Stocks Are Down and Al Jazeera’s Out   

After the Arab network aired controversial footage, the New York Stock exchange and NASDAQ gave Al Jazeera correspondents the boot.

As war raged in Iraq, two Al Jazeera business commentators in New York became "collateral damage" of sorts.

On March 24, one day after the Arab satellite network aired graphic video of American prisoners of war captured by the Iraqis, the New York Stock Exchange revoked the press credentials of Al Jazeera analysts Ramsey Shiber and Ammar Sankari. The two, who primarily work in banking and financial advising, provided live, daily market commentary from the floor of the Big Board.

NASDAQ officials subsequently refused to allow Al Jazeera to move the correspondents to that exchange for the daily reports. (The stock exchange reversed its position in early May, allowing the reporters back to the market for live broadcasts.)

The ban came as U.S. officials decried the POW broadcast, saying it violated Geneva Convention guidelines for POW treatment. Meanwhile, U.S.-based hackers were suspected of attacking Al Jazeera's new English-language Web site, making it inaccessible to the public.

Media advocacy groups condemned both incidents against the Arab network.

The Society of Professional Journalists, in urging the NYSE to reverse the ban, called the institution's action "reckless." "A decision to deny Al Jazeera reporters credentials does nothing to support our country's image as a place where the free exchange of ideas and information serves as the foundation for everything America does," says Mac McKerral, SPJ's president-elect and editor of Tampa Bay's Business Journal.

The week after the exchanges shut out Al Jazeera, NYSE spokesman Ray Pellechia said discussions were already under way to readmit the Arab broadcasters and that his organization's action was largely symbolic.

Pellechia says the Pentagon's condemnation of Al Jazeera's broadcast of the POW video came at a time when requests for live broadcasts from the exchange were peaking. "We were looking to prioritize [media requests]," Pellechia says. "We wanted to accommodate established financial and business networks. Business and financial coverage is not [Al Jazeera's] main focus."

Al Jazeera's Sankari says the stock exchange should have given his network formal, written notice of its exclusion in advance, rather than hastily showing the correspondents the door. "They were saying they were cutting back on broadcasters, but Al Jazeera is the only one," Sankari says. "We talk to the Arab world. There are a lot of Arab investors interested in the U.S."

Al Jazeera, founded in 1996, evolved from the BBC's defunct Arab Television Service and is considered the Arab world's only independent editorial voice. It claims up to 45 million viewers in the Mideast, and viewers worldwide have watched its live footage of Baghdad under fire. A recent poll presented at the Broadcast Education Association Conference in Las Vegas found that "71 percent of Arab speakers surveyed feel that Al Jazeera is fair."

Stephanie Thomas, bureau manager of Al Jazeera's office in Washington, D.C., says the network has had no other access problems in the U.S. International press group Reporters Without Borders joined SPJ in denouncing the action against Al Jazeera. "This decision is at best clumsy and at worst a reprisal against the station," Robert Ménard, the organization's secretary-general, said in a statement.

The New York Times, in one of two editorials on the ban, declared: "Al Jazeera is feisty and frequently controversial, but it does real journalism, and it is the only uncensored TV network in the Arab world." The Times said the ban by "the princes of the free market" put them in the "impressive company" of Libya and Tunisia, which have complained that Al Jazeera gives too much airtime to opposition leaders.

Media critic Jack G. Shaheen, author of "Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Villifies A People," bluntly calls the exchange's action racist: "First of all, it was sheer stupidity and blatant racism. You do not ban decent people who are working and trying to do their jobs because of a bias you perceive. They did not do anything wrong."

Outrage erupted again following the April 8 airstrike on Al Jazeera's offices in Baghdad that left one of its reporters, Tariq Ayoub, dead. The Arab network maintains that bombers targeted it, a charge the Pentagon denies.

In America, Al Jazeera's airing of video of captured U.S. soldiers and its distribution of messages from fugitive terrorist Osama bin Laden have been controversial. And a visit to the network's Arabic Web site also shows stark, shocking images of war-maimed Iraqi civilians that the U.S. media shy away from.

During a March 27 appearance on CNN's "Larry King Live," Gen. Hugh Shelton, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that the broadcast POW images bothered him. He added: "But on the other hand I think it helps sometimes to listen to the way the news is being reported by others around the world, and that gives you a perspective of how maybe the other side, maybe the Iraqis are viewing the actions of the United States."

In an April 3 profile in the Washington Post, Al Jazeera Washington Bureau Chief Hafez Mirazi defended his network's approach to covering the war. "There is a feeling in our newsroom that you need to be as realistic as possible and carry the images of war and the effect that war has on people," Mirazi said. "If you are in a war, your population shouldn't just eat their dinner and watch sanitized images on TV and video games produced by the technological whizzes in the Pentagon and say, 'This is war.' No. You really need to show every family what your men and women are going through."

Mohammed el-Nawawy, a professor at Massachusetts' Stonehill College and author of the book, "Al Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East," says that "Arabs are more used to seeing gruesome images than Americans," in large part because of Al Jazeera's coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

El-Nawawy laments the stock exchange's decision to ban Al Jazeera, which he considers "a double standard" in a country that espouses free expression.

Ramsey Shiber, who initiated Al Jazeera's broadcasts from the NYSE in 1996, appreciates media coverage of the network's ouster. "Ultimately, we'd like to go back to the stock exchange," he says, "and if that doesn't happen, we'll still give good analysis and commentary.... We'll do it from the studio, over the phone. There are options."