Slashdot Mirror
Al Jazeera Gets a US Voice
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that Al Jazeera plans to start an English-language channel available in more than 40 million U.S. homes, with newscasts emanating from both New York and Doha, Qatar. They announced a deal to take over Current TV, the low-rated cable channel that was founded by Al Gore seven years ago. But the challenge will be persuading Americans to watch the award winning network with 71 bureaus around the world — an extremely tough proposition given the crowded television marketplace and the stereotypes about the channel that persist to this day. 'There are still people who will not watch it, who will say that it's a "terrorist network,"' says Philip Seib. 'Al Jazeera has to override that by providing quality news.' With a handful of exceptions, American cable and satellite distributors have mostly refused to carry Al Jazeera English since its inception in 2006. While the television sets of White House officials and lawmakers were tuned to the channel during the Arab Spring in 2011, ordinary Americans who wanted to watch had to find a live stream on the Internet. Al Jazeera's Robert Wheelock said, We offer an alternative. It's a broader coverage of news. It's a broader spectrum into countries that aren't traditionally covered.'"
After all, a non American involved in US broadcasting is clearly beyond the pale.
Why next somebody from Rand McNally will make us wear hats on our feet and reverse the direction the water flows in our toilets.
Well actually I do, it's great to have an alternative voice and hopefully this will bring more understanding and humanity to the news.
Nullius in verba
I hope they take her lessons to heart!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Fox News isn't really that independent 25% of its ownership belongs to Saudi family (yes, as in Saudi Arabia). At least AlJazeera provides quailty coverage..
You should look up their web page and read their coverage before you make such stupid ignorant statements
Al Jazeera is more like CNN or BBC than Fox or Russia Today. It's an actual news organization rather than a propaganda outlet.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
As someone who's actually watched Al Jazeera English, I'd just recommend that people watch it before they judge it, rather than just assuming it's the "Al Qaeda network". It's not.
CBC's "As It Happens" & "The Current" news & current events programs are well worth a listen, eg, via podcasts.
Warm - asking difficult questions sensitively (eg, about tragic stories), & providing time both for the whole answer -and- transitions between adjacent stories... sometimes playing fitting music between them.
Smart - asking excellent & concise questions, giving time for interviewees' answers... but also asking excellent follow-up questions, so their probing questions -get- answered.
Ever since the days of the (late) radio journo Barbara Fromm, these & other Canadian programs have kept the hard-hitting interview tradition alive & well. We love em!
Found stories like
Are US evangelicals exporting anti-gay views?
"A new report reveals conservative American Christian groups behind efforts to criminalise homosexuality in Africa." and
What is Obama risking by backing gay unions?
"We ask if the US president should go a step further by offering constitutional protection for gay and lesbian couples."
Al Jazeera is far from conservative.
Yup here they come. Except for issues that have directly to do with the Qatari government and its interests (for example Arab Spring in Qatar), Al Jazeera english is quite fair and balanced. And they go a lot of places other news organizations are unable or unwilling to go. This may be unpleasant to Americans (the inside story of the civil war in Syria, for example), or even uncomfortable when the results of western action are exposed.
In any case, give it a look see yourself. Go to their web site and watch right there online. Or do this:
rtmpdump -v -r rtmp://aljazeeraflashlivefs.fplive.net/aljazeeraflashlive-live/aljazeera_eng_med | mplayer -
I'm sure Nickelodeon and The Comedy Channel are already feeling the heat.
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Subject: I expect Fox News to report on this heavily.
After all, a non American involved in US broadcasting is clearly beyond the pale.
That was sarcasm, right? K. Rupert Murdoch, head of Fox News Channel's parent company Fox Group (formerly News Corporation), isn't even as American as Barack Obama.
My local PBS station carries Mhz Worldview which carries Russia Today, Al Jazeera, France 25 and NHK World broadcasts. I welcome this move.
Hopefully we won't bomb their headquarters again like we did in Iraq. I can honestly say I get better, factual news from international sources about my own country than what CNN/MSNBC/Fox/ABC/CBS provides. It's pretty easy to see where the blackouts are when all the US networks won't cover one story but the international networks do.
Yet people are still pissed off because AJZ played Osama Bin Laden videos? I for one wanted to hear what he had to say. I think Americans deserve to hear all perspectives.
How cute that you think CNN and BBC are in the same category as Fox News. How jaded do you have to be before you start making absurd false equivalencies like that?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Here's the web url for watching if you don't want to use mplayer or vlc:
http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/
Oddly enough, I'm pretty impressed with Al Jezeeras online coverage of the mideast. That should say a lot since I am sympathetic to the Jews in Israel and a complete cynic about the newsclowns domestically and in Europe.
I'd rather read that than most of the crap I run into in the world.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
If you look at their English edition and track the history of reporting on different countries you'll notice that articles about the US are far more likely to have the comment system enabled, while articles about Middle East countries, Russia, or China almost always have the comments disabled. When you see that most of the comments are anti-US and anti-Jewish, you will wonder whether it's an underhanded way of maintaining a veneer of neutrality while still guiding opinion.
Its owner is the state of Qatar, hosts to the U.S. Central Command’s Forward Headquarters and Combined Air Operations Center. There is nothing "radical" about them. All "news" must receive clearance, Clarence...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I read Al Jazeera's English website regularly. They provide good news, good video clips, and seem right up there with the BBC or CBC for the quality of their reporting.
But unlike the BBC and CBC, a lot of their news is about Asia and Africa, areas which aren't even *mentioned* on "mainstream" channels unless there is a major disaster or a few dozen people killed.
Oddly enough, they manage to cover the world with only one front page to their website, the same screen real-estate that the other channels have.
In comparison, the BBC and CBC are "local" news channels. And the US news feeds are just a freakin' joke -- they don't cover anything that can't be directly related to US white house policy. Navel-gazing waste of time -- no wonder most Americans are so ignorant about world politics and economic issues.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Well, it heavily depends on which Al Jazeera you watched, the English or the Arabic speaking one. The former is pretty objective and neutral, the latter is trying to establish new records in how biased they can be.
Heck, just for an example, after the revolutions that swiped the region, Al Jazeera English covered the elections in a pretty neutral way, they only showed regular people voting and stuff. The Arabic one had images of the leader of the Islamist party in Tunisia, voting and showing off with his friends, running all day long. I guess they keep it this way knowing their "target audiences".
One interesting result of all this, though, is a huge loss of popularity for Al Jazeera in these countries (mainly Tunisia and Egypt). In part because, now that the revolutions ended and a semi-democratic climate is avialable, less biased news sources appeared and Al Jazeera can't claim it's role as the "Sole source of real infos". And also probably because everyone here understood the game Quatar is playing. They financed the winning team and they are reaping the benefits in "Honest opportunities for our benefactors to help us "finance" our economic rebuilding efforts".
Actually, the BBC is not owned by the british government. For some reasons, some US-Americans have a problem with grasping the difference between "public" and "governmental".
It was formed when BBC closed it Arabic division. Those folks went and started Al Jazeerah.
It is criticized as too west in the Arab world.
JFYI.
It is still news, even if it is biased. Each retelling of a story is an interpretation, and even the selection of a newsworthy story shows bias. Get over it. It's still news even though your strongly opiniated neighbor tells it. For some reasons, a lot of people still believe that news, told by the wrong person, somehow aren't true. It's still news.
Let me understand this... Al Gore, Eco Warrior, founds Current TV, a left leaning political news cable channel. It is (last year) put up for sale. An offer from a conservative group is rebuffed, with the Current spokesperson saying, "the legacy of who the network goes to is important to us and we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.” Instead, they sell it, for $500 million (of which Al Gore gets $100 million), to the Government of Qatar, one of the top producers of fossil fuel in the world, a country were women have no voice, and homosexuality is illegal and punishable by death. As icing on the cake, apparently Mr. Gore tried to push for the sale to be complete before the new year, so he could take advantage of expiring tax laws. "we are sensitive to networks not aligned with our point of view.”
Those of you not familiar with the history, Al Jazeera was founded by the staff of the BBC's Arabic language channel when they went into retrenchment (shut down the channel they did). The Qatari's foot the bill, but the overarching philosophy and quality are Auntie Beeb's. They only got a bad rap from the Bush administration for reporting honestly during the Iraq invasion, but basically they are the straightest shooters in the Arabic world, and one of the best sources of world news period now that the U.S. desks have given up on maintaining foreign bureaus.
"Lost time is not found again."
The deal closed after the new year. Gore will pay higher taxes. You're either wrong, or lying.
" [] a muslim, foreign nation's state owned media apparatus broadcasting into other nations"
What's wrong with muslims? We can talk about who's controlling the strings, and if that's good or not, but you busted out Muslim as a bad thing all by itself.
You should perhaps consider that you're an uninformed racist, at best.
I'll watch the channel, assuming Concast (and no, I didn't accidentally misspell it) will carry it. Al Jazeera can't possibly be any more biased than Fox, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, etc.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The funniest part of this whole deal is that Al Gore pushed the sale to get completed prior to the new year to avoid Obamas tax increases. Not that I wouldn't do the same... but it's more of Al Gores "Do as I say, not as I do" nonsense. I wonder if he was the sole passenger on a private jet that took him to sign the deal.
Arabic language journalism seems to be about where English language journalism was about 300 years ago.
Hopefully they will catch up, and hopefully stop about 30 or 40 years ago when the English language profession was at its high point, and not follow all the way to the degenerate crap that we have now.
Just pointing out a Troll here folks.
People. Don't be willfully ignorant. Check out Al Jazeera for yourself and decide:
http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/
http://www.aljazeera.com/
I will tell you first off a little bit about myself to point out any biases that I may have: I am a white Canadian man who is in his 40's who hates Muslim zealots and Jewish zealots. Yes I can't stand Christian religious fundamentalists either. I'm also a highly analytical person. I hate political correctness, and I hate yellow journalism. I'm finding a lot of ignorant and prejudiced comments here, so I'll start off with this Troll who proclaims to be knowledgable about Al jazeera, and who seems to imply that it is NOT so much a news company but rather a propaganda organ for religious extremists. Think moderators: before you up-moderate Trolls!
Parent said:
If you look at their English edition and track the history of reporting on different countries you'll notice that articles about the US are far more likely to have the comment system enabled, while articles about Middle East countries, Russia, or China almost always have the comments disabled.
OK I admit I don't track the history of comments. Lets be serious though; nobody except for somebody with an agenda would track comment history. Even if the parent's comment is true, it is still a Troll because it implies malfeasance without any proof but the authors own speculations. Also realize that people often see patterns where there are none (this is a psychological phenomena of the mind). Also notice that this person gives no statistics and doesn't back up his claim in any way. Most people who would do this kind of research, even on an amature basis would at least post their details on a public Website: and there are lots of free services to do this.
For that matter, who cares? Not having comments enabled has NOTHING to do with journalistic standards. This is a red herring argument.
Also: think of the logic here. Al Jazeera English WANTS to have a Western audience. This is because it is a business that is owned by a businessman. It doesn't make business sense for them to post Islamic religious propaganda because they know that they will be very carefully scrutinized by the Right Wing in the West and especially the Christian Fundamentalists in their largest potential market: the United States.
Also, look at Al Jazeera's journalists. They have quite a few award winning journalists that have (and had) worked for prominent Western news agencies like the BBC, CBC, etc. These professionals are not going to ruin their careers and reputations by working for a propaganda organ of the Muslim Brotherhood or some other political or religious organization. Of course, and for some perspective, politics will always play a role in journalism, for example Al-Jazeera English journalists protest after being ordered to re-edit UN report to focus on Qatar emir's comments on Syria. But at least there is transparency here. And lets not lie to ourselves or be hypocrites: Western news agencies, especially the for-profit ones like CNN and Fox News have their own biases and are subject to the editorial control of their commercial sponsors.
When you see that most of the comments are anti-US and anti-Jewish, you will wonder whether it's an underhanded way of maintaining a veneer of neutrality while still guiding opinion.
You mean like on Slashdot, and on many Canadian and European news sites?
And YES I know what you mean by "anti-Jewish": anybody who criticizes Isreal or Zionism is an anti-semite according to Christion Fundamentalists. Using "hate crime" language to try and stifle speech and to censor news is wrong. I've seen Al Jazeera report bad things about Isreal, and I've seen Al Jazeera report bad th
The thing that Al Jazeera brings to the table is not unbiased journalism but journalism with totally different biases than US journalism.
Al Jazeera doesn't care much about the Washington consensus.
Al Jazeera is much more plugged into the UN
Al Jazeera is not beholden to US corporate interests
Al Jazeera is not likely to go through the same emotional cycles as Americans when important events happen
I'm thrilled by the idea of Al Jazeera taking its place next to BBC America.
Al Jazeera still has actual journalists on the ground in countries making the news, like Egypt, Syria, and Lybia. It's sad, but the New York Times, which still has more live reporting than any other major US newspaper, can't compete with the real life reporting Al Jazeera can do. They just don't have the money to make that possible. Because of it's fantastic presence in the Middle East, I'm happy about Al Jazeera gaining a channel to reach Americans.
However, people reading Al Jazeera should know the background of this source, just like readers of Fox News should know about Rupert Murdoch (which they don't - but that's another post). Al Jazeera is owned and run by the Emir of Qatar. This guy has done some things that impress me, though a lot of it's scary. He overthrew his father as Emir, claiming his father was corrupt and was misusing the government's assets for himself. He was probably right. He did a lot of things to modernize Qatar, and did a very impressive job. He's positioned tiny Qatar as an intellectual leader in the Middle East, much due to Al Jazeera, Qatar now plays a central roll in the Arab Spring and evolution of the Middle East. For Americans to miss out on this influential news source makes us weaker.
Then there's the side of Al Jazeera that pisses me off. When that pretty blond western journalist was brutally raped in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak, Al Jazeera deleted all posts that mentioned it. The Emir has a political agenda, and anything that goes against that agenda is banned from Al Jazeera. That agenda includes making the Middle East the "good guys" while allowing the rest of the world to appear to be the "bad guys". That's why westerners can be raped with no reporting, but if a westerner insults Islam, Al Jazeera is happy to fan the flames of anger - anger that resulted in the death of our ambassador to Libya.
So, by all means, allow Americans to learn what Al Jazeera has to say. There is no better news source to represent the Middle East. At the same time, let's all feel free to be seriously pissed off at Al Jazeera, because they deserve it. How much like Fox News is this?
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell
Watching Al Jazeera as TV is somewhat wasteful of time, but it's worth reading their site. Today's important item: trouble is brewing in the Balkans again.
Other viewpoints to watch:
It's hard to find any coverage of those subjects in US dailies.
Editorially independant, and not subject to the equivalent of Rupert Murdoch ringing up and pulling a show off the air halfway through (which he did to one of his TV networks a few years ago).
The BBC are not immune to pressure - they had to apologise after they dared to question the ridiculous government line that Saddam could bomb London within 45 minutes, and more recently when a news report hinted that a powerful member of the government was on some sort of list with suspected pedophiles (the list was on camera). However how they react to the pressure is not dictated directly by the government. They can be yelled at or starved of funds but they can't be immediately directed to do anything.
How stupid he must be to have had, for a long time, the signature "Socialism is slavery".
Not really. If the state owns everything you need to survive, it's hardly a stretch to say that it effectively owns you.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
How stupid he must be to have had, for a long time, the signature "Socialism is slavery".
Not really. If the state owns everything you need to survive, it's hardly a stretch to say that it effectively owns you.
Capitalism is when man exploits man.
Communism is the opposite.
Socialism is in between the two.
Anyway, joking aside, social democracies as seen in i.e. northern Europe and perhaps Canada are hardly bastions of slavery. In fact, slavery was mostly practised by capitalists, as it was the ultimate low cost labour and desired by large scale land owners and maybe industrialists, not by communist collectives.
And the USA was rather guilty of using it, yet I don't think anyone is looking back to pre-civil war USA and thinking, "socialism!"
Cheers
It was not anger that resulted in the ambassador's murder in Libya. It was an organized terrorist attack, timed to occur on 9/11. Where are you getting your news from, Mr. Well-Informed?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
When that pretty blond western journalist was brutally raped in Cairo during the Egyptian uprising against Mubarak, Al Jazeera deleted all posts that mentioned it.
I assume you're on about Natasha Smith, who's recently published a piece on sexual harassment in Egypt, and the wider area. Other outlets cover the problem more generally BBC, Guardian
I'll have to take your word about Al Jazeera's censorship, but it's interesting that there's surprisingly little coverage of this case. The BBC doesn't have any mention of a british citizen being attacked in this way. it's cropped up in reputable sources (the independent and CNN), as well as the sensationalist tripe that is the daily mail. The coverage that Lara Logan got 15 months earlier was much more extensive coverage world wide, but it appears Al Jazeera didn't cover it. They later ran a story on sexual violence in Tahir Square in general, mentioning both women, linking to abc news for the Logan assault.
A lot of the blame can be put at the backwards society that prevails in the middle east and south asia, men are brought up to think of women as objects to be possessed and conquered, and they're asking for it if they're not hiding under a blanket, or dare to go out on their own. Sadly this society is infiltrating the more enlightened parts of the world, like Europe and the U.S.
We can only hope that main stream muslims will eventually grow out of these views, like christians eventually stopped genocide in south america and burning "witches"
False equivalence is the favorite propaganda tool of Fox news and similar organisations.' Sure all sources are biased, but not all sources are equally credible or equally biased. The difference between Fox and AJ is that Fox is first and foremost a political organisation and AJ is a news organisation. AJ aspires to be a credible representative of the free press specializing in it's own region, and they do a pretty good job of it. Fox wants to persuade you to vote against your own self interest and will knowingly lie to it's audience to achieve that, they also do a pretty good job but they're not doing the same job as AJ, BBC and other members of the "forth estate".
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Every broadcaster has an agenda, every reporter has someone paying his/her bills. Many people consider news to be unbiased... an impossibility to begin with, if it agrees with their bias. "Look, they are saying what I want to hear, how unbiased of them". Bias is something that happens only to other people apparently.
Take womens rights, it is a fact that NOT everyone has the same view on this subject so ANY newssource that reports in anything but the most absolute neutral tones, has a bias. Simply put, if a newsource reports the weather with anything else then figures like using comments as "it will be a nice day", they are biased. Nice for who? By whose standards?
Take snowfall, 1 centimeter falls in Holland, DISASTER! 1 meter falls in Sweden, business as usual. But when in Sweden the snowfall is a disaster, the impact is a WHOLE lot worse then that in Holland where the trains were delayed a whole ten minutes and almost two cars had a fender bender.
Take the rape case of the Indian student, roughly at the same time, Belgian news had that rape has gone up, less then 4% of rape cases result in a conviction and there are as many as 11 rapes a day in Brussels alone. One story is international news, the other is not. Why? One to close to home perhaps? To many uncomfortable questions would need to be answered so lets just tut-tut the Indians and leave it at that. And who made that decision? Male news-readers (Belgium TV news is very old fashioned in many ways, including it being actually rather good BUT not without bias).
ALWAYS know the bias of your newssource and if you want to stay informed, WATCH the newssources that make your blood boil. NOT because they tell you the truth but by combining newsources you get a more honest exposure to the various opinions in the world. You may not agree with anything Al Jazeera has to say (it is pro-strict islam supported as said above by a dictator) but it does give you insight into a whole group of people think. Same with the BBC or Fox or for that matter the Financial Times and the Guardian. One will report a story the other will barely touch and it is the WHY of the difference where the facts about power in the world are hidden (sorry for that sentence, hope you got my gist). In between the reports, you can see how the world really is.
Take the rape news events, rape is therefor clearly bad but not so bad we actually want to stop it, just want to say it is bad when far from home but back home, well boys will be boys. 4% conviction rate in any other crime would see the people responsible fired VERY quickly. No calls for resignation have been made. In fact, reaction seems to be "oh well". In the western news, India is made out to be a place totally unsafe for women... but these attackers will either hand or serve live. In Holland, rapist have been getting away with community service, a father convicted of raping his underage daughter got community service because else he might loose his job, true case.
Which country takes protection of women more serious? One were rapist hang or one where they have to pick litter for a month?
Know your bias.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Al Jazeera isn't what it used to be, but honestly a Bozo the Clown News Network would probably improve the quality of US cable news. - Marc Lynch
-- p a n a p i c - panoramas des alpes: Mont-Blanc, Mont-Rose, Cervin, etc...
So, I guess exploiting middle-east oil money and radical Islamic terrorism are more "aligned" with Al Gores' and Reason TVs' views.
"By their actions, ye shall know them."
Strat
Since when does Al Jazeera have anything to do with Islamism or terrorism? Is it because they both have "Al" in their name? (Oh god- so does Al Gore!).
Although it is valid enough to question whether they have bias in their reporting (hardly a new thing; see Fox News), their editorial style is usually on the liberal, rather than conservative, side. There's no reason why Al Gore wouldn't see them as an ideological match for his own channel.
Excellent post. Mine had already run long, so I didn't mention any of what you just said, but I'm glad you did. Al Jazeera may not be directly responsible for our Lybian ambassador's death, like you say, but they certainly are responsible for fanning flames of anger that result in terrorism and anti-western violence. They have more control over what people think and believe in the Middle East than any other authority. With that power should come some responsibility, and while the Emir is practically a saint compared to most of the other rulers in the area, he's still a Middle East king, and he's warping Al Jazeera as a news source just like Richard Murdoch does to Fox News. People should know when their news source is massively biased.
Celebrate failure, and then learn from it - Nolan Bushnell