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.

Comments

That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

Al Jazeera America was a great, unbiased source of news. I will definitely miss it.

Re:That sucks

[cmeans]

I wouldn't describe it as totally unbiased, but it did seem less biased than all the other options here in the USA. I will miss it...here's hoping Al Jazeera English steps up.

Re: That sucks

[bill_mcgonigle]

unbiased source of news

Ain't no such creature, son. The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter. Gets you a little bit closer to an objective truth, but even at that don't take any related reality too seriously.

Re:That sucks

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I wouldn't describe it as totally unbiased, but it did seem less biased than all the other options here in the USA.

Bingo. It wasn't totally unbiased, but they covered a lot of stuff that never made it into the 3-minute "news" cycle that most of the news outlets in the US live and die by.

Re:That sucks

[Locke2005]

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!)

Re:That sucks

[GerryGilmore]

Actually, real TV journalism can still be found on PBS NewsHour. For print, it's The Economist or nothing.

Re:That sucks

[Lumpy]

Or just read the associated press feed raw without all the spin the channels add to it.

Re:That sucks

[amiga3D]

It might have had some bias but I'm so used to CBS, MSNBC, CNN and FOX acting as propaganda outlets outlets that they seemed unbiased. It was refreshing to have a channel that mostly just reported the news.

Re:That sucks

[hambone142]

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.

Re:That sucks

[Darinbob]

Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important, then 5 minutes of commercials, repeated for a 24 hour period. Depending upon the channel this can change slightly to that the 22 minutes are news anchors giving partisan editorials lightly disguised as heavy hitting news, or entertainment news (Kardashians), or a "for a rebuttal let's go to the other political party for their reaction" segment, and whatnot.

Al Jazeera has fallen to the same problem as the other news networks: they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them. The other networks decided to sensationalize the "news" to bring in eyeballs rather than go under.

There's still the BBC. I get a lot of my news from them on the web or radio. I wish they had a streaming service that will go to a TV though.

Re:That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

That's actually hilarious. The AP feed is FILLED with pro-leftist bias. It's only marginally less biased than Reuters, and that's not saying much. The manifested hate for the right is practically seeping out of the ethernet ports on the AP's edge routers. "The channels" don't need to spin it, because the whole idea of syndicated journalism is that someone posts a story and the publisher just prints it (sometimes after modifying the headline for space considerations.) Hell, even Fox will sometimes post an AP story, but there's usually a link to an editorial rebuttal at the bottom of the page.

Re: That sucks

[Darinbob]

You can sort of be aware of bias, and I think it's possible to have news without bias if one conscientiously avoids it. It's sort of like saying that you can't teach mathematics without bias because everyone has some innate bias. There might not be any objective truth in news, but there are the basic facts. If they cut out all the extra crap then they could focus on just the basic facts and have time to allow showing more basic facts rather than picking and choosing a small subset of facts (which increases bias).

The part I hate in America (probably true in many other parts) is the artifical way a lot of states try to avoid bias by giving time to opposing views. If 5 minutes were given reporting Obama's state of the union address (straight up facts, this is what he actually said) then they feel compelled to give 5 minutes to the opposition party's rebuttal (again, it is a basic fact that those were the words that were spoken). The result is a lot of gibberish. It leads false credence to the idea that all views are equally important. This technique can lead to the ludicrous if taken to an extreme ("here with the rebuttal to NASA from the Flat Earth Society is our guest ...").

A good news channels should build a wall between news reporting and editorializing; be trained to spot innate bias; understand science, statistics, polling; don't pander to an audience; have a role of ombudsman or such on staff; and so forth.

Of course, not all bias is bad. Some of the more enlightening radio shows I've listened to in the past were ones that would take people with opposing views and have them try to reach an understanding or common ground rather than just shouting back and forth.

Re: That sucks

[ClickOnThis]

The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter. Gets you a little bit closer to an objective truth, but even at that don't take any related reality too seriously.

Not necessarily. Argument to moderation could put you further away from the truth, rather than closer.

Re:That sucks

[Midnight Thunder]

I wouldn't describe it as totally unbiased, but it did seem less biased than all the other options here in the USA.

Bingo. It wasn't totally unbiased, but they covered a lot of stuff that never made it into the 3-minute "news" cycle that most of the news outlets in the US live and die by.

All news sources will have some degrees of bias, whether it is intentional or incidental. In the end when we are exposed to a source of news, we should be aware of who sponsors it, who the target audience is, what the quality of research is and what their historical narrative has been.

Ideally if you the time, exposing yourself to multiple sources and understanding historical context is the best, but beyond a specific story, I doubt many of us can or will make that time. Saying that, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be open to different takes on the same story.

Re:That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

The AP feed is FILLED with pro-leftist bias.

Reality generally is, too, at least relative to how far right the US has become.

Re:That sucks

[Jack Griffin]

Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important,

This is why I stopped watching the news. People love information, which is why the News is so popular, but watching a 'breaking story' where there is zero information and talking heads speculate over possible scenarios is just trash.
The sad part is that media is one of the pillars of a strong democracy, and by cheapening the news, it results in people switching off and caring just that little bit less.
Ironically when a story does break, the talking heads in here usually have far more insight than on TV. I remember when that jet went missing over Malaysia we had Pilots, Traffic controllers, Navy guys, GPS experts, all in here discussing the finer detail, then when I switched on the News it was the like the play school version by comparison.

Re:That sucks

[Applehu Akbar]

"They're biased by the views of their listener/doner base."

I've heard NPR being accused of a lot of things, but I've never heard them run a kebab commercial.

Re:That sucks

[Jack Griffin]

Depends on the subject. They are very blatantly biased and actually act as a propaganda tool for the Democrats when it comes to 2nd amendment rights issues.

Are they actually biased, or they just didn't agree with your views on the matter?
We have a govt broadcaster (funded by govt but with full editorial independence) always being criticised by the the Right for apparent Left wing bias. Independent analysis is done and never finds any,or if it does, it's the least biased of all media outlets. It seems that the Right will just complain more about sharing the platform with other, opposing points of view. Conservatism by it's nature does not like other points of view, ie it's conservative, whereas Liberalism embraces it (even if it's plain wrong)

These same right wing politicians will happily go on Fox News, so most of the times whenever I hear "bias" it usually means "disagrees with me and shouldn't be heard".

Re:That sucks

[ScentCone]

They had the paris shootings hours before cnn

What? CNN and Fox were both airing on-air interviews with people on the ground in Paris before police had entered the concert venue. You might dislike both of those networks, and really have liked AJAM ... but what do you gain by lying in a way that's so easily debunked? Really, what's the point?

Re:That sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:That sucks

[ArmoredDragon]

Are they actually biased, or they just didn't agree with your views on the matter?

That's basically the same thing as bias. Agreement or disagreement is an opinion. I.e. saying "we think firearms are bad" is different from saying "a district court made a new ruling against private ownership of firearms today". One is stating an opinion, the other is reporting on current events.

Conservatism by it's nature does not like other points of view, ie it's conservative, whereas Liberalism embraces it (even if it's plain wrong)

That's blatantly false (and quite naive on your part.) Take for example the concerted effort to get Glenn Beck off of the air. If they don't watch his show, why did they even want it off of the air? Simple: They don't want anybody else hearing him either, even if those people watch his show. (Disclaimer: I never did watch his show, nor do I identify as right, left, conservative, liberal, or even centrist. More like libertarian) Similar efforts are routinely undertaken to get other conservative talking heads off of the air.

Oh and by the way, have I mentioned (from what I hear) that Glenn Beck is very outspoken against Donald Trump? If he was still on Fox News, his program would likely be routinely plastering Trump every day. Consider it poetic justice to the left if Trump gets elected (I don't care either way as moving from one president to the next doesn't ever change much.)

These same right wing politicians will happily go on Fox News, so most of the times whenever I hear "bias" it usually means "disagrees with me and shouldn't be heard".

You mean like the concerted effort to take Beck off of the air? No shit? You're pretty far off of the deep end dude.

Re:That sucks

[myowntrueself]

Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important, then 5 minutes of commercials, repeated for a 24 hour period. Depending upon the channel this can change slightly to that the 22 minutes are news anchors giving partisan editorials lightly disguised as heavy hitting news, or entertainment news (Kardashians), or a "for a rebuttal let's go to the other political party for their reaction" segment, and whatnot.

Al Jazeera has fallen to the same problem as the other news networks: they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them. The other networks decided to sensationalize the "news" to bring in eyeballs rather than go under.

There's still the BBC. I get a lot of my news from them on the web or radio. I wish they had a streaming service that will go to a TV though.

The most hilarious US 'news' I saw recently was CNN talking to some republican guy about Trump. The republican said "You guys talk about Trump a lot and I watch a lot of CNN. You never seem to cover the democrat primaries." The CNN talking heads didn't quite seem to know what to do and said "We'll cover that when time comes for the general election." which seemed incredibly dumb.

Re:That sucks

[whoever57]

. The republican said "You guys talk about Trump a lot and I watch a lot of CNN. You never seem to cover the democrat primaries." The CNN talking heads didn't quite seem to know what to do

That's because they would have to admit that Clinton has a serious rival for the Democratic nomination: Bernie Sanders. They would prefer that the sheeple did not consider this possibility.

Re:That sucks

[PvtVoid]

Depends on the subject. They are very blatantly biased and actually act as a propaganda tool for the Democrats when it comes to 2nd amendment rights issues.

Recognizing that most 2nd amendment rights advocates in the U.S. are raving nutjobs is not bias, it's contact with basic reality. This is but one of many issues where false equivalence is turning U.S. journalism into a farce.

Re:That sucks

[terjeber]

Eh, no. Al Jazeera is nowhere near the league of Fox. Seriously. Al Jazeera is far more balanced than almost any news source in the US, and FAR more balanced than news sources in Europe. In fact, in Northern Europe these days I'd call the "native" news sources being entirely anti-Jewish in its coverage of the Middle-Eastern conflict.

It was very refreshing to see a female reporter from Al Jazeera tear several new orifices in the Hamas leadership about their use of civilians as shields for their military operations while European news sources were busy talking about the evils of the evil army populated by evil Jews in the evil state of Israel. The Hamas leader said multiple times things similar to "I will not be talked to like this by a mere woman". I have never seen a roasting like that on any European or US news channel of those murderous terrorist bastards.

Re:That sucks

[TapeCutter]

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.

Re:That sucks

[Coisiche]

It does have Sky News though but it's not quite the same.

Sky is just another Murdoch outlet.

Re:That sucks

[hairyfeet]

What is truly sad and pathetic is how thanks to deregulation allowing a handful of corps, all of which are either heavily tied with the US government or the defense industry, to own all of the media stations USA "news" has become that joke from the movie Airplane. You know the one where all the other news outlets report "four alarm fire rages through X" except when they get to the Soviets a guy with a gun hands the reporter the script and he reads "four alarm fire makes way for GLORIOUS new tractor factory!"? That is the "news" in the USA in a nutshell.

BTW you want an easy measuring stick on how much government dick is being sucked by a particular news org? Look up what they reported the day after Wikileaks dropped those docs showing a PMC in Afghanistan was selling little boys as rape toys to get better contracts while the US government tried to cover it up while also releasing that video of the chopper pilot laughing and joking as he blew that guy and his kids away. If they ran with the "if Assange didn't use a condom he MUST be a rapist" line? They were sucking dick as that was originally put out by a state dept talking head, if they actually talked about what was revealed? Then they might actually have a spine. The only ones I saw pass? PBS with Frontline who ran stories on both, followed by in depth hour long stories laying out the background of what happened, the rest? "Four alarm fire makes way for glorious new tractor factory!"

Re:That sucks

[dywolf]

Reality has no bias, but it very much appears biased, because one entire side of the political spectrum (the Right) has abandoned it altogether and only exists inside a fantasy world where:
- the US is the only nation that matters, and Europe, Canada, and Australia either doesn't exist, or are considered to be socialist hellholes, even though they live longer, safer lives, with less violence, less poverty, more education, more freedom, less debt, better healthcare
- all the worlds scientists are engaged in a global conspiracy to force evolution and global warming, and other lies of satan upon the world
- the only knowledge worth having, be it political and economic theory, social studies, science, or philosophy, comes from the Bible
- more guns = more safety, even though the rest of the world has already patently disproved that notion many times over
- immigrants are evil people intent on killing us in our sleep, even though they actually commit crimes at a lower rate than the native population
- terrorist threats are imminent, terrorist = muslims, and the president is a secret member
- the entire constitution only applies to Christians, everyone else is SOL
- the "war on poverty" is a lost cause, even though history clearly shows that social programs (aka welfare) have reduced it and improved the quality of life of society's weakest members, and in other nations that have gone even farther than we have, have even lower rates of poverty
- trickle down economics works
- Obama/Clinton are felons, somehow, because 4 people died Libya, even though countless investigations by the very people blaming them continually fail to find them at actual fault, and also somehow Bush/Cheney are completely blameless for all that they did
- we somehow can't afford to take care of troops when they come home, but we can spend 1000x that amount on going to war in the first place

The list goes on and on and on.
So yes, reality effectively does have a bias, in the sense that only one side actually lives in and acknowledges it.

Re:That sucks

[dywolf]

race baiting: phrase used by conservatives when someone admits black people not only exist in the US, but are at a systemic disadvantage

Re:That sucks

[MachineShedFred]

What's to cover? You have the preordained candidate that the DNC is doing their best to rig the primaries in favor of, a grumpy crank independent Senator from New England who is making waves because he actually cares, and some other guy that has zero chance, but is hanging on anyway.

The only way that the Democratic primary race becomes anything other than 'dog bites man' is if Bernie runs the early table and wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I don't blame the news networks for not carrying anything about that - it's not a race, and they refuse to talk about Hillary's dishonesty or flaws of character for fear of upsetting the preordained nominee and getting shut out during the general election.

Re:That sucks

[MachineShedFred]

I don't want my news to 'agree' or 'disagree' with anything. I want facts. Agreeing or disagreeing is opinion, and there's entirely too much opinion in the 'news' today.

That's the fucking problem.

Re:That sucks

[operagost]

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.

Yeah, because they'd never change their reporting if the ruling regime decided to reduce their funding if they didn't.

Re:That sucks

[LynnwoodRooster]

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" - Evelyn Beatrice Hall. When you try to silence your critics or those you disagree with, you've already lost the debate. You're the close minded dolt, not the person you're trying to silence.

Re:That sucks

[Crosshair84]

"What is truly sad and pathetic is how thanks to deregulation allowing a handful of corps, all of which are either heavily tied with the US government or the defense industry, to own all of the media stations USA "news" has become that joke from the movie Airplane." OK, Hairry, you need to put down the pipe and read the idiocy you are posting.

You blame "deregulation" for causing the problem, seemingly deliberately ignoring the issue of regulatory capture that happens in any regulated industry you care to name.

Then complain you about corporations that have heavy ties to the US government.

Instead of blaming corporations, defense industry, etc, just get to the root problem with is LARGE GOVERNMENT. Government that has the money and power to hand out favors to the politically well connected.

Back in the 19th century you didn't have any of that at the federal level. Back when Senators worked with a shotgun to the back of the heads, held by the state governments, that sort of nonsense did not happen at the Federal level because there was virtually nothing to hand out. The STATE level was where you had all the shenanigans going on, with Tammy Hall and such, because THAT is where the power was concentrated.

The benefit of that system, which is how the US is supposed to be setup. Was that any corruption and bad policies was limited in scope. We didn't have nationwide Jim Crow, we only had it in the south. which millions of blacks exploited by simply moving out of the south. We, for the most part, didn't have anti-Asian and anti-Hispanic laws on the national level, they tended to be at the state level.

Any shenanigans over money, favors, and power had to be done on a state by state level. Consolidating such shenanigans across multiple states proved impossible to do for any length of time, as each state had different local interests competing on the state level, each with their own power structures and lines of loyalty.

So you get down to the root of the problem, deregulation and whatever is just a symptom of the problem. The problem is big government and the welfare state and sadly it doesn't seem like much will be done about it until the federal government is finally forced to default on everything it has promised all the special interests. That will happen whenever the world stops handing us more rope and starts demanding payment on our bonds and T-bills.

Re:That sucks

[david_thornley]

Deregulation caused this particular problem. We used to have laws limiting the amount of media one company could own, which included one radio station per market. This meant that there was room for lots of independent radio stations with their own emphases and biases. When that law was changed, small media just got gobbled up until most of the US media were controlled by a small number of really big companies. We had regulation, and lots of variety in radio. Then we removed regulation, and allowed capitalism to proceed unhindered. Now, the variety is mostly gone.

Radio is really a Federal responsibility, since radio waves pay no attention to state borders.

Re:That sucks

[david_thornley]

I'm not disagreeing, but there is no effective conservative party in the US, unless you count the Democrats. The frontrunning Republican candidates are jokes, and the Democrats have a battle between a centrist (by US standards) and a guy who wouldn't be considered right-wing by Europeans. I think conservatives should form a political party sometime that would be, you know, conservative. You know, move slowly on things, value approaches to balanced budget, respect traditional US values, that sort of thing. I bet it would get significant support.

Re:That sucks

[PvtVoid]

Yes, there's some pretty nutty people on the Right, just as there are on any side with that this many people involved. I'm more worried when I don't hear about the other side's cartoon characters.

The left's cartoon characters aren't leading candidates for President.

This was the plan all along

[110010001000]

Now that they have been feeding us misinformation for the last few years, they terminate all broadcasts before the invasion! To the bunker (or your Mom's basement)!

Difficult to sympathize

[Bruce Perens]

It's difficult to sympathize with the economic plight of a government that wouldn't even let me board their national airline because of who I was born to.

Re:Difficult to sympathize

[jrumney]

This is how a lot of people feel about America these days.

Re:Difficult to sympathize

[dbIII]

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.

Re:Difficult to sympathize

[unixisc]

Oh, yeah. There was this Islamic diktat from the time of Mohammed that Jews couldn't live in the Arabian peninsula under any circumstances. For this reason, after Mohammed's genocide of Jews in Medina, this was always banned, and the US shamefully grovels before those Arab sheikhdoms.

That's the other good thing about low oil prices - the al Thanis being unable to fund al Jazeera, and being forced to fold their US operations. Hope that the same thing happens to it everywhere outside Qatar.

Re:Difficult to sympathize

[Bruce Perens]

In 1987 a guy named Brian Wilson did a hunger strike on train tracks at the Concord naval weapons station, and was run over by a diesel locomotive at high speed. He lost both legs and ended up with a plate in his skull, but survived. I don't know much about the situation or how it was that the train wasn't stopped. What I do know is that the train operator went through many years of psychotherapy and wasn't ever really OK after that.

The problem with putting yourself in front of something like that is that the little person who is operating it isn't your political enemy, isn't there to make a point. They are only there because their job is their only, tenuous, connection to making a living and not being out on the street, and they must keep it at all costs.

Brian Wilson wasn't the only victim that day.

Re:Difficult to sympathize

[Sun]

The US Government will, if requested, allow you to hold two separate US passports so that you can visit relatives in Israel with one, and go to some of the middle-eastern nations with the other.

Last time I checked, that was not necessary. When entering Israel, you can tell the customs official that you want your passport not to be stamped. You will get an addendum page instead, and your passport will not show any signs you were in Israel, so you can enter those Arab countries.

It's old information, so don't rely on it without verifying.

Also, when were you in Israel, and why didn't you contact any of the local LUGs? I'm sure we would have loved to hear you talk.

Shachar

Re: Difficult to sympathize

[Bruce Perens]

If you can find a conference that wants me as a keynote and will pay air and lodging, I'll come and talk. For about 2 years I was on vacation from Open Source talks. Having done them since 1996, I just burned out.

Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things

[blind biker]

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.

Re:Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things

[edbob]

How can they be pro-Arab and anti-Semitic at the same time? That doesn't make any sense.

Re:Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things

[mrchaotica]

anti-semitism

Fun fact: Arabs are just as Semitic as Jews, so describing anti-Jewish bias by Arabs as "anti-Semitism" makes very little sense.

Re:Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things

[Anonymous Coward]

You sound like someone who has never actually watched the station. In fact, you sound like the average idiot Republican. Good job!

Wasn't Qatar just funding it?

[rsilvergun]

For the most part I vastly preferred their coverage to the likes of Foxnews. They covered a lot of the nastier things the US Gov't was doing that the mainstream press wasn't covering. Frankly being gov't funded I'm surprised they got away with what they did.

The Intercept wants them to be another FOX News

[EmperorArthur]

Rather than fill a market gap for strong-voiced journalism with a focus on domestic counter-terrorism policy and the Middle East

Because screaming about how America should be afraid will really help the Al Jazeera brand. Yeah right! American cable news is so heavily politically slanted that you have to take everything with a kilogram of salt.

I'm more likely guessing the problem came from "purchased Current TV in late 2012 from founder Al Gore for $500 million." I'm guessing the bought a lemon of a company from someone who they thought was trustworthy. Also, whenever you have foreign management take over an American company instead of starting from scratch you have issues. Established American corporate culture rarely mixes well with foreign work cultures.

Re:WTH Qatar?

[ericloewe]

Why, many exciting activities:

*Funding wars and terrorism
*De facto acquiring deeply-troubled airlines to use as a means to circumvent EU airline ownership laws
*Promoting slavery
*Bribing everyone at FIFA
*Pissing matches with fellow Arabs to see who has the most expensive $_item, the tallest vaguely-phallic architectural piece, largest airline, etc
*Organizing huge events to pretend they're a civilized country (see "slavery" and "FIFA")

And I'm sure I missed a few.

al Jazeera on Arab Springs

[unixisc]

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.

Re: Mixed bag

[kenh]

why would other operations be more affordable?

Because those operations actually had viewers, AJAM peaked at 30,000 viewers for it's most popular shows - without viewers there is no advertising revenue, without revenue, no network.

AJAM was rubbish; long live AJE

[wilkinsm]

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.

Re:AJAM was rubbish; long live AJE

[PvtVoid]

This.

I was a loyal watcher of AJE on the web: by far the best TV journalism avaiilable in the U.S. Then they started AJAM, which sucked, and blocked access to AJE from the US. (Thanks, Al Gore!) Why is it that media organizations which produce perfectly good journalistic content for consumption outside the U.S. produce dumbed-down, shallow garbage as soon as it's specifically intended for a U.S. market? CNN is the same way: CNN International is still a pretty good (not great) news channel. I saw HLN (formerly CNN Headline News) for the first time in a long time the other day. It was literally a ripoff of America's Funniest Home Videos, except it was home videos of children being run over by cars and the like, sort of "America's Funniest Lurid Death Videos". What. The. Fuck?

News cycle

[Michael Woodhams]

Here is a stunning example of how bad the USA news cycle can be.

This story would be the night 19 August, 1991. I was a graduate student living not too far from New York. The previous day, I'd heard ominous indications of a coup in Russia, probably trying to return to Soviet style government. Having been out of touch with news media for about 24 hours ("graduate student", remember?) I felt the need for an update, so I tuned my radio to a New York city "24 hour news" radio station.

After a full 30 minutes, they hadn't even mentioned it once. Then the announcer said "And now back to tonight's top story..."
"Finally!" I thought.
"... basements flooded in Long Island"
ARGH! I gave up. The world's second largest nuclear arsenal was potentially falling into the hands of hostile extremists, the Cold War could be restarting, and it didn't rate a mention compared to flooded basements.

Re:News cycle

[operagost]

Thanks for your extremely relevant anecdote regarding one NYC news radio station on one day 25 years ago.

Meanwhile, a hurricane did hit New England the same day you were trying to find news about the coup, so it was a bit more than "... basements flooded in Long Island". People have more immediate concerns about their houses being destroyed.

The first casualty of war...

[TapeCutter]

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.

Re:What will Hillary watch for news?

[kriston]

No. That is patently false. Al Jazeera America was launched in late August of 2013. The article and network Clinton was referring to was Al Jazeera, and specifically the Al Ajazeera English service.