By Daikha Dridi
Reporter, Algeria-Interface.com
Algiers, Algeria

When I first read the Seattle Post-Intelligencer (PI), I had to make efforts to concentrate on reading it. I blamed myself because of what I thought was an obvious lack of interest. I found it sad that I had come to the United States to spend five months in a newspaper I couldn’t read because it was boring to me. These were my first impressions.

Then came the first ten days in the newsroom. The city desk editor did not assign me an editor before taking some days off. So I had to wait until she came back from vacation. I found myself totally jobless in a new environment in a dreary gray city. I felt frustrated and irritated: why did I travel from Algeria to spend my time doing nothing in a newsroom where nothing ever happens?

Fortunately my mentor is a great person. His sense of humor really helped me through these first days. And I also decided to busy myself doing research on story ideas I wanted to work on as soon as I would be assigned to an editor. Thankfully things changed dramatically as soon as I had one.

Then breaking news about the FBI investigating a Seattle mosque for “terrorist ties” made everything go very fast. The PI was beaten by its competitor The Seattle Times, which broke the story. The PI had no choice but to try to catch up with The Times and my editor thought it could be worth sending me with the PI reporter to talk to Muslims who attend the mosque. I guess the first idea was to use me as a translator.

I felt apprehensive. I didn’t know how the other reporter worked, what his attitude would be with people at the mosque. I didn’t know how the PI would use the information we would bring back. I figured out that people at the mosque would be upset because the way The Times wrote the story, which was indeed unfair, relying exclusively on FBI sources.

I was apprehensive but I was very curious too. I decided to go because I wanted to know how the press here deals with these kinds of stories. I was also very curious about those Muslims suspected of attempting to set up a terrorist training camp in the heart of white rural Oregon. What happened is I really liked the attitude of the reporter I worked with—we made a good team and brought back good new information. We had to go on working together on that story for a while; it followed several episodes until a Seattle suspect was arrested. Our editor was glad because we could catch up with The Times and even have scoops on the story.

I once did an interview with an Algerian who lives in London and who infiltrated “radical mosques” for European and Algerian intelligence, he gave the PI new information on the Seattle story. My colleague and I also had an exclusive interview with a person who lived at the ranch where the suspects were supposed to have set up a terrorist training camp. Many of the big bosses at the PI still think I was able to help on such stories because I speak Arabic. Truth is I had to work most of the time with American Muslims who do not speak Arabic at all.

What happened in fact is I found it so interesting to work on such stories that I worked hard to quickly make good contacts with people inside the community. My Muslim culture was often of great help but sometimes it was a burden. In a context where people were angry with the media and scared of it at the same time, I was told that I was considered as part of a trick used against them. In other words I was the “traitor.” However, I think my knowledge of Islamic culture, world civilization and Islamist movements was even more helpful once back to the newsroom.

Working on such stories is exciting because of the pressure it puts on you. We were competing with The Times who spent more resources and who obviously had better FBI sources than the PI.

At the same time it gave me an extraordinary opportunity to compare between the way these kinds of stories were handled back home and here. I never thought the U.S. press was as free as its legend says. I must also say that since September 11, its reputation as a free press was shaken not only in Muslim countries but also in Europe. But I think it is one of the most professional and I wanted to see how “the pros” work. I was not impressed. But I was not disappointed either.

What I observed working on “terrorism” stories, was that the standards of professionalism were not as high as for other stories. The pressure of competition also added to the fact that information published was not checked as it should have been. I was shocked to see how easily the press used the word “terrorist.”

It felt to me like Algeria in the nineties, in the heart of “terrorism and counter-terrorism period,” when all big newspapers were competing to get their “terrorist exclusive.” Since I have been in the U.S., I often read stories that are exclusively sourced by the FBI or other intelligence sources and I find it problematic.

What made me continue working on such issues whenever I was asked was that the version of the story given by the accused people was also published in the paper. I also witnessed an interesting debate that lasted a whole week, while I was sent (again with another reporter) to eastern Washington, to do a story on a tiny Muslim community suspected by the FBI of sending money to organizations labeled by the U.S. government as terrorists. While we were working in eastern Washington, the FBI called the managing editors and asked that we stop the story. They said that we were jeopardizing an investigation they had been doing for months. Some bosses were thinking that we should do what the FBI was asking “because we shouldn’t burn bridges for the future between them and us.” Others thought we shouldn’t, “because we had an exclusive story and we shouldn’t waste the occasion to run it.”

Finally the decision was taken several days later to publish it. It was interesting for me to see that journalists who love to think and say they are the “freest in the world” were so anxious about what the government was asking them not to do

In Algeria, when the security services call to stop a story, most of the time the story doesn’t run, because they don’t really ask, they “order.” But I witnessed a case when editors took the decision to publish despite the cops’ pressure. It was only once, but Algeria was under a military dictatorship in a context of violent civil war.

When I decided to do the Alfred Friendly program I did not expect to learn how to be a reporter. I was curious about how it works in a normal context, where freedom of press is guaranteed, where violence and poverty do not undermine the ethics of reporters.

I am expected to answer a question about what I think I learned here and would implement in Algeria. I am perplexed. Truth is I don’t know. The contexts are so different. My experience in the PI taught me that it is much easier to be a journalist in the U.S. than in my country and, I guess, many other countries in the South of the planet.

But saying this does not mean I think the Alfred Friendly program is useless. I actually think it is a very good program. It gave me an extraordinary opportunity to judge my real abilities, out of the familiar Algerian context. I do not think any academic program can match this experience.

It can be a very interesting experience if the fellow is aggressive enough, if the fellow does not let people in the newsroom patronize, which they tend to do. I enjoyed my experience because I had to work with the same editor and it was great. Our relationship did not begin very well, I had the feeling he was patronizing me just because I was a foreigner and he felt I was an arrogant reporter. But after we knew each other better, I loved working under his supervision. I never had the chance in Algeria to work with such an editor. When I was a beginner I would rather go ask “elder” friends to help me and they would not always be available. Here I had the chance to work with an editor who took time to make me give the best I could. He was not only “using me” for “terror coverage” but he actually wanted me to gain from the experience as much as I could. And I did.