Pretty much the title. I’d expect it to have a Middle Eastern focus/perspective on things, just as I’d expect the Washington Post to be fairly District-centric and the Times New York leaning. Knowing that context, is it an overall reputable general source of information?
Or, given its origins (largely owned by the Qatar government), is it more akin to the Fox News model, and is more of an agenda-driven network that is aggressively trying to model its viewer’s perceptions and limit their information to things in accord with its founders’ ideology?
[on preview: if you feel the need to push Fox’s marketing line of it being ‘fair and balanced’, then go start a different thread. You know the criticism directed at Fox; this thread isn’t asking if it’s legitimate to say that of Fox, it’s asking if it’s legitimate to direct it at Al-Jezeera.]
Well, Al-Jazeera has won several awards for circumventing censorship and contributing quality news coverage.
Admittedly, the bar for quality independent journalism is set somewhat lower in the authoritarian states which Al-Jazeera largely serves than it is in some other places. Still, AFAICT a lot of Al-Jazeera’s coverage is excellent news reporting and analysis by anybody’s standards.
As for its Qatari ownership stake, ISTM that the Emir is much more interested in Al-Jazeera’s profitability than in its potential as a mouthpiece for political or religious orthodoxy. I’m not saying that Al-Jazeera’s owners would let the reporters get away with saying absolutely anything, but I don’t get the impression that they’re primarily interested in providing them with a specific ideological script.
It occurs to me that I’m not sure whether you’re talking about Al-Jazeera in general or just the English-language satellite service Al-Jazeera International (Al-Jazeera English). Did you have a specific form of Al-Jazeera in mind?
Given its origins, you’d expect Al-Jazeera to be much, much better than Fox. It was formed from a lot of people who used to work for the BBC Arabic language station, after it was shut down, not formed ab initio as a venture of the Qataris.
It ain’t RT. That’s for sure. It’s also not Terror TV, as some people assume. It’s–how can I say this so it sounds like the compliment it is?–it’s boring. Straitlaced, serious-minded, journalism with no oddball agenda; the BBC with funny hats. They have a huge area to cover so there’s no time for fluff, an attitude I wish American stations, especially ABC News, would adopt.
I shared the OP’s confusion some years ago, because many western news sites one minute were once describing it as a propaganda network for saddam, and al qaeda, and denouncing their decisions to show beheadings and such.
Within I think 1 year, said western sites were suddenly very frequently citing al jazeera (indeed essentially forwarding on their news reports), and were describing it as liberal, and west-facing.
I’m not sure what happened. All I know is I watch the english-language channel from time-to-time and agree with dropzone that it’s fairly boring straight reporting of the major events.
I’m most familiar with AJ America and I love it - easily my favorite, go-to TV news channel.
It is *actually *fair and balanced, quite unlike Fox. It has very little in the way of shows with hosts that are pushing their own opinions and agendas, it’s mostly just straight news, with the occasional guests/interviews where they try to give equal opportunity to opposing viewpoints. It has much, much more international news, instead of focusing hour upon repetitive hour on the latest inconsequential, sensational BREAKING NEWS story of the day about the father who left his baby in the car, etc. It has very little in the way of entertainment related news about which reality TV star was caught by paparazzi doing who-the-fuck-cares.
When you get right down to it, it’s pretty much 24 hour “straight news” (with *relatively *few repeats of some produced current-event type shows) in the same journalistic vein of the old-school network channels. They try to focus on important, consequential news, where ever in the world it’s happening, with a little bit of lighter stuff mixed in now and then to keep it just upbeat enough that you don’t get too depressed about all the heavy, mostly negative shit that’s going on in the world.
IIRC, post 9-11, al queda released its video messages via Al Jazeera. They did that because AJ was exactly as described in this thread, but that interaction was interpreted by many ‘in the west’ as meaning AJ was an al-queda offshoot or sympathiser.
Kids stated hacking the website, etc. All wrong and stupid.
Its not without its biases though, as can be seen by the difference in coverage of the Arab Spring protests in Egypt (not a Qatari ally) and Bahrain (a Qatari ally).
I haven’t watch the TV version, but I’ve read the on-line print version, and it is also somewhat boring and straightforward. I like their coverage of middle-eastern stuff, because they seem less biased than most other sources I can find.
The very first time I read it, it had some article about Israel that seemed very polite and, if not sympathetic, not hostile. I figured that was a promising sign.
We’ll never really know whether Al-Jazeera is biased until they have a story to cover that clearly pits the interests of the MENA as a whole against those of the West as a whole, and the MENA is too internally divided for that to happen any time soon.
Under present circumstances I suppose it might be possible, when they cover Israel v. Palestine stories, to betray a pro-Palestinian bias, but if AlJ has ever been accused of such I’ve never heard of it.
