Noam Chomsky has been called one of the world’s foremost intellectuals.

We know policy-makers like Donald Rumsfeld have called Al Jazeera ‘Terror TV.’ What do you think is the perception among Americans of the Arab media?
 Well it depends on which Americans. Bush, Rumsfeld, Powell and Rice hate Al Jazeera for the same reason as the Arab tyrants do. It’s a democratizing force; it’s free, open and contributes to democracy, so naturally they hate it. And just like the Arab tyrannies, the US government has tried very hard to put Al Jazeera out of business. When the Emir of Qatar came to the United States, he was bitterly condemned by Powell, Rice and the rest of them for allowing Al Jazeera to function. In fact the pressure was so intense that he offered to privatize it, but the Bush administration told him that wouldn’t work either because they didn’t want private independent media. No independent media. That’s why they kicked Al Jazeera out of Iraq before the elections, because you can’t allow independent media before an election. That’s why they bombed them out of Kabul before they went in. So yes, naturally they hate them. As for the American public, they don’t know that they exist. All they know is what they read in the newspaper. It’s a terrorist outlet. How could they know?
 
You said the US bombed Al Jazeera; do you think the bombing was on purpose?
 I happen to be in Islamabad a couple of days after the bombing of the Al Jazeera facilities in Kabul, and there were thousands of journalists in the hotel in Islamabad trying to get into Afghanistan. And journalists hang around the hotel bar and talk and so on, the usual situation. I guess that every journalist there took for granted that they bombed them on purpose. However, when I read their reports, they didn’t report that.  I’ve seen that many times in the past, in many parts of the world, in Southeast Asia, in the Middle East and elsewhere; the journalists understand and when they’re talking to each other they assume the obvious, but when they write it, it comes out differently. Either because they write it differently or the editors change it. My assumption was that the bombing was on purpose to get them out of Kabul before the Northern alliance came in.
 
And then again in Baghdad in 2003?
 How that should have been a mistake is hard to believe; they’re attacking a hotel where journalists stay. But whatever you think about that, they forced them out of Baghdad before the election. I mean they claim the Iraqi government forced them out, but the Iraqi government doesn’t do things without U.S authorization.

Many American journalists say that the media in the Middle East is changing but still lags behind the West, especially in terms of editorializing the news. Do you agree that Western press is still more objective, independent?
 It depends, I mean I don’t read the Arab press, but I read Al Ahram Weekly and I read The Daily Star, and they’re as free and open as anything in the West and even more so in fact. While I’m here I’ve done more clipping from the Daily Star than I have from the International Herald Tribune. I mean I clip things that I find of unusual interest. I don’t know what the censorship system is like in Egypt but I’m sure its heavy still plenty of material appears in Al Ahram Weekly that you would never find in a Western newspaper. Many American journalists have illusions about themselves. They believe they’re very free, courageous, pervading and so on, but that’s because the narrowness of their intellectual framework is so extreme that they can’t see what their omitting, they can’t see that they never would  dream about talking about like say, US aggression, it’s not a concept.

Do you think that America’s dominant position in broadcasting is slowing being chipped away by all-news networks from other countries, especially with the effort now to broadcast Al Jazeera in English?
 They’ll all try to prevent it. In the 1980s, there was an effort byUNESCO to create what was called a new international information order that would allow Third World sources to enter into the international media system. Well that led to a huge attack against UNESCO, with denunciations and the American press claiming they were trying to impose censorship, trying to eliminate the free press—full of lies, hideous lies—New York Times and the rest of them were publishing outlandish lies. They would never permit a response, and in fact the US ended up removing funding from UNESCO. It was a major attack against the idea that there might be a breakdown of the Western monopoly. It was an astonishing incident and gave you the real understanding of what the Western media feel about freedom of the press. They have to have a monopoly, and they’re willing to lie at will to try to prevent anything else.