the news-channel Al-Jazeera international was launched this fall
It haves many similarities with BBC world if you ask me
so what’s your opinion?
How do you watch it, cable, satellite? I see it’s on DVB on IA5. Cool.
It’s very good IMHO. It’s good to watch stuff that isn’t so western-centric. It’s certainly a lot less USA-biased than CNN in the UK incarnation of each. You see stuff on palestine, lebanon and africa you just never see anywhere else.
And some interesting interviews with US and iranian talking heads.
From what I understand (recent news article) it’s pretty hard to get in the US since many consider it “The Terrorist Channel”. :rolleyes: Frankly, I’d tune in pretty often if I could get it. I think it’s important to see some of the things our western media won’t show and, similarly, I’d like to see what kind of propoganda crap many middle eastern viewers are being fed as well.
I did see that Dave Marash was a correspondent for them. I think that lends some instant cred right there.
C’mon Dish Network, make it an option. Heck, I’d pay extra for it, no prob.
I mentioned that it is on DVB satellite. I used to watch Al Manar on DVB, not realizing it was an organ of Hezbollah. :eek:
I’d watch it. I e-mailed DirecTV to ask if they’d be carrying it, and got a canned response – the usual “We’re always reviewing our programming”.
A very sad commentary on the BBC.
Yeah, why would anyone think that? :rolleyes:
Because they are a big fat dummy? 
I get it here on a sat channel and it’s not bad. I’ve only seen it a couple of times, but they have this insanely good looking woman anchor, don’t know her name. I still prefer BBC world.
If you want to see a terrorist channel, there is a pro-Sunni insurgency channel out of Dubai that shows nothing but clips of IEDs and sniper attacks in Baghdad set to music interspersed with talking heads calling for death to a long list of people.
What kind of music do you set clips of IEDs and sniper attacks to? Yakety Sax?
It’s traditonal Arabic music with vocals; there is this one crazy-creepy loop of sniper attacks over a children’s choir. On Thanksgiving we sat around getting drunk watching it and making smart ass remarks and we chose to hum the Benny Hill music (that music they used at the end when everyone chased him and the film sped up).
Its funny because we had gone into the Green Zone for Thanksgiving which is really pretty safe and all the people whol lived in the Zone hated the channel, but every single one of us who live in the “Red Zone” (ie Iraq) couldn’t get enough of it. We called it the boom boom channel. I think we were getting a sadistic pleasure out of freaking out the Zoners.
Back to the OP, Al Jazeera isn’t that bad. I’d say some of it’s editorial content skews to the insurgency the same way Fox skews to the Republicans. It’s important to get opposing views of the world. I would point out that my Arabic speaking friends tell me the English channel dials back their slant as compared to the Arabic version. I don’t speak Arabic, so I can’t say.
Naw, I am guessing it might be the insider videos from car bombings, ambushes, etc…
Even a big fat dummy could see it. But apparently some people aren’t as smart as a big, fat dummy.
But as journalists, aren’t they just doing their job? Wouldn’t you expect a journalist covering Iraq to try to get access to insurgents and report the story?
That would be Yakety Sax.
I thought this was launched world wide
terrorist channel???
Probably very true, but not necessarily any more than CNN and Fox are adjusted for their different audiences in their own international versions.
No, Al Manar is The Terrorist Channel. From “The New Yorker”:
The videos they show are made as propoganda for the terrorists usually BY the terrorists themselves, not by journalists.
FYI, David Frost now works for this station.