But now: US viewers seek Al Jazeera coverage

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/02/201121121041735816.html

by aj700 • 15 years ago

132 78 15 years ago

english.aljazeera.net

mmaunder2• 15 years ago

Al Jazeera is producing some of the finest global news coverage in the world today. I became a regular viewer recently so I could keep up on political debates with my family based in South Africa who have AJ on satellite.

Watching AJ reminds me how human-interest and emotion-centric the local news has become. The Egyptian coverage on CNN is nauseating. Yesterday a caller phoned in from Cairo and was falling over his words just spilling massive amounts of useful data and the anchor woman interrupts him to ask him about his feelings.

adscft• 15 years ago

That's only because AJ is still produced in a male-dominated society. Emotional news is one of the consequences of feminism, prevailing in the West.

mmaunder2• 15 years ago

I'm guessing you were born after Margaret Thatcher left office.

mey• 15 years ago

Posting under a throw away account?

idiopathic2• 15 years ago

No, it's because they were given a huge budget and told to spend it to hire and resource the best journalists. This started with the exodus of Arab journalists from the BBC world service, who downsized (Blair should have severely regretted this for what it unleashed in factual reporting on his fantasy dossiers) and continued with a deliberate attempt to hire the troublemakers from around the world - real journalists who cared about injustice rather than ratings.

The disregard for ratings is of course possible because they are funded by an oil rich dictator. He is not benign - no such dictator exist - but if the only good thing he ever did was create AlJazeera, then I would still be forever grateful.

Of course, in the true spirit of Make Something People Want, the disregard for simple ratings is what is causing AJ's growth in viewers around the world. A good chunk of people want real news, and these were the same people who propelled CNN to dominance, back when they had invested in news.

sliverstorm• 15 years ago

Yesterday a caller phoned in from Cairo and was falling over his words just spilling massive amounts of useful data and the anchor woman interrupts him to ask him about his feelings

What's nauseating is knowing they broadcast that because they show what people want to see.

alexqgb2• 15 years ago

@silverstorm - That's bad, but I think FOX may have topped them with this: http://plixi.com/photos/home/73294801

Step 1: Locate Egypt on a map...

davidmathers• 15 years ago

Apropos: Why I Love Al Jazeera by Robert D. Kaplan

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/why-i-lo...

idiopathic2• 15 years ago

This starts off well but then he damns them with faint praise. What is wrong with thinking the weak are right because they are weak? It is far better than everyone else's heuristic that might right. And if covering the viewpoints of those who have no power is AlJazeera's "despotism" then its employees should feel nothing but pride.

russnewcomer• 15 years ago

Anyone wanting greater understanding of the regional dynamics in the Middle East should read al Jazeera regularly, just like anyone wanting to really understand local politics should read their local newspaper for a year, instead of reading an NYTimes article about their local politics. Watching it when there is a crisis really doesn't help understand, it just helps give you more information.

Similar to how a pipe fitter in West Texas reading HN once a month wouldn't really help them understand the culture that exists in the Y!Combinator/startup world, watching AJ when there is a crisis without watching it regularly leads you to impose your own cultural lens on the issues. I lived in a Central Asian country for three years, and it took me about two years to really understand how much I didn't understand the local culture.

Alex39176• 15 years ago

Even if All Jazeera is seeing a huge traffic spike, it's still only a small percentage of Americans who are trying to seek out real news. The vast majority of Americans don't even want an uncensored media.

nhangen4• 15 years ago

Do you really believe Al Jazeera is uncensored?

Alex39176• 15 years ago

Let's compare their coverage of U.S. politics to CNN, NYT, and Fox:

http://alexkrupp.com/picture_library/rp/rp.html

lancewiggs• 15 years ago

Uncensored - yes just as Fox News or CNN or the BBC is uncensored.

But all practice some degree self-censoring, where they. for example, beep out language deemed offensive

More importantly all have some degree of bias. (Let's not get into the discussion of who is and more or less biased and in which direction.)

The only true way to get the news these days is to watch from different viewpoints and form your own opinion. That's all Al Jazerra is asking for. They are also offering coverage of news that is otherwise unavailable - isn't that a good thing?

mahmud3• 15 years ago

I believed they were sucking up to the Qatari regime until late 2009 when they nearly caused themselves to be de-funded after exposing that 20% of the country's oil exports were unaccounted for.

They are censored, by a tiny emirate which I don't care about, and even then they test limits of their own sandbox there. It's not like Qatar has a huge global influence and alliances it must watch over. And their own self-censorship regarding Qatar is one of omission, rather than, say, creative reporting.

Al-Jazeera is good for us because it holds the four major forces in the region accountable and on their toes: the regimes, Israel & America, Iran, and Saudi Arabia and its Jihadi minions.

Al-Jazeera angered everyone when it broadcast a program calling the Arabic language obselete and said university students should be taught in English to compete in the global economy. Stuff like that doesn't buy you a lot of friends.

fwez2• 15 years ago

Does anyone know if cable carriers in the US don't carry AJ because of lack of demand or is there documented evidence of active exclusion for business or political reasons?

Please don't take this question as conspiracy theory flame bait. I'm just curious about what is known about this.

jhamburger5• 15 years ago

Let me put it this way- If I were running a cable company, and I had to make a pure business decision on whether to carry AJE, I wouldn't do it. People were up in arms over a "mosque" several blocks away the WTC site...People were outraged at our President's middle name. there would be a HUGE uproar if cable operators started broadcasting "muslim propaganda" in our homes. I'm talking mass boycotts.

fwez2• 15 years ago

They can watch it and make up their own mind. Can't they?

j_baker2• 15 years ago

The fact that it's owned by the Qatari government probably wouldn't help things either. Not only is it Middle Eastern, but it's controlled by a foreign government.

envane• 15 years ago

This was discussed in a Salon article a few days ago:

http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/dahl_...

The section "Turning On" describes the process that led Buckeye Cable System in Ohio to start carrying Al Jazeera. I think it directly addresses your question.

This hit the front page a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2156195

pmorici• 15 years ago

Hm, it strikes me that there are absolutely zero advertisements of any kind on that page.

tkahn62• 15 years ago

That's because Al Jazeera English receives its funding from the Qatari government.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Editorial_independen...

iamelgringo• 15 years ago

As the vast majority of news networks have been scaling back "expensive" forms of journalism like having dedicated foreign bureaus, Al Jazeera has been one of the precious few news agencies that has been rapidly expanding it's foreign bureaus. The move is really starting to pay off for them.

In an increasingly globalized economy where we need much better coverage of international events, US news networks are going to find themselves scooped and out reported by Al Jazeera again and again. It's an impressive news agency, and to think, we bombed their offices twice in the last 10 years by accident[1].

ref:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War#...

cliveholloway• 15 years ago

Do you really think that was an accident? Heh.

RK2• 15 years ago

Maybe Al Jazeera should just run with being a 21st century, Internet delivered news channel.

I mean, I don't get Al Jazeera on my TV because I don't have cable or satellite anyway. I do have Netflix, etc, though.

jarek2• 15 years ago

Satellite gets them a lot more viewers in the developing world than either internet or traditional cable. It's also a lot harder to block.

borism• 15 years ago

Maybe Al Jazeera should just run with being a 21st century, Internet delivered news channel.

they are! I haven't seen any news network that has such high priority for having live feed on the internets. they literally have their live feed at almost every internet video delivery provider - youtube, real media, livestation, you name it...

kingkawn• 15 years ago

I am not watching Al Jazeera because of their underlying ideology, but because they are doing the best reporting on Egypt. If they were to continue to provide such powerful reporting on other topics I would watch them for that as well.

alexqgb2• 15 years ago

Um, I think their "underlying ideology" is doing the best reporting on Egypt, and everything else they cover.

These are seriously hardcore journalists with a very global perspective. I suspect they're currently being flooded with resumes from disgruntled / disgusted / dismayed reporters at CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX - all of whom would give up their first-born to get back into real reporting, instead of the dreadful corporate infotainment that's busy getting relegated to the sphere of complete irrelevance and risible self-parody.

aheilbut3• 15 years ago

The guy in charge of Al Jazeera English used to run news at - wait for it... the CBC (that's the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). (http://english.aljazeera.net/aboutus/2007/12/200861501043226...)

kragen• 15 years ago

I think their good reporting is a result of their underlying ideology, which they explained in this article:

"Through investigative and on-site journalism, our ultimate goal is to bring greater awareness, painting a more complete picture of the Middle East's realities. Armed with more information, we believe the people of this region and further afield can make better choices to guide their lives - hopefully ones that will lead to a more peaceful and democratic future, regardless of where they live."

Qz• 15 years ago

My guess would be that this is a reference to the alleged anti-Israeli bias as had been mentioned in comments on other recent Al Jazeera threads here.

PaulHoule2• 15 years ago

I'd like to get Al Jazeera on ivi.tv

pella• 15 years ago

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream

http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/

PaulHoule2• 15 years ago

This is good on my work connection but doesn't quite work on my third-rate rural DSL connection from Frontier.

ivi.tv will give you a stream with bandwidth requirements that works on any connection, degrading all the way to a slide show if it has to.

But now: US viewers seek Al Jazeera coverage

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