Weighing Anchor: A veteran ABC newsman joins Al Jazeera

by Robert Wiener
NJJN Staff Writer

Veteran television news correspondent Dave Marash’s recent assignments for ABC’s Nightline have included stints in Iraq, Pakistan, the Asian tsunami areas, Israel, and the Palestinian territories.

Good training, perhaps, for the flak he is about to take for his latest career move: The former resident of Glen Ridge and Montclair will become an anchor for Al Jazeera International, an English-language news network based in Washington.

Marash said he anticipates being hosted at “piñata parties,” where critics of the controversial Arab-owned news service will skewer him for his career choice.

“I expect to be the poster child of their attacks and I welcome the opportunity to defend myself and the channel,” the newsman said in a lengthy cell phone interview with NJ Jewish News.

Marash will be one of two broadcasters to anchor the American-based news programs on the network that critics have labeled a “mouthpiece for terrorists.” His co-anchor has yet to be announced.

The 63-year-old veteran journalist — a familiar presence on New York local news before his years at the ABC network — insists the Arab-owned news satellite channel’s agenda is one of “open discussion and information exchange and not…ideological triumphalism. All my research and conversation with AJI management has convinced me that this will be a completely respectable and professional news organization,” one which promises a “high-end competition” with the American news networks.

Marash pointed out that he is “not the only Jewish person they have hired, and they’ve made it quite clear that they regard my religious background as incidental to my professional credentials.”

Preceding him on the AJI payroll was New Yorker Rebecca Lipkin, a colleague of his at Nightline, who is based in London as AJI’s executive producer for documentaries.

“We talked over all of these issues together, and we feel very comfortable that this is an organization which is not anti-Semitic and which is, quite the contrary, working as hard as it can to create the conditions that can produce civility and peace and progress in the Middle East,” Marash said.

In addition, his Jewish wife, Amy Marash, a former photographer and field producer at American networks, has been hired as the Washington bureau’s deputy news editor.

“I don’t believe Al Jazeera is anti-Semitic,” Marash said. “I don’t believe we are anti-Israeli. I don’t believe we are anti-American. I don’t believe we are anti-Western.”

“I am very, very comfortable that I am not betraying my Jewish heritage or my American citizenship. But in this job, I think I am going to be able to express the best sides of my religious, cultural, social, and political background. It is what makes this such an attractive job.”

Launched a decade ago, Al Jazeera came to Western attention following the 9/11 attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld accused it of “working in concert with terrorists” and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice complained of “reporting that’s purely inaccurate.” On NPR’s On the Media program, host Bob Garfield said the network “has been, if not necessarily an advocate of Islamism and jihadism, or even necessarily being sympathetic to those causes, it’s certainly been hospitable to rhetoric about them and has all sort of accompanying, very inflammatory images.”

Marash draws a distinction between the new English-language service and the one now broadcasting in Arabic, which emanates from Doha, Qatar, and reaches an estimated 30 million viewers in the Arabic-speaking world.

“Let me make one point extremely clear,” he said. “Al Jazeera in English is an entirely different channel.”

Marash likened the new channel to A&E, the Arts and Entertainment Network, which is owned largely by ABC “but is a completely independently-programmed channel.”

Marash said the new English-language network will have a “global perspective,” with reporters based in many parts of the world, including Israel, and has “360 degrees of coverage” as its motto.

“We are not taking news from an Arabic or Middle Eastern or Muslim point of view. I’m an American guy; I’m always going to be an American guy, and this means my cultural and political orientation certainly comes through a filter of American politics and American experience. I think America is a blessed place, and for journalism it is the freest place on earth. That freedom is going to be completely available to me.”

Even as he insisted that the new English-language outlet will be an entirely different entity from the one aimed at the Arab world, Marash said, “The philosophy of Al Jazeera’s Arabic network “is very much like our philosophy.” He said the original Al Jazeera attempts to “represent as broad a spectrum of political opinion as possible, and certainly in the Arabic-speaking world, a large segment of that palette is very unpalatable to us as Americans and very hostile to Israel and, frankly, anti-Semitic. But always, those points of view are presented in a package with alternate points of view.”

The broadcaster argued that among Arab-language news gatherers, Al Jazeera was the first to use Israeli sources. Those included “very right-wing Israeli sources as part of their philosophy of ‘We want to get all points of view.’ If you believe in the possibility of peace and reconciliation between Israel and the Palestinians, between Jews and Arabs, between the West and the Islamic worlds — any way you draw the line in the clash of civilizations and cultures — Al Jazeera is the bridge. The people who own and run Al Jazeera believe in free information, not captive information, secular and religious diversity, not religious fundamentalism and narrowness.”

Marash of Arabia?

But Alex Safian, a professional media watchdog for the pro-Israel Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, said, “Al Jazeera is not a legitimate news source, contrary to what Dave Marash is saying.”

Calling the anchorman “Marash of Arabia,” Safian told NJJN that since its inception in 1996, Al Jazeera’s Arabic-language broadcasts “have done a tremendous job of inflaming the Arab world against Israel and the United States.”

Safian said he is “extremely skeptical” of Marash’s claims that AJI will be a fair and objective news outlet.

“It has not been on the air yet, but the people leading Al Jazeera are not interested in having a legitimate news agency in the United States. They are very sympathetic to terrorism, absolutely, and they have acted in the interest of terrorism,” he said.

Nor is Safian impressed by Marash’s talk of his own Jewish background.

“It doesn’t matter that he is Jewish,” said Safian. “I think any American or any Western newsperson who goes to work for Al Jazeera — regardless of their religion — is betraying their profession, regardless of what Marash says about the guarantees he’s had. We’ll see. I’m extremely skeptical.”

Al Jazeera International is expected to be launched “sometime in late spring,” said Marash.

Marash, who first began reporting for Nightline in 1989, is leaving the show as it undergoes major changes, including the “retirement” of anchor Ted Koppel — who reportedly turned down an offer from Al Jazeera and has since joined the Discovery Network. Before Nightline, Marash was best known to New York metropolitan-area viewers as an investigative reporter for WNBC-TV and the news anchor for WCBS-TV.

“I hope our attackers will all watch us very closely, even if it is only to gather material for their point of view,” he said. “But I think if they do watch us closely they will see the point of view they started out with is oversimplified and inaccurate.”

Robert Wiener can be reached at rwiener@njjewishnews.com.

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