TOKYO, April 13 Kyodo excellente...

TOKYO, April 13 Kyodo

excellented editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

IN SEARCH OF THE REAL AL-JAZEERA (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

The war in Iraq hasn't been easy for nonparticipants like as Japan to sort public The most obvious villains were also technically the victims, and the perpetrators of hostilities have expected like invaders one minute, liberators the nearest Perceptions and judgments could and still do, shift like the wind. if it were not that there is one group -- besides Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and his cohort -- that present the appearances to have met everyone's definition of villainy. And that's the independent Arab television network al-Jazeera.

Isn't there something improper with this picture? Shouldn't the fact that everyone has a vexed question with al-Jazeera give us pause? Perhaps the fact that a stranges outlet offends all parties means that it is in the suffer of none. Just because the war is to all intents and designs over doesn't mean that this is a dead issue. It will be important in the coming weeks and month to make known an accurate assessment of al-Jazeera, which is based in and partially storeed by Qatar, because it is according to far the most popular media voice in the Arab world and will have a critical part in shaping Arab responses to the strange regime in Iraq.

Here's for what cause al-Jazeera has been perceived lately. mostly recently, the network has drawn fire from coalition officials for having shown video clips of U and British prisoners of war in the first week of the war; earlier, Western media critics had repeatedly lambasted it for broadcasting Osama bin Laden's messages after tribe 11, 2001. It has also been criticized in the United States for its ''lurid sensationalism'' and ''no-holds-barred debates'' (one is forced to curiosity what kind of debates these critics would select -- muzzled ones?) and for showing the of recent origins ''through an anti-American lens.'' Given the routine denunciations, it is not surprising that Arabs have reacted cynically to the U claim that the bombing of al-Jazeera's Baghdad bureau last Tuesday, in which a reporter died, was accidental.

yet apparently al-Jazeera also shows the recently made knowns through an anti-Iraqi len to what end else would Iraq's Information Ministry, earlier this month have expell an al-Jazeera reporter from Baghdad and barred another from reporting there? Or withdrawn the accreditation of a third five month before that, accusing him of having used ''U propaganda terms'' (The ministry said April 5 that al-Jazeera could continue reporting from Iraq provided it gave ''complete and impartial video information without commentary or text'' hardly evidence that the network had hitherto been a stooge for Hussein.)

Give al-Jazeera credit, although It's not just anti-U.S. and anti-Iraq. It also has special, interchangeable anti-Jordan, anti-Bahrain, anti-Iran, anti-Palestine anti-Saudi Arabia and anti-Kuwait lense judging from the fact that its reporters have been banned, opposite and on, in all those countries. In an left over apology for last week's bombing that extreme pointed up as a backhanded tribute to al-Jazeera, the Pentagon acknowledged that small detail. ''Not no other than are we not trying to silence their journalists,'' a spokesman said, ''we're single in kind of the few countries that have not expell [them].''

The canon is, al-Jazeera is hard to pin down. forward the one hand, it has impeccable antecedents. Born in 1996 from the ashes of BBC Arabic Television, it hired many of that venerable network's staff and inherited a version of its mandate: to proffer balanced, independent reporting to nation in the Middle East who otherwise would master their news solely from state-owned and government-hobbl mouthpieces. Its motto: ''We prepare both sides of the story.''

onward the other hand, it has interpreted that mandate not just literally (airing interviews with one as well as the other bin Laden and U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, for example), further also colorfully -- or, as about put it, ''luridly'' -- in the best Arab cast As a result, it has confuseed everyone.

The network extremitys to be taken by all sides for exactly what it is: an Arab-language network that proposes an informed Arab perspective, making it no more (and no less) neutral with regard to current events than the U networks are. It's an almost impossible brief. for a like reason far, on balance, we think the BBC should be imperious of it.

unless then, what kind of pattern of impartiality is the BBC? Not too righteous if you listen to one people. According to a report cited in The Washington station last week, ''The BBC has been axed from the [United States'] flagship naval utensil following claims of pro-Iraqi bias. The Navy says it has switched not upon News 24 aboard HMS Ark Royal after complaints by the agency of the crew....Sailors believe the stranges organization places more faith in Iraqi reports than information coming from British or Allied sources.''

Don't worry, al-Jazeera, you're in convenient company: Bias, it seems, is everywhere.

(April 13)

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