Voices from the Periphery

Abstract

Al Jazeera’s motto, “The opinion and the other opinion,” is the natural starting point for a review of its mission to widen the boundaries of public conversation in the Arab world and the world. All responsible mass media have a similar motto or goal: to represent and discover the many voices that comprise one’s community, to provide a place and context for the expression of opinion and to lead in the granting of mutual respect. The world-regarded social responsibility theory of the press holds this goal as its core. Any conversation about media mission and vision includes the metaphor: voice of the voiceless. What range of voices does Al Jazeera broadcast as duty, privilege for purposes of peace? What voices would Al Jazeera never cover, and why? How does Al Jazeera keep itself accountable to the “mission of voice” as it negotiates the challenging political, religious and developmental ecology of the Middle East? Finally, what can Al Jazeera teach other media companies and constituencies as it continues to grow and articulate its own mission? Couldry’s (Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism. London: Sage, 2010) perspective on the importance of the voice is pertinent in its argument that recovering voice challenges the dominant neoliberal politics opposed to Al Jazeera’s contra flow.