'It's no hangout for al-Qa'ida'

rolling news al jazeera

Al Jazeera has been bombed, banned and ridiculed - but its new English language version has accumulated viewers in 100 million homes after barely a year on air. Ian Burrell goes inside its London bureau to find out what makes the station tick

S tepping out of his studio at Al Jazeera English and striding purposefully on to the street, Sir David Paradine Frost seems impervious to London's winter chill, as he briefly adjourns from filming and heads up Knightsbridge to the Library Bar of the Lanesborough hotel, where the staff nod to him in recognition and the barman promptly reaches for a bottle of the presenter's favourite Chablis.

"Good-sized glasses," he says approvingly, settling down at a corner table. "A nice bit of refreshment in the middle of the day." Sir David, 68, is enjoying life, one year after he raised eyebrows in political and journalistic quarters by signing up to the Emir of Qatar's ambitious plans to transform global news coverage.

The presence of this most high-profile of television interviewers on the fledgling network has been of incalculable value to a media organisation that still suffers pariah status in large parts of American society and a tense relationship with the Washington administration. The station's offices were attacked by US forces in Baghdad and Kabul; George Bush commented to Tony Blair that the network's headquarters in Doha should be bombed.

Yet the Friday show Frost Over the World has in its first 12 months secured interviews with the former secretaries of state James Baker and Madeleine Albright and the retired four-star general Wesley Clark, not to mention such international political figures as Tony Blair, Benazir Bhutto, Desmond Tutu, Mikhail Gorbachev and Gerry Adams.

"It has been a terrific experience, everything they said it would be in terms of total editorial freedom and coming up with the facilities around the world when we need them," says Sir David, scooping peanuts out of a dish. "I ran into [the former Chancellor of the Exchequer] Norman Lamont the other day and he said, 'I'm a news junkie but now I always watch Al Jazeera English first because you keep telling me things I didn't know.' I think that is a rather good slogan for a station, actually: telling people things they don't know."

Having launched franchises such as London Weekend Television in 1967 and TV-am in 1982 - "I love new stations and new challenges" - he has always been a broadcasting pioneer. But Al Jazeera English is far more than Sir David Frost's Friday foray into politics and culture. It is a station that follows the sun as it moves around the globe. Early-morning coverage emanates from Kuala Lumpur, and is transferred at 10am to Doha in the Gulf; the London bureau takes centre stage at 8pm before handing over to Washington at 11pm, Greenwich Mean Time. At all times, the station is attempting to provide an alternative to what it sees as the Western perspective of rivals CNN and BBC World, offering a "south to north" interpretation of the news. In its first 12 months, the network has far exceeded its expectations, reaching 100 million homes, though it is shunned by most cable networks in the US, where it relies heavily on its website stream. The station's stars include Rageh Omaar, best known as the BBC correspondent in Baghdad during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the former BBC World anchor Stephen Cole, and the former US marine turned TV presenter Josh Rushing.

Inside the London bureau, near Hyde Park Corner, strict security reflects the al-Qa'ida fatwah that was issued against the station over its coverage of a recent Osama bin Laden video. There is more than a little irony in this, given the accusations faced by the station - which is banned from Saudi Arabia - from critics who say that it publicises the actions of the terror network.

A group of senior Al Jazeera journalists have convened in an airy room adjoining an atrium filled with small trees in planters. By conference call to Doha, they are negotiating the day's running order. "We have pictures of bodies being dragged through the streets - there's enough for a package," says an English voice in Doha, commenting on unrest in Mogadishu.

Many of the 160 London-based staff have considerable experience gained at more established news networks. Ben Rayner, the head of news, is a former editor of the now-defunct ITV News Channel. He says that AJE has distinct news values from its rivals. "There is an obsession in the West with celebrity. You just have to see a story like Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith and the amount of coverage those stories have got in the West. Stories out of Washington and London are quite often uncritically accepted. Pronouncements are given great coverage just because they come from those places - whereas we are trying to shift the balance," he says. "It's looking at the world from south to north, challenging received perspectives as to what the news agenda is. There's no domestic agenda. BBC World still does a lot of British news and CNN is very much looking at the world through American eyes."