Al Jazeera's Struggle for U.S. Airtime

Submitted by Bob Burton on

Andrew Stroehlein, the director of media and information at the International Crisis Group, reflects on why the English language version of Al Jazeera's television news operation "remains unavailable to most Americans." The quality of reporting from what is perhaps the best-funded television news network, he argues, is not the problem. "The hurdle for some [cable companies] is a lingering fear of a public relations backlash -- that some customers might get agitated by their cable company offering a channel whose sister station in Arabic has a reputation for being anti-American," he writes. However, he points out that key administration officials and former White House press secretary, Tony Snow, have given interviews to the station. "If it is worthwhile enough for them to spend their time giving interviews to Al Jazeera English, no one could seriously argue that the American public should not watch it," he writes.

Main Source: 
Boston Globe, November 20, 2007
Topics: 
Journalism
International
Media

Comments

Sheldon Rampton replied on

No one should (or could) force you to watch it if you don't want to, but it's a mark of foolishness to call something you haven't seen "anti-American" or "terrorist." The issue isn't whether someone will force you to watch it, but whether you (and everyone else) has the right to have access to it.

As Roger Cohen [http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/opinion/12cohen.html?ex=1352523600&en=747b663f06b77db1&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink recently pointed out] in the New York Times,

In the gym at the NATO base in Kabul, U.S. soldiers hit the treadmills every morning and gaze at TV screens broadcasting Al Jazeera’s English news channel. ... America, and not just its front-line soldiers, needs to watch Al Jazeera to understand how the world has changed. Any other course amounts to self-destructive blindness. ...

Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.

Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.

Judith Siers-Poisson replied on

I don't currently have cable, but if a local provider offered Al-Jazeera, I would sign up. It's critical that we get more perspectives on the war -- and other issues -- than are available on U.S. news. That's why I watch French satellite TV for the news.