Got any cites for this claim? Definitely doubt this was a majority opinion, as you seem to imply.
I’m surprised - I assumed they’d been broadcasting in the US for years by now.
I have no problem with it. And frankly, I don’t think it’s going to matter much - there are hundreds if not thousands of cable channels, and I doubt one more is going to make much of a splash. People who watch cable news probably will continue to watch FOX or CNN or MSNBC or BBC or any of the other options.
Absolutely contemptible and borderline treason. Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for Arab terrorism, and I cannot see how any good could possibly come of this.
…not that the word “treason” even means anything nowadays.
Got any non-hysterical cites for this?
Of course they should be allowed to broadcast. Freedom of speech/ the press, etc.
The reason a lot of people are up in arms (and likely the reason behind the poster above) is that the average American knows Al Jazeera only as the network that broadcast Osama Bin Laden threats.
I admit that slants my view of them somewhat, but their English reporti g seems relatively straightforward, and even if it wasn’t, unless they are inciting violence, they can say what they want.
I’ll bite. Who is committing treason here? Is it Al Gore, perhaps? It can’t be Al Jazeera, as they’re not an American company.
You’re right, when people like you use ‘treason’ to mean “expressing opinions we are uncomfortable with.” I live in Qatar, and listen to Al Jazeera radio (which is basically the audio feed for Al Jazeera English TV). It is wholly innocuous. They do a good job of covering international news from a non-great powers perspective. When they have a panel, they always have a balance of people. Shit, I’ve heard guests from the Heritage Foundation on there. They did an extended interview with Ed Koch, for Christ’s sake.
Not that people like you are interested in the truth about any of this. If Al Jazeera is liable to a significant criticism, it is that it doesn’t really do news that is critical of Qatar (particularly the Qatari gov’t). Also, Al Jazeera Arabic is a different ballgame.
Whatever. So many conservatives these days wave their flags and have forgotten what it is to be a fucking American.
Who has time for that? It’s a 24-hour online world, you know. Al Jazeera English isn’t without its flaws and biases, but it’s not like broadcasting the channel is a threat to national security. Al Jazeera English employs plenty of Western journalists (who presumably wouldn’t be keen on joining a propaganda outlet for terrorists or dictators) and most of the channel’s U.S. content is going to be produced in the U.S. It’s not like they are going to broadcast cable access shows starring the heads of Al Qaeda. All that said, I’m wondering if it’s doomed to failure because enough people think it must be a terrorist mouthpiece because it’s Arab media.
Your first post was a perfect example of a meaningless use of the word.
From a few years ago Dave Marash (who I respect as a journalist) explains why he quit AJE. I hope it has gotten better since then.
Before opening my trap I watched a few videos read some articles from them.
Most of my experience was some stodgy British guy or another reporting non-sensationalized boring facts on things like banks and wars. Their editorial content and interviews seemed to be well done and relatively fair. Absolutely no obvious propaganda or ISLAM IS THE TRUE ANSWER or DOWN WITH AMERICA stuff. Even the reports that ended up dealing with Islam were, pretty fair, if not outright critical of a lot of traditional Islamic practices. As mentioned by Sophistry perhaps they avoided direct criticism of the Qatari government a bit more than they should have, but I’m not too sure. If anything, they give America a lot more credit than many people on this very board do.
Obviously I haven’t been following them for a long time, so my experience may or may not be representative, but my response to them being on American TV is somewhere between “meh” and “good.” I say “meh” because they’re really “just another news network” like any other from what I’ve seen. I say it’s “good” because this property (which should be common) probably makes them better than most US news channels. Literally my only worry about them being on American TV is that they’ll become a worse network because of the allure of sensationalizing things to get money, and that’s probably paranoia. Even if not they probably have a good decade or so before the real network degradation kicks in.
I agree, Do you remember when the Bush administration outed a CIA agent to score cheap political points and lead us into pointless war? Now THAT was treason. AJ is just a TV network.
I’ve watched a tiny bit of the english version of Al Jazeera. They seem reputable from the small sample, and certainly I’d trust them over Fox News. I am glad that a network is riling up the conservatives so much and think that they may bring much-needed points of view that Americans are not regularly exposed to
Interesting article. He makes a point in the interview, unrelated to the main thrust of the interview, that AJE is a different beast than AJ Arabic with a different editorial point of view. I think that is a point frequently being missed in the discussion, and it’s important.
He also makes the point that AJE is no longer (back in 2008) the multi viewpoint cosmopolitan news outlet that it set out to be. Does anyone know how true that is today or if they have pushed to go back to their original model? I have seen a bit of Al Jazeera English here and there but I am not a regular watcher.
I have zero interest in their views and equally as little interest in watching them. shrugs I have no problem with them doing their thing, though.
I think you will find that the source of that description was the US propaganda channel.
I can’t help feeling that you aren’t so much “simply raising questions” as espousing a point of view.
As South Park would (loosely) have it, is it true that you, aceplace57 are the love spawn of Josef Stalin and Pol Pot? I don’t know. I’m just asking questions.
Marash argues that Al Jazeera’s coverage of America sucks, but that its coverage of the rest of the world is great. For a more recent review of Al Jazeera’s coverage (although without the insider’s perspective), I found Robert Kaplan’s Why I Love Al Jazeera (from The Atlantic) interesting. It confirmed my impression that one of AJE’s main editorial slants is a sort of up with the little guy, down with the oppressor viewpoint that is present in many of its stories. Really, the Arab Spring was tailor-made for AJE.
I’m remembering some pretty big problems with their coverage but its been a while so my memory might be faulty.
I just flicked over to Al Jazeera English on Sky. There’s a programme called Witness currently on. It is the story of an elderly Dutch Jewish woman finding out about her long lost lover who was murdered in the Holocaust.