Yale Bulletin and Calendar

April 18, 2008|Volume 36, Number 26

During his visit as a Poynter Fellow, Riz Kahn broadcast his Al Jazeera English interview show, which featured research scientist Rebecca Puhl as his guest. The topic was the stigma of obesity. Kahn also delivered the Gary G. Fryer Memorial Lecture.

Noted Al Jazeera journalist discusses stereotypes during campus visit

When former CNN news anchor Riz Khan left Atlanta and moved to a new home in Dubai, his American friends became uneasy when he invited them to come visit.

They would ask: “Is it safe to be in that part of the world?” Khan told his audience at the Yale Center for British Art, where he delivered the Poynter Fellowship’s Gary G. Fryer Memorial Lecture on April 7.

“That part of the world,” Khan noted, refers to the Middle East, a region that has become so prey to suspicion since Sept. 11 that it is difficult for Westerners to see beyond stereotypical images of it, the journalist said in his talk.

“I don’t remember people canceling trips to Paris or Milan when the Irish Republican Army exploded bombs in London all those years ago,” said Khan. “People didn’t stop visiting other places in Europe when the former Yugoslavia was in a total civil war.”

Khan, now the television host of his own interactive interview program for the network Al Jazeera English, used video clips and photographs to illustrate some of the deeply entrenched stereotypes of the Middle East in his talk on “Al Jazeera, Islam, Stereotypes and Who Is the Enemy?”

One, a “Mad TV” spoof on Al Jazeera English, showed everyone on a news program — from its anchors to the sportscasters and weather reporter — punctuating nearly every one of their sentences with the comment “Death to America!”

In America, Al Jazeera largely has a reputation for being the “mouthpiece” of Osama bin Laden, according to Khan, who described this view as a misperception. One of the founding directors of Al Jazeera English, he said he believes the channel is “politically neutral” and that its editorial mandate is to be “free and fair.” The goal of the channel, Khan said, is to provide better coverage of the developing world and to give “a clearer perspective on some of the most important news stories in the world today,” including those relating to the Middle East.

Khan described stereotyping as one of the world’s “biggest dangers” and noted that stereotypes “become far more easily established and entrenched than reversed.”

He said Muslims and Arabs are particular targets in today’s world.

“In the case of Muslims — and in particular Arabs, who are somehow all regarded as Muslim even though many are Christian — there’s the double whammy of being Arab and Muslim,” Khan told his audience. He noted that the majority of Muslims in the world don’t even live in the Middle East.

He said that stereotypes of the Middle East are so entrenched that just the world “al” — as in al Qaeda — carries negative connotations for people in the West, especially Americans. In fact, “al” simply means “the” in Arabic, Khan told his audience, and the phrase “Al Jazeera” translates into English as “The Peninsula.”

“It refers to the geography of that part of the Gulf region of the Middle East,” Khan said. “If you visit Doha, in Qatar, where Al Jazeera is headquartered, you’ll see a hundred businesses called ‘Al Jazeera’ — from Al Jazeera Dry Cleaners to Al Jazeera Kebab Shop. The word is hardly controversial there, but then again, it all comes down to perspective.”

Khan, who started his career at the BBC and was the global network’s first news anchor from South Asia, worked for eight years at CNN, where he was the senior anchor for the network’s global news shows and for special events. In 1996 he launched his interactive CNN show “Q&A with Riz Khan.” He left CNN months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to work as a freelance journalist and to write his first book, “Al-Waleed: Business Billionaire Prince,” about the Saudi prince and international investor. He joined the 24-hours news channel Al Jazeera English in 2005. Among the individuals he has interviewed during the course of his career are Jane Goodall, the Dalai Lama, Kofi Annan, Hillary Clinton, Sheryl Crow, Mikhail Gorbachev and Nelson Mandela.

During his visit to the University, Khan also conducted an interview for his television show with Rebecca Puhl, a research scientist in psychology who is affiliated with Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. The show focused on the stigma of obesity. Kahn noted how this stigma is also related to stereotyping.

“I read some of [Puhl’s] research and I was shocked to read that parents of obese girls are statistically less likely to spend money on sending their daughters to college,” Kahn said. “It’s really sad to hear how people judge one another on factors that may have nothing to do with their capabilities, their humanity, their potential.”

The Gary G. Fryer Memorial Lecture honors Yale’s former director of public affairs and special assistant to the president, who served from 1994 until his death in 1997. The lecture focuses on the ethical responsibilities of those engaged in government, higher education or communications.

— By Susan Gonzalez

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