Friday, November 17, 2006
Another Take on the News: Al Jazeera Goes English
On Wednesday, Al Jazeera launched their new English language news channel. I happened to be near a TV that night and caught CNN's little blurb of coverage about it. Unsurprisingly, aside from giving the basics about the new channel, with visuals of their multiethnic anchors and lovely studios, the rest of the story from CNN's point of view was about how many people think this is just a horrible development, because Al Jazeera is clearly just an outlet for terrorists. Please.
My own opinion is, of course, that it is a good thing. I honestly find CNN exceedingly annoying, what with their propensity for talking to absolute death every bit of news they consider interesting to the American public, and yet somehow never actually saying anything new the whole time. NPR is better, certainly for American news. For world news I usually turn to the BBC online, but they are also, albeit understandably, a bit Eurocentric. I expect the Al Jazeera English take on the news will be very interesting. How can people not want to hear the perspective of the people from that whole area of the world over there that we seem so involved in right now? Anyone who still thinks the US holds the admiration of the rest of the world has a very active fantasy life, and I suspect they won't be tuning in anyway. For those of us more interested in actually understanding the world around us as it is, perhaps so we might try to work with it instead of just pissing it off all the time, this offers a great deal.
Besides, I always thought one of the most interesting things about living in another country was getting to watch and read that country's news, just to see how different (or similar) it is to the news I'm more familiar with. This will be sort of like getting to visit another region of the world!
On Wednesday, Al Jazeera launched their new English language news channel. I happened to be near a TV that night and caught CNN's little blurb of coverage about it. Unsurprisingly, aside from giving the basics about the new channel, with visuals of their multiethnic anchors and lovely studios, the rest of the story from CNN's point of view was about how many people think this is just a horrible development, because Al Jazeera is clearly just an outlet for terrorists. Please.
My own opinion is, of course, that it is a good thing. I honestly find CNN exceedingly annoying, what with their propensity for talking to absolute death every bit of news they consider interesting to the American public, and yet somehow never actually saying anything new the whole time. NPR is better, certainly for American news. For world news I usually turn to the BBC online, but they are also, albeit understandably, a bit Eurocentric. I expect the Al Jazeera English take on the news will be very interesting. How can people not want to hear the perspective of the people from that whole area of the world over there that we seem so involved in right now? Anyone who still thinks the US holds the admiration of the rest of the world has a very active fantasy life, and I suspect they won't be tuning in anyway. For those of us more interested in actually understanding the world around us as it is, perhaps so we might try to work with it instead of just pissing it off all the time, this offers a great deal.
Besides, I always thought one of the most interesting things about living in another country was getting to watch and read that country's news, just to see how different (or similar) it is to the news I'm more familiar with. This will be sort of like getting to visit another region of the world!
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But I thought part of the story was that no US cable system was going to carry the new channel. Time Warner Cable would not want to be called unpatriotic for carrying the terrorist's cable channel. So you aren't going to get to see it after all. At least not immediately.
Dad
Dad
# posted by 
: 8:12 AM
: 8:12 AM
Not that I would have gotten to see it anyway, since I don't actually have a TV. But I still don't think the idea of it is bad, and I'm glad it's available to some people. And there's always the internet.
You know, I remember back in the good ol' days when Al Jazeera was a new experiment being conducted by a bunch of crazy liberal journalists who jumped ship from the BBC World Service to found this Arabic station in Qatar. They were the bane of the Middle East, allowing women to show their faces and act as anchorpersons, and were banned in many of the other Arab states for demonstrating the harsh truth of the many autocratic and corrupt regimes around the region. As the United States supported their efforts to spread good journalism and a modernist attitude among the Arab nations, they were accused of being a puppet voice of our government.
Then Osama bin Laden started sending them his mix tapes, and they started broadcasting them against American wishes, and suddenly they are the darling of the entire Middle East and all of a sudden, our government doesn't like them any more. You just can't please anyone...
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Then Osama bin Laden started sending them his mix tapes, and they started broadcasting them against American wishes, and suddenly they are the darling of the entire Middle East and all of a sudden, our government doesn't like them any more. You just can't please anyone...
# posted by : 6:08 PM
: 6:08 PM
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