What’s gone wrong at Al Jazeera English?

Just discovered this on a media blog I read. There's a few people from Jazeera English on QL, so I thought I'd share.

Al Jazeera English a one billion dollar project financed by the Emir of Qatar and based in the small Arabian Peninsular, promised a fresh perspective on World news. The critics may have hailed the channel and complimented its unbiased reporting, but behind the scenes things have not been nearly so successful with morale at the station on the decline for the past year.

Al Jazeera English promised to give voices to the voiceless. Unfortunately for staff at the Doha base of AJE, The voiceless have turned out to be the very staff trying to produce the News.

In an extraordinary meeting held last Thursday a tired looking Nigel Parsons, Managing Director of Al Jazeera English, took questions from an angry group of over 100 from all levels of the company. Up to then, staff have had to keep their complaints to themselves unfortunately for Nigel Parsons he walked straight into a volley of extraordinarily upset staff who were not holding back with their venom.

What has happened at AJE? What led to Nigel walking into the verbal equivalent of a lynching ?

Delayed for over 18 months it began transmitting on Nov 1st 2006, but much like some of the new buildings in Doha, almost immediately cracks began to emerge. If one was to pinpoint the exact moment a nail was hammered into the heart of AJE it was perhaps in the 48 hours before launch, here a fateful decision was made, to change the name from Al Jazeera International to Al Jazeera English, a small change on the face of it but behind the scenes the change was more than just a name.

It was at this moment that AJE would no longer be a stand alone channel with all of it’s own in house services but would become part of the Al Jazeera Network, this Network includes sports, documentary and children’s channels. Overnight senior departmental managers and their staff became obsolete, managers of finance, programming, Personnel, Technology, Engineering and others suddenly found themselves answering to existing managers with their own staff. None survived 12 months.

Immediately the quality of service dropped, this came as no surprise to staff in Doha, and what was clear to staff seemed unexpected to the new managers, with no new staff existing teams of people used to dealing only with Arabic Al Jazeera now had over 400 new staff mainly from Western Europe to deal with. The departments most under stress were also the most important ones Personnel and Finance. This added workload resulted in long delays to family Visa’s, medical check ups (mandatory for expats in Qatar) and contract issuance. Now many people accepted the initial delays as part of doing business in the Gulf, a place where glacial is the term used to describe any business activity. Only the service didn’t get any better, and things deteriorated further.

The lack of a dedicated personnel department has meant chronic delays in hiring additional staff, this coupled with an unofficial ban on any staff being hired from Europe/Australia/N.Z. meant managers were forced to scrabble through C.V.s to find people fitting the new profile. Also managers were forced to obtain a clearance from the board of directors for all new members of staff, and if the board rejected your choice for a position you were forced to go back to square one.

In addition to this and almost unbelievably no one at AJE has been given a contract since June 2006, and the staff that were issued contracts were told shortly after they arrived that the promised benefits were not guaranteed.

It was shortly after June that the cuts began, two flights home became one, full medical benefits suddenly became subsidized only, and most controversially, rumors started flying that school fees would no longer be paid. A devastating blow to the many people who had brought their children to the Qatari desert. Many with large families now faced crippling costs of sky high school fees, forced up by an influx of expats that have flocked to the country in the last couple of years.

Families that only 18 months ago were preparing a for new life in the desert Kingdom now have to face the fact that they will have to return to their respective countries much sooner than planned.

Along with the immediate loss of benefits and the financial implications this has on staff a more fundamental problem exists at AJE.

Since the integration into the Network, AJE has found it’s self slowly being drawn into the archaic ways that the Arabic channel had always run on, thus in 2007 the channel was now being forced into working practices not seen in television since the 80’s. One of the fundamental problems was the idea of multi skilling, in a modern newsroom it’s unheard of for an individual to hold a single role, Journalists now edit packages, a director can vision mix a camera operator does sound, a sound-man does auto cue, etc. News is now based around the idea. The result of this and the modern technology involved in the new channel, is a staff level half that of it’s sister channel, but the wage bill is not half. A point of disagreement at the Arab channel. For an outsider it seems obvious that it’s better to pay a single Director/Vision Mixer 40,000 pound a year rather than pay a Director 40,000 and the Vision Mixer 40,000 to anyone the saving was clear, however, to the bosses at the Arabic station these were unheard of sums to be paid to an individual.
To this end all salaries offered to staff since June 2006 have been significantly lower than ones offered before that date. This has compounded the employment problems of managers who face having to hire staff on sometimes half the original wage of their colleagues.

The problem is that 40,000 pound for Vision Mixer/Director was already on the low side of industry scales and the same held true across AJE. Remember these roles are based in Doha Qatar, not central London. Contrary to Industry assumption the company were not handing out gold bars at the arrivals lounge, the wages have only ever been considered average, what made the wage acceptable to many was the overall package of benefits including housing, and the fact that due to Qatar’s huge oil wealth there is no income tax.

Now of course no tax may have attracted a few but talk to staff and the overriding feeling is that staff signed up to be part a historic channel launch. It is this that has kept the channel going despite the now chronic staff shortages and the gradual eroding of benefits.

Now though It seems that the staff have had enough, its not quite clear what the straw that broke the camels back actually was, schooling perhaps or the fact that in a country where inflation runs at 15% the company seems to have ruled out any pay rises, or it may have been the overwhelming feeling that despite many members of staff putting in over 70 hour weeks and not taking leave for over a year Al Jazeera doesn’t really seem to care.

It seems that the dedication of the staff thats produced the award winning programming no longer have any respect from the Al Jazeera Management, the feeling that “we are being used” was a popular sentiment of the meeting. Passions are running so high that when one member of staff suggested a 24 hour strike a ripple of “hear hears” filled the room.

And it seems that the voices and concerns raised in the past year have been falling on deaf ears, it transpired early in the meeting that Nigel Parsons the Managing Director, is not invited to Al Jazeera boardroom meetings. Instead he admitted to a stunned room that he gained his information through his secretary who talks to another secretary who sits in on the boardroom meetings. It would appear that even at the highest levels there seems to be a lack of respect.

And it didn’t not go unnoticed that when a Managing Director gets his information from his secretary there must be fundamental problems with the company structure.

And the result of the reduction in benefits, and a seemingly uncaring attitude from the Network, Over 13 resignations this week alone.

The MD is bracing for more as many people joined on 2 year contracts between Nov 2005 and June 2006. Al Jazeera could be facing a serious staffing crisis.

Clearly something has to give, with your staff threatening walkout, and resigning at an alarming rate it would appear that things will only get worse before they get better.

The question is though with a Managing Director seemingly cut out of any decision making processes how much worse will it get.

Will the channel become a one billion dollar white elephant before it celebrates it’s second birthday?