera, not someone else.

Jehane Noujaim: I think there is a curiosity about inside democracy and how does democracy work. Maybe that can happen, and this relates to the previous question as well, is there a way to deal with the hearts and minds other than policy. On a very kind of – a level which I don't know if it would make a huge difference, but programming like that or documentaries. People said, why doesn't Jazeera show documentaries – I've actually talked to Jazeera about this and they're excited to do this – that have been made about the US democratic system? Entertaining documentaries – The War Room.

Hafiz Al-Mirazi: We do have programs. Al-Jazeera, for example, started a US election show, a weekly wrap-up, one hour, since mid-January with the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primaries. I don't want to compare, because other network that is related to the US has started it only with the Boston convention, the Democratic Convention. They are interested there.

But I would like to go back to the main concept, winning the hearts and minds. I wish we could just give up on that concept and this idea of winning the hearts and the minds. This administration or even the Kerry Administration is not going to win the hearts and minds of people in Washington, DC, let alone people in Mecca or Cairo or Baghdad. All what you need for public diplomacy or whatever you name it is damage control for wrong policies in the Middle East. That's all.

David Chambers: I'm going to wrap here. I've pretty much run out of questions and the rest are far too incendiary to ask. I would like you all to please join me in thanking our esteemed and excellent panelists for sharing their expertise and their experience. I would also very much like to thank you, our audience, for your questions and interests – Howard, Bassam for speaking out and keeping us here – obviously there was the interest. We will now break for lunch and reconvene at 3:00 PM for our final panel on "Soft Power."