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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

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

[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.

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

[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.

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.

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.

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.