I believed they were sucking up to the Qatari regime until late 2009 when they nearly caused themselves to be de-funded after exposing that 20% of the country's oil exports were unaccounted for.
They are censored, by a tiny emirate which I don't care about, and even then they test limits of their own sandbox there. It's not like Qatar has a huge global influence and alliances it must watch over. And their own self-censorship regarding Qatar is one of omission, rather than, say, creative reporting.
Al-Jazeera is good for us because it holds the four major forces in the region accountable and on their toes: the regimes, Israel & America, Iran, and Saudi Arabia and its Jihadi minions.
Al-Jazeera angered everyone when it broadcast a program calling the Arabic language obselete and said university students should be taught in English to compete in the global economy. Stuff like that doesn't buy you a lot of friends.
I subscribe to al-Jazeera and listen to their podcasts. If you speak Arabic, here are the "Op-Ed" episodes (they're both transcribed, so paste into translator if you don't speak Arabic):
The realities of the Arabic Language
واقع اللغة العربية
P.S. If you're interested in tracking al-Jazeera and mideast media in general, I can scrape program titles and headline from the last 5 years and run that through a translation API. It's very prophetic of Al Jazeera to broadcast a program titled "Why don't the Arab masses rise up and revolt against the regimes" less than 2 months ago.
A tiny emirate who's leaders just managed to acquire the world's biggest sporting event, and are trying to buy one of Europe's best known football teams.
My point being, writing off any news bias as irrelevant as Qatari politics has no influence on the world stage is ridiculous as Qatar are moving towards centre stage.
It's not even the fact that Ron Paul was essentially just deleted from existence by every mainstream American news outlet. Remember, this was the period when McCain went from 2% support to winning the Republican primary in about a month after CNN, Fox, and the NYT teamed up to swing the electorate.
They basically figured out that they were only going to get paid for this cycle if there was a Republican candidate who actually had a shot at winning, so they buried all of McCain's opponents and completely censored the entire grassroots movement.
I'll take NPR. I've been a dedicated NPR listener for a long time. Even after leaving the US I listened to it online nearly every day. Over the last week, Al Jazeera's (English) coverage has been shockingly better than NPR's. Some of this, of course, is that world events right now happen to be on their turf. But I think most of it is that NPR's reporters and pundits are locked in a narrow and obsolete spectrum of thinking. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I'll be continuing to follow AJ, at least intermittently, from now on. I know greater openness when I see it; going back to NPR makes me feel claustrophobic now.
(One underappreciated thing nobody has over NPR News, though, is Robert Siegel. God I love that man's voice, and his English. I'd happily listen to him interview the phone book. The phone book wouldn't say anything, but Siegel's questions would be exquisite.)
NPR does a great job at talking about stuff that's already in the news, but they aren't really a news service.
BBC has reasonably good coverage of American politics, but it's not written for Americans so there's a lot of cognitive overhead. Because of this it doesn't really make sense to read it like a newspaper, though their take on specific issues is often good, albeit brief. Many of their article are barely more than headlines.
And PBS is decent, but it's mainly targeted at people 60+ and retired. Waiting until 7pm for news from last week just isn't viable for people who actually need to know what's going on.
> And PBS is decent, but it's mainly targeted at people 60+ and retired. Waiting until 7pm for news from last week just isn't viable for people who actually need to know what's going on.
I'm sorry that's just ridiculous. Not only do they have a website that's constantly updated, the news they present is timely according to the importance of the event. They usually have a mix of a) news that happened that day, b) follow up stories from events from the past few days or week and c) long term international news (Haitian recovery, Peru's economy, etc.). And then they have ~5-7 minute rundown of the headlines from that day. Recently they've been devoting almost the entire program to Egypt.
I seriously cannot understand HN's infatuation with Al Jazeera English. It's simply a more sophisticated version of CNN or BBC. I guess if you're looking for a 24 hour news, then yeah, go with Al Jazeera English. I've watched it for their live coverage of Egypt, but I can't imagine watching AJE every day.
Uncensored - yes just as Fox News or CNN or the BBC is uncensored.
But all practice some degree self-censoring, where they. for example, beep out language deemed offensive
More importantly all have some degree of bias. (Let's not get into the discussion of who is and more or less biased and in which direction.)
The only true way to get the news these days is to watch from different viewpoints and form your own opinion. That's all Al Jazerra is asking for. They are also offering coverage of news that is otherwise unavailable - isn't that a good thing?
I have no bias against them other than the fact that they seemed a pulpit for AQ, but even then I'd rather have something than nothing.
I don't watch Fox, MSNBC, or the rest unless I have to, so it's not an issue of who's better or the least biased as much as it is who will waste my time least.
To claim that someone is a mouthpiece for a terrorist organization is a pretty serious claim. You cannot seriously claim this and then just leave it without substantiation.
Provided a pulpit or were used as a pulpit? The post is poorly worded I agree but there's a difference; if I as a hypothetical editor went searching for such people as regular op-ed voices I think that would be unethical, but is it the same to broadcast their latest threatening diatribe when sent it? Al Jazeera seem to be the largest regional news source by some margin so it's logical for someone wanting to spread a message to send it via them and it's equally logical (to me) for them to report that the threatening message has been sent.
eftpotrm below has it right - I'd argue that they provided a platform for the release of Bin Laden's videos, and as I said above, I'd rather have the videos than not, so I don't fault them for doing it. I just get concerned any time an organization gets too close to their source.
I thought this interview was a good look into their policy and goings-on:
