LOS ANGELES: The Western monopoly on global news production has met its first serious challenge from a Third World source. The improbable upstart is Al Jazeera, a 24-hour Arabic language satellite news channel from the tiny Gulf emirate of Qatar. In this war the airwaves belong to Al Jazeera. Since its founding in 1996, Al Jazeera has created a revolution in Arab news media and public opinion, emerging as the first independent, professional pan-Arab news outlet.

Now that Al Jazeera is the primary international news organization providing serious coverage from inside Afghanistan and is commanding the attention of Arab public opinion - a key constituency in this most political of conflicts - the station’s coverage and its audience have become more important than any other in the world. If CNN was made by the 1991 Gulf War, the current conflict represents a similar global coming of age for Al Jazeera. Because of its reporting and free-wheeling call-in talk shows, Al Jazeera has evoked the wrath of almost every Arab government. Now US officials have joined the love-hate club, actively trying to alter Al Jazeera’s content and condemning its coverage while demanding to be interviewed on its programmes.

Even more intense has been the Al Jazeera-bashing in the Western press, which is heavily relying on news and footage gathered by Al Jazeera from the war zone. During the most dramatic moments of the war so far, news sources such as CNN and ABC simply morph into a rebroadcast and translation service for Al Jazeera and then squabble over rights to its coverage. Al Jazeera is simply telling the truth about what is happening in Afghanistan, while CNN and company have switched from “all-Condit, all the time” to “all-anthrax, all the time.”

Whatever one thinks of the current bombing in Afghanistan, it stands to reason that when one throws huge amounts of bombs at a country, people are going to get killed. The public, both in this country and around the world, has a right to see the effects of these actions.

Among the most troubling aspects of the attempts to manipulate and smear Al Jazeera is the spectre of censorship of inconvenient and embarrassing news about civilians killed in a war that is not supposed to be aimed at the Afghan people.

Al Jazeera represents the best trends of openness and democratization in the Arab world. It is a long-overdue two-way street in the global flow of information and opinion. It should be celebrated and encouraged, not smeared or censored.—Dawn/LAT-WP News Service (c) Los Angeles Times.