Wednesday, April 4, 2007
On March 12, Buckeye CableSystem became the first American cable company to broadcast the Al Jazeera English channel. This is a small but important breakthrough for Al Jazeera, and hopefully a sign that the channel will finally reach a wide audience in the United States.
Since its launch on November 15, the English version of the largest Middle Eastern television network has failed to find cable providers to carry its programming. This is outrageous because the channel is a wonderful opportunity to diversify the way news is covered in the U.S.
Why aren’t major cable companies offering viewers this channel? Comcast has claimed that it is not adding a lot of new channels. This statement is absurd. On March 23, Comcast launched an I-70 traffic channel in Colorado. If the issue is really bandwidth, it is nice to know where their priorities are. As long as there are 20 shopping channels everything is fine.
The U.S. is in desperate need of a new cable news channel and Al Jazeera might just be the solution. American cable news is in terrible shape, FOX News, CNN and MSNBC are becoming increasingly similar to entertainment networks. It’s hard to find valuable journalism in the midst of the newest celebrity overdose, latest blond girl gone missing or the constant partisan squabble between “analysts.” All of this, of course, is interrupted every three minutes by the newest erectile dysfunction commercial.
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However, Al Jazeera is still misinterpreted by many Americans. It’s not even close to being the “pro-terrorist” network its critics accuse it of being.
Although Al Jazeera has had its faults along the way it has been crucial in providing objective news to the people in the Middle East. Western media has taken advantage of its breakthrough coverage by using its footage. The network has often attracted criticism from authoritarian governments whenever it aired critical reports against their administrations. It has also faced remarkable challenges, whether having reporters banned from Arab nations, having its Baghdad office hit and a reporter killed by an American missile and having one of its cameramen detained in the aberration that is Guantanamo Bay.
However, Al Jazeera is still misinterpreted by many Americans. It’s not even close to being the “pro-terrorist” network its critics accuse it of being. It has never shown footage of terrorists beheading hostages. It has showed dead American soldiers, but didn’t American news outlets show images of burnt private contractors in Fallujah, or the dead bodies of Saddam Hussein’s sons? Why should the general population be insulated from the horrors of war?
Al Jazeera English, at least the online stream version, shows some excellent reporting. Its stories have a BBC feel, with a great degree of objectivity and calmness. I’ve yet to see sensationalist overtones in the reporting or loaded headlines asking, “Will Dems crush the economy if they control congress?” or, “Are atheist tactics too militant?” — both real headlines used by Fox News and CNN respectively.
The most positive aspect of Al Jazeera English is its news focus. It offers news coverage from areas that have been ignored by other cable news networks. Including significant coverage from Africa and perhaps the most thorough coverage of the Middle East. Even its European coverage, constantly reduced in the United States to only terrorist threats or French battering, is better.
Shame on Time Warner and Comcast for not carrying Al Jazeera English on their channel lineups, perhaps they can learn something from Buckeye about the importance of media diversity.
Sullivan De Oliveira is a Belo Horizonte, Brazil sophomore in journalism and history.
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