Interview with Al-Jazeera/English correspondent & Marine vet Josh Rushing (long)

A conversation with Al-Jazeera/English correspondent Josh Rushing (www.Joshrushing.com)

Q: What's your background?

A: Before Al-Jazeera, my last employer was the US Marine Corps. I was the face of America, the spokesman for Tommy Frank. In fact, that's how I learned about Al-Jazeera. Whoa, it was nothing like what Rumsfeld was saying. They never showed a beheading. They've been kicked out of just about ever Middle East country except Israel. When I was with the Marines, I tried to get Central Command to engage with Al-Jazeera more. Then someone released a documentary about me at the Sundance film festival. Without telling me -- I didn't know anything about it. I only found out because a guy looked up my Marines work number, and called to say, 'Hey, you don't know me, but I just saw your movie, and I want to say Thank You.' I was, like, 'WHAT?' I Googled my name and Sundance, and up came "Control Room." I'd never heard of it. It became this huge story that broke records in independent theaters. Suddenly all the media wanted to talk to me about it. The Pentagon said I couldn't talk about it, and that only made the story bigger. I finally had a platform to discuss my frustrations, so I resigned total America what Al-Jazeera was and what it wasn't, and why it's so important. I went on Anderson Cooper, Fox, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4133282, and then 6 months later, a BBC producer called me to say he was leaving the BBC to start Al-Jazeera English -- this wasn't an Arab guy, but a guy in London -- and we shot a test, and it turned out well.

Q: What have you been doing this year?

A: I've been traveling the world for most of a year, writing about war -- looking at war as a universal force and trying to understand it. I've been to Laos, Peru and other places that don't have easy Internet access.

Q: Tell us about being un-invited to the Golden city manager's barbeque.

A: Well, I've been invited to a lot of barbeques and un-invited to a couple, but this was the first time I was un-invited via press release. They didn't call me or send a personal email. I found out in a press release. How do you turn the word 'surreal' into an adjective?

Q: Was it the first surreal moment as an Al-Jazeera correspondent?

A: No. The beginning of my book talks about that. I flew into Crosby, North Dakota when I was doing a story on small-town America where the kids are moving away and not coming back. An ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agent was following me around, and told everyone I'd interviewed that they had become security risks. So all these old people started calling me, asking if I could un-interview them, not use their stories. Then that got on the Fox news ticker: Al-Jazeera is probing the northern unsecured US border. I was, like, you've gotta be kidding me. My office is 3 blocks from the White House, and I flew to Crosby, North Dakota, and suddenly I'm a security risk? And then that day I learned that a friend of mine was killed in Iraq, in a helicopter crash, and I'm thinking, "My buddy died for ...what?"

Q: And other moments?

A: I'm tasked with what Middle America thinks, so I go to small towns and VFW halls all over the country -- Kansas, Alabama, and you haven't lived until you've walked into a VFW hall in Alabama. A month or two ago, I was in Burlington, Vermont, for a week of town council meetings. People were protesting because Al-Jazeera was being carried by a local cable channel. I went there in between a trip to Iran where they have prisons for Al Qaeda, and a trip to Peru for a story on the new Shining Path. For a week of town council meetings! And 150 people showed up in a room built for 70. Standing room only. Of the people who spoke, 44 were for Al-Jazeera, and 6 were against it. Of those 6, none of them had seen it. Not one. Half of them -- three people -- weren't mad about Al-Jazeera specifically; they were mad about the way the city picked its cable networks, and used Al-Jazeera as a springboard. The other three were repeating what they'd heard on talk shows and the internet. That got national headlines. But there was not a follow-up story. That's the surreal nature of my life. I get invited to barbeques and un-invited by press releases.

Q: What do you say to the people who believe Al-Jazeera is a front for Al Qaeda?

A: Well, I like to ask them questions: How much Al-Jazeera have you watched? Invariably, the answer is "None." Then I ask, "How can you feel so strongly about it?" America seems so polarized. People have such strong opinions based on almost nothing but other people's opinions, and that's true of the left, too. People have forgotten they can find out facts by themselves. Billions of people watch Al-Jazeera on YouTube. You can watch us live. Even if you didn't watch that, you can go to the website. These people have not done much homework. Never have I seen people be so ignorant, and have such strong feelings about a subject they don't understand. It'd be like me saying, "I hate Indian food, and I hate it so much that I want to burn down an Indian restaurant." Someone might ask, "Gee, have you ever eaten Indian food?" and I'd say, "No, but that doesn't matter. I still want to burn down an Indian restaurant." What would people think if I said that? They'd think I was crazy.

Q: What are the most common misperceptions?

A: First, they say that we show beheadings. It's a black and white fact that Al-Jazeera has never shown a beheading. The European media started that, and they've apologized, although the American media never has. That all started with the Daniel Pearl tape. Al-Jazeera showed only the first part of the tape to prove it was true, and that was after CNN showed it. I was on O'Reilly's show, and told him that it wasn't true about the beheadings, but he never followed up on that. Opinion Nation. That's what we've become. Truthiness is such a perfect word for our time.

Q: And what's another misperception?

A: That Al-Jazeera is the mouthpiece of Al Qaeda. Well, look at what Al Qaeda actually says about us. They call us pro-Zionist, pro-Western and infidel. Al Qaeda HATES Al-Jazeera. HATES us. That's why they started their own network. We were the first Arab news station to put on Israeli officials to explain their point of view. Before, all the news was state-run; you never saw the Israel point of view.

Q: What's a drawback about working at Al-Jazeera?

A: Well, when we first launched Al-Jazeera/English, one of the most honest criticisms of us was that it looked like Apocalypse TV. I think Al-Jazeera felt that Western media spends too much time on entertainment and celebrities, and we were there to give voice to the underdog. We were more serious, and very, very hard-hitting. But after three months on the job, you could almost have post-traumatic stress syndrome. We're trying to find more balance now.

Q: What's with http://www.aljazeera.com and AlJazeera.info?

A: They have nothing at all to do with Al-Jazeera.net. They're the number one source of misinformation on Al-Jazeera. It's where people naturally go when they're Googling Al-Jazeera, and right away they come to alJazeera.com, and it's the worst conspiracy stuff you've ever seen, and people think this is the network. Al-Jazeera filed a lawsuit against it in 2004 or 2005, but we lost, because Al-Jazeera is a common word in the Middle East. It means "island," and so you have Al-Jazeera coffee shops, Al-Jazeera airline, Al-Jazeera restaurants -- and none of them have anything to do with the network. But the other guys, the alJazeera.com guys, had that name going back to 1992. But what Al-Jazeera.net did win in that lawsuit was that the alJazeera.com had to put up a disclaimer. It's not easy to find. When they first offered me this job, the first thing I did was Google Al-Jazeera, and alJazeera.com came up, with all this inflammatory stuff -- they said the US had caused the Indonesian tsunami with a nuke, and that the Koran said it was OK to beat your wife. I was, like, oh my gosh, I can't work for this company! I wonder if that's what the people in Golden saw -- if they went to alJazeera.com. If you went to Al-Jazeera.net, there's nothing on our site that you wouldn't find on the BBC.

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