The End of His Rope

Broadcast journalist Dave Marash has been a stalwart of the American TV news scene for nearly 50 years, having worked at Fox, NBC, ESPN and, until 2006, as a correspondent for ABC's "Nightline" alongside Ted Koppel. But the veteran correspondent turned heads in early 2006 when he signed on to become anchorman at the Arabic TV network Al-Jazeera's Al-Jazeera English, which was opening its American headquarters in Washington. The network faced what one might charitably call a public-relations challenge, being best known in the United States as the first place to broadcast the anti-American tirades of Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda cohorts. But Marash was hopeful that the U.S. operation would change that. During an appearance on Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report", part of a media blitz he did upon announcing his new gig, Marash said he expected Al-Jazeera English to be "the highest-class English-language news channel in the world."

Two years later Marash is leaving Al-Jazeera, expressing disappointment that the global channel's American coverage was undervalued and that the concept that he originally bought into had changed into something he "could no longer stomach." A spokesperson for the network who saw things differently told NEWSWEEK that Marash is a talented journalist but that the opinions he expressed on his way out were "very much inconsistent with the sentiments of other employees of Al-Jazeera—Arab, British and American." Marash spoke with NEWSWEEK's Daniel Stone about his tenure at the controversial network.

NEWSWEEK: How did Al-Jazeera sell you on the development of the English network in the United States with you as its face?
Dave Marash: They said it would be a very high-quality news channel, which it is, but that it would be distinguished from all other news channels by having four separate news centers: Doha [Qatar], London, Washington and Kuala Lumpur [Malaysia]. I was told that each of them would have a large degree of autonomy. It was known from the start that the largest share of the hours would go to Doha and the largest share of perspective would come from Doha. But the other three points of interest would be very well represented.

The implication of your departure is that it didn't happen that way.
Over the course of two years, I found that more and more of the lineups and assignments were being devised mandated and ordered direct from Doha, and quite conspicuously Washington was the only one of the four news centers that never got a news hour.

Was it just the geographic imbalance of on-air time that bothered you? What did you think about the content?
Well, every day I would see things that I would be very proud to associate myself with. The coverage of Latin America was really good. The coverage of the implosion in parts of Africa was absolutely great television. But it really hurt and embarrassed me that in the U.S. there was less concern given to that kind of excellent and authentic and knowledgeable coverage.

Were there specific stories in which that was apparent?
Here's an example: there was a series on poverty in America, which ended up being nothing more than saying, "Here are poor people in the richest country on earth, what a shame." And there's nothing wrong with that statement, literally. But it's a reporter's job to get a little bit deeper than that, to say, "Why is it that these people or this part of town is poor? Why is it that being poor in this town is such an unrelieved misery when other places do a better job at mitigating?"

But in any professional environment, isn't it common to have moments when you think things should be done differently?
Well, if I was just another employee, I might have felt differently. But I was sent out to represent a concept, and that concept had changed in ways I couldn't stomach.