Al Jazeera International is Having a Hard Time Launching in the US......

[leftchick]

http://www.friendsofaljazeera.org/node/690

Al-Jazeera, As American as Apple Pie

Joanne Levine is executive producer of programming for the Americas at al-Jazeera International.

<snip>

Most people in this country have never watched al-Jazeera. But in so many minds, it has become synonymous with al-Qaeda. I'd guess that the only thing most people know about it is that it is always the first network to receive bin Laden's videotapes. What they don't know is that al-Jazeera started nearly 10 years ago as the first independent voice in the Middle East. With the courage to tell it like it is, it offended authoritarian regimes from Saudi Arabia to Jordan. Its reporters -- and at times the network itself -- have been routinely kicked out of countries for reporting the real news instead of acting like the sleeping pill known as state-run television news.

<snip>

What many Americans also don't know is that, before Sept. 11, 2001, al-Jazeera was lauded and applauded by the Bush administration for this fearless attitude toward the dictatorships of the Middle East. High-ranking administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, made frequent appearances on the network.


After 9/11 -- and especially after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 -- tensions between the West and the Middle East escalated, and al-Jazeera's reporting often angered Americans. The network showed civilian casualties caused by U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. It also showed images of U.S. troops taken hostage in Iraq. It broadcast pictures of Iraqis celebrating over a downed U.S. aircraft. When four U.S. contractors were killed in Fallujah in March 2004 and their burned and mutilated bodies were hung from a bridge, al-Jazeera put it on TV.

<snip>

Each incident shrouded in bigotry has served to convince me ever more that the United States needs an outlet like al-Jazeera International, offering a wider panorama of views. These are dangerous times. And they will just get more dangerous if each side continues to retreat. Al-Jazeera doesn't shy away from any side of a story. And Americans should not shy away from al-Jazeera.

[Gabi Hayes]

1. un frickin' believable

''High-ranking administration officials, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, made frequent appearances on the network.''

[zippy890]

2. good article - thanks for the link LC

Each incident shrouded in bigotry has served to convince me ever more that the United States needs an outlet like al-Jazeera International, offering a wider panorama of views. These are dangerous times. And they will just get more dangerous if each side continues to retreat. Al-Jazeera doesn't shy away from any side of a story. And Americans should not shy away from al-Jazeera.

Al Jazeera is a good credible source for news from the Arab world. more people should read it.

[Gabi Hayes]

3. yes....thanks here, too....remember this?

After 15 months of US media coverage of the war in Iraq, Jehane Noujaim's "Control Room" is like an open window that sucks the smog out of the room. Clear-sighted and fair-minded, sympathetic to everyone except Saddam Hussein and the topmost level of the US government, this modest yet necessary documentary digs into the tussle between bias and balance in modern journalism and sends you out debating where one side's reporting becomes the other side's distortion.


The focus of "Control Room" is Al Jazeera, the Qatar-based independent news network that functions as the controversial CNN of the Arab-speaking world. The cast of characters, however, extends into the American network news corps and the press offices of the US military at Central Command in Qatar, and the period covered runs from just before the onset of US operations on March 20, 2003, through the taking of Baghdad less than a month later.

Noujaim, a Cairo-born, US-based director who made the scrappy 2001 Internet documentary "Startup.com," takes her camera into the offices of Al Jazeera, where she finds seasoned journalists proud of working for the only news organization in the Arab world that isn't a state puppet. At the same time, these men and women are wrestling with the question of whether journalistic objectivity can be maintained -- or even should be maintained -- in the face of a US media they see as obsessed with delivering only the good news to the folks back home.

Their arguments are articulate, impassioned, all over the map, and hammered out in the heat of the moment; Noujaim captures a remarkable scene of senior producer Samir Khader berating a staff member for lining up an American activist who claims the war is just a grab for Iraq's oil. The guy was trashing his own country, the staffer says in defense, but Khader responds, as if explaining the moon to a child, "We want guests who are balanced."

http://www.boston.com/movies/display?display=movie&id=6776

[zippy890]

9. "Control Room' is an excellent movie

Thats a good description you posted.

I recommend everyone see that movie, it dispells the myth that as jazeera is a religious based news source.

[leftchick]

4. yes indeed

but the beauty of them here in the US, is they will be reporting about the US as well! If this gets off the ground we will actually have a real "fair and balanced" news network! God knows we need one.

[Jim__]

5. Foreign Policy also had an article on Al Jazeera International

Here. An excerpt:

For its part, AJI has said it will focus on developing-world issues and use more indigenous reporters and freelancers than other channels. It is widely expected to win large market share in Asia, where the Al Jazeera brand already enjoys a favorable reputation and where many more people speak English than Arabic. Pakistan has 160 million Muslims, and Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country, has 215 million Muslims, many of whom will be interested in following events in the Arab world closely.


Of course, it won’t be so easy to break into America. Even securing distribution for AJI has been tough: As of press time, not one U.S. cable company had offered to carry the channel as part of a general news package. Ironically, it is the world’s freest media market that poses the biggest challenge to Al Jazeera.

I really wonder how many people can fail to see the "irony" in the juxtaposition of these statements: ... not one U.S. cable company had offered to carry the channel as part of a general news package. Ironically, it is the world’s freest media market that poses the biggest challenge to Al Jazeera.

The world's freest media market?

[leftchick]

6. it certainly exposes our corporate media for what they truly are

AmeriKan Pravda Networks.

[Gabi Hayes]

7. my guess is they'll NEVER gain acceptance here.

there's WAY too much xenophobic fear/ignorance directed toward anyone associated the way they've been to Saddam/Al Qaeda, etc.

most americans still associate Arabs with 911, and I'm afraid it's just that simple.

they aren't going to buy a network with that sort of 'stigma'

I hope I'm wrong, but look at what's happening in the media now. most people still think there's massive LIBERAL bias!

just imagine what they'll think of a network that will CONSTANTLY be connected to terrorists

[leftchick]

8. you are probably right

this is just shocking to me and very distressing....

<snip>

My department, for instance, tried to do a story about Civil War reenactors. The journalists were denied access to a reenactment because the organizers were expecting "many patriotic people" who they thought would be upset by al-Jazeera's presence. At the recent Take Back America conference here in Washington, author Kevin Phillips would not accept a business card from our investigative reporter. And even The Washington Post would not allow one of its staff photographers to participate in an AJI discussion about images from the Iraq war.

unfuckingbelieable! :grr:

[Gabi Hayes]

10. distressing, yes....shocking?

not really

it's exactly what I expect. and what's with Phillips?

I remember reading about Kevin Phillips a LONG time ago, in book about Hoover's FBI. He was prominently featured, and it sticks in my mind what a creep he was back then. I'll never trust him as a result of what I read back then (not that I can recall details anymore....just the very strong revulsion I felt).

his denial of any Bush family-nazi connections, despite his strong antipathy for them, (the Vesting Order didn't mean much to him, and he discounts other connections) also gives me pause