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Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations (theintercept.com)
waspleg writes: Executives of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) held a meeting at 2 p.m. Eastern Time to tell their employees that the company is terminating all news and digital operations in the U.S. as of April 2016, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. AJAM has been losing staggering sums of money from the start. That has become increasingly untenable as the network's owner and funder, the government of Qatar, is now economically struggling due to low oil prices. The decision was made recently to terminate AJAM, which allows the network to terminate all of its cumbersome distribution contracts with cable companies, and re-launch its successful Al Jazeera English inside the U.S.
I just read this article (which I missed back in June): a number of ex Al-Jazeera employees are (were?) suing the company due to sexism, anti-semitism and a pro-Arab agenda.
In many ways, it seems that it wasn't a very healthy journalistic environment.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
And I'm sure I missed a few.
One that you missed - financing the building of mosques in countries regardless of whether or not there is a shortage of mosques or enough Muslims. Essentially, their way of promoting dawa, or Islamic proselytization in those places.
media is one of the pillars of a strong democracy
Niel Postman has an interesting book on this subject, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, I don't know what to say about this book other than you should read it. It does not paint a pretty picture.
I too stopped watching, even listening to most news and I remember the exact time and place. And why.
Living in the UK I get Al Jazeera English (AJE) over the air for free; frankly it's my preferred TV news source here (sorry BBC.)
However every time I'd travel to the US, all I could usually get there was Al Jazeera America (AJAM); which I found frankly rubbish. The programming was all different and appeared to me to have been clearly designed to not be too harsh or distant; I suspect in order to try and not frighten the squeamish/sheltered US audience too much. Obviously that did not work out so well for them.
I hope now they find a way to push AJE out to the US TV providers; while it has it's flaws, I think US residents could greatly benefit from their excellent international news and documentaries (I highly recommend their "Witness" series in particular.) Yeah it's funded by government of Qatar, but after years of watching I've only detected their influence on the editorial process a handful of times (In reality I'm guessing it's usually AJE self-censoring; news around the royal family specifically seems to be a sensitive area.) When in doubt, France 24 is usually a good double check.
Finally I'd just say that I find AJE's coverage of Africa news/events some of the best out there; I really hope that does not change.
The dismal state of the US news networks became obvious to me during the invasion of Iraq. At the time I had cable feeds for the BBC, ABC (Aussie version of BBC), AJ(english) and the main US networks. The (private) US networks were wall to wall talking heads arguing about whatever the pentagon/WH told them to argue about, interspersed with the occasional video of something exploding. The state funded networks reported on a totally different war with real "boots on the ground" war correspondents, they were not shy of comparing what they saw to the airbrushed half truths of their host governments.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.