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Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations (theintercept.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the end-of-the-line dept.

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.

6 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. That sucks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:That sucks by cmeans · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Give a hand, not a hand-out.
    2. Re: That sucks by bill_mcgonigle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      My God, it's Full of Source!
      OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
    3. Re:That sucks by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
    4. Re:That sucks by Jack+Griffin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

  2. Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.