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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.
Not sure whether or not you're being sarcastic. Al Jazeera obviously had a pro-Arab bias. But it also appeared to be really trying to do journalism. The only sources I've seen lately that adhere to traditional journalism values are Al Jazeera, BBC, and Christian Science Monitor (which is also much less biased that one would expect). Hopefully, Al Jazeera's web-based news service will continue. Why does anybody expect media companies owned by huge multinational corporations to do real, unbiased journalism? (Fox, ABC, MSNBC, CNN... yes, I'm talking about you!)
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Ain't no such creature [as an unbiased source of news], son. The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter.
Unfortunately, one manifestation of bias is failing to report news that runs counter to the bias. This leaves you without information. You can't apply filters unless you have a signal.
So he other half of the key is actually GETTING the reporting from sources with other biases.
Al Jazeera America and Russia Today have been two such sources, readily available on cable and satellite TV throughout the US. AJA (and the many OTHER news feeds it aggregated) will be sorely missed.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I bookmarked it in hope that I'd get unbiased news. After a while, the news links just seemed to be "Yahoo-like" clickbait.
Sensational, tabloid type news subjects.
I removed it from my news sources.
I wish I could find an unbiased news source but it's getting more-difficult to fine lately.
You sound like someone who has never actually watched the station. In fact, you sound like the average idiot Republican. Good job!
That's blaming the owner not the org. The reason AJ seemed to become high quality from nowhere is because they bought a big chunk of the BBC that had been scrapped, and that portion is very much still run like the BBC.
Did al Jazeera also cheer the Arab Spring in Bahrein, where Shias rebelled against the Sunnis? Yeah, they've been happy to support SUNNI revolts everywhere, be it Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, but when SHIAS rebelled, like in Bahrein, I'll bet you that al Jazeera didn't support them, for the simple reason that there was no way that their owners would have tolerated it.
they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them.
No, AJ actually has a lot in common with the BBC, including the fact it is state funded so does NOT rely on eyeballs for revenue. There's also the ABC/SBS network in Australia, it was born at the same time as the BBC and copied it's funding/organisational structure (we even had the same TV license scheme in Oz up until the late 60's). The reason a state funded TV network like the BBC works so well is because they are set up as an independent state funded corporation (the 'C' in BBC/ABC stands for 'corporation'), this is vastly different to a state run TV network that's used as a political megaphone by the ruling party.
The BBC/ABC are tasked with entertaining/informing the masses, they must cater for a wide range of tastes so almost by definition they will offend someone. More importantly they are also tasked with "keeping the bastards honest". They both do a pretty good job and have an enviable track record stretching back over half a century, which is why the masses who actually pay the operating costs overwhelmingly support their continued existence.
Finally AJ haven't "gone under" in the US, AFAICT they are just rebooting the US business to get out of a contractual money pit they dug themselves into. They don't need to make a profit to serve their "foreign relations" purpose in the US, but they can't continue to feed the current money pit. Cleaning up the first launch failure and re launching seems a sensible thing to do, it's almost certain they will do a better job after such an expensive training exercise. I wish them well, this kind of foreign relations exercise is infinitely preferable to firing missiles at each other.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.