MU emeritus helps train Al-Jazeera staff

A retired professor of the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Journalism is helping train communicators for Al-Jazeera, the Arab news agency that’s been both hailed and reviled for its coverage of Middle East events.

Roger Gafke, an MU professor emeritus, has conducted two 10-day workshops for Al-Jazeera, training supervisors of its satellite television news and sports channels as well as its Web site.

"It is very stimulating and challenging," Gafke said in an e-mail from Doha, Qatar, where Al-Jazeera is based. "It’s like working with any other group of substantial professionals."

Byron Scott, a member of the journalism school faculty, recently attended an Al-Jazeera-sponsored conference with Gafke.

Al-Jazeera has more than 30 bureaus around the world. It’s often the first to receive pronouncements from terrorist organizations or messages from Osama bin Laden.

When it was launched in 1996, Al-Jazeera was applauded as a source of independent, unbiased and uncensored information in an area ruled by despots and dictators. More recently, the Bush administration has accused the news agency of falsehoods and inflammatory reporting. Last August, the U.S.-backed government in Iraq banned it from reporting there.

The Washington Post reported last fall that more than half of the network’s funding comes from the emir of Qatar.

Of itself, the news agency says: "In the rest of the world, often dominated by the stereotypical thinking of news ‘heavyweights’, Al-Jazeera offers a different and new perspective." That’s the word from its Web site, aljazeera.net. And it adds that during the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, its coverage brought into the spotlight "the war’s devastating impact on the lives of ordinary people."

The potential for controversy over a relationship with Al-Jazeera is not lost on officials at the journalism school. They haven’t forgotten state lawmakers’ criticism in 2001 when KOMU-TV wouldn’t allow broadcast reporters to wear American flag lapel pins.

There was a faculty meeting last fall about involvement between the news agency and the school, but the issue went no further. School officials are seeking more information before moving ahead.

Mark Hughes, a spokesman for state Treasurer Sarah Steelman and a 1987 graduate of the journalism school, said working with Al-Jazeera was potentially controversial.

"The use of faculty and staff affiliated with the University of Missouri School of Journalism to train journalists or alleged journalists in a media agency like Al-Jazeera is questionable and merits public awareness and debate," Hughes said.

Gafke said the J-school is aware of his work but is not involved in it.

"I have undertaken the workshops as a personal activity from my position as a retired member of the faculty - something like a private contractor," Gafke said. "Of course, given the channel’s prominence in the Arabic-speaking parts of the world, it seems reasonable to me to explore where there are areas in which our interests coincide.

"I would hope that we would have other faculty members to go there and put on workshops, too," Gafke added. "It’s important work. The more bridges we build, the better understanding we have of them and the better understanding they have of us."

Al-Jazeera is preparing to launch an English-language channel in April. It has been recruiting English-speaking broadcast journalists.

Gafke conducted workshops in November and last month. He and Scott participated in a three-day international conference on the media and democracy that ended Feb. 2.

"I went because this was a good opportunity to find out more about Arab journalism," Scott said in an e-mail last week from Moscow. He said his attendance at the conference was covered by independent funding through the school’s International Programs office.

Esther Thorson, an associate dean, sent e-mails to the school’s faculty last October exploring the possibility of collaborating with Al-Jazeera. She said she had provided an overview of the J-school’s research capabilities to the director of Al-Jazeera.

"Initiatives in journalistic development in the Middle East are important for the school to consider," Thorson wrote. "Such activities would be consistent with our historical mission to champion journalism and its role in democratic societies."

Gafke said he got connected to Al-Jazeera through a colleague he met in Egypt four years ago and who later served as an editor at KOMU-TV. The colleague has just taken a position with the Al-Jazeera English service.

The people he has trained espouse the same journalistic values and standards he became familiar with in Columbia, Gafke said.

"It has been a wonderful experience to see those values at work in another part of the world in which covering and presenting the news is far more complex and hazardous than in our country," Gafke said.

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Reach Terry Ganey at (573) 815-1708 or tganey@tribmail.com.

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