Al Jazeera headed to a channel near you...

[hippie_hunter]

Exactly.
It will only have peoiple of a certain political stripe watching it, but I don't think those people exist in the US enough to sustain a channel.
They think they do, but that's because those people can be extremely vocal sometimes, and there's a tendency to overestimate a silent minority.

I think it's hard to tell how al-Jazeera will do. On one hand, I think it's going to be very hard to improve ratings. Because of ignorant Islamophobia, people will automatically equate al-Jazeera with terrorism. It's also taking over Current TV which had absurdly low ratings to begin with and they were going down with no end in sight. Current TV was essentially Air America Part Deux.

But on the other hand, I can see it doing better than Current. Unlike Current TV, which had had a business plan to provide for a demographic that was already fully catered to by MSNBC; al-Jazeera plans to be like BBC World News and provide actual news as opposed to the crap we currently get. al-Jazeera America doesn't have a political agenda, it's there to make money by providing news content and expand their outreach to new markets. The criticism that al-Jazeera America is getting, before it even launches mind you, is nothing but ignorant crap. I think that there could be a market for people who want genuine news in the style of CNN International and BBC World News.

 

[The Question]

Exactly.
It will only have peoiple of a certain political stripe watching it, but I don't think those people exist in the US enough to sustain a channel.
They think they do, but that's because those people can be extremely vocal sometimes, and there's a tendency to overestimate a silent minority.

What political stripe are you referring to? The common characteristic of people who watch Al Jazeera now seems to be "moderate-to-liberal leaning," and there are plenty of those.

 

[Mr. Dent]

^ Unless he's suggesting that's a political leaning that is a "silent minority".

Like Hippie Hunter said I see Al-Jazeera as being a BBC News, with an eye toward in-depth coverage of international news rather than being a second MSNBC. They might keep some of their primetime opinionated programs but that's it.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Well the rumor was a pretty good one because its seem to of stuck in alot of peoples minds.

Hey, I've slept with about 3 or 4 of my female friends I haven't so much as kissed if you ask other people. Rumors and called rumors for a reason.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

Please don't try to hijack the thread.

That's not hijacking anything.

Please take your fingers out of your ears if you think Israel is being "nice" or "fair" to the middle east. They're as bad as Hamas. Brutal ethnic cleansers. Walk through Israel you see racially charged graffiti about Arabs everywhere, and the Government carries out some pretty ruthless actions against Palestinian civilians. They've killed Palestinians to a tune of 100 to 1 for every Israeli that has been killed.

You display the exact naivety that Question just referred to.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

That never happened. The news agencies that reported this later retracted it.

I have nothing against Al Jazeera. I've watched their news coverage before, it can be extremely informative. They have their biases, but they're not the biases American news agencies have. They offer a very valuable perspective.

I also find the notion that they're anti-American to be absurd. They're not anti-American, what they are is without an American patriotic bias. They publish stories that make America look very bad from time to time, because sometimes America does bad things that are worth reporting. Anyone who thinks they're Anti-American is painfully naive. They're goddamn tame when compared to their peers in the Arab news world, who regularly criticize them of being pro-American.

Bingo

 

[Pink Ranger]

Hey, I've slept with about 3 or 4 of my female friends I haven't so much as kissed if you ask other people. Rumors and called rumors for a reason.

OP is straight up pimpin'.

 

[regwec]

I think the US government/media was pissed because it was broadcoasting via the internet and on their Arabic news channel the unedited Osama and Al Qaeda messages to the world.

They also played unedited versions of the speeches of Bush and Rumsfeldt.

They don't have a particular duty to further American interests, or to censor its enemies. Objective and unbiased reporting is a reasonable undertaking.

Some on their Arabic news channel use some different wording showing an Anti-US War on Terror bias as stated by the mother of Daniel Pearl in an OP-ED NY times 2007 article about the Arabic broadcast:

"For example, the phrase “war on terror” is invariably preceded by the contemptuous prefix “so-called.” The words “terror” and “insurgency” are rarely uttered with a straight face, usually replaced with “resistance” or “struggle.” The phrase “war in Iraq” is often replaced by “war on Iraq” or “war against Iraq.”

Again, I don't think they are biased for refusing to adopt the highly political choice of term the US chose for its operations in the Middle East. They referred to it as the "so called War on Terror' because that is what the US government decided to call it. The term itself is judgmental, and echos a fairly one-sided of what was/is going on. By comparison, people in the Middle East often refer to the operations as an "occupation" or a "crusade".

All of these terms are highly charged, and I think Al' Jazeera is right to prefix them in a way that makes it clear they do not necessarily reflect the views of any of their reporters.

Edit: No disrespect to Mrs Pearl; she is entitled to her view and it goes without saying that what was done to her son was heinous. But that doesn't make her opinion authoritative or balanced.

 

[Schlosser85]

"Operation Enduring Freedom" is just as blatantly propagandistic, if not more so, as calling it "war against Iraq".

 

[chamber-music]

Bush "god told me to end the tyranny in Iraq" quote in 2003 didn't exactly help with the crusade tag either from a public image point of view.

 

[Schlosser85]

God told Bush to end tyranny in Iraq but is fine with the tyranny in our ally Saudi Arabia, apparently.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

OP is straight up pimpin'.

Only in the realm of fiction apparently.

I'd rather like it if the rumors about me actually resembled my life, then it would be more interesting.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

God told Bush to end tyranny in Iraq but is fine with the tyranny in our ally Saudi Arabia, apparently.

God needs oil for his fleet of Hummers. God clearly is supposed to be materially wealthy, according to the Bush administration.

 

[Schlosser85]

According to a lot of people, God is a rich white man.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

According to a lot of people, God is a rich white man.

It is funny. Now that I think about going to Furman, in Greenville, SC, and all the Bible-Thumpers that went there. I never once caught one actually reading a Bible in a non-congregational setting.

 

[Kelly]

According to a lot of people, God is a rich white man.

Actually I think he's a Middle Class White Woman of Celtic, French, Danish, Cherokee descent....

 

[hippie_hunter]

According to a lot of people, God is a rich white man.

I really wish I could post the White Heaven clip on here.

 

[Incrediblejeff]

I really wish the old current channel before the format change was still around it was such an edutaining channel.You had InfoMania,The Rotten Tomatoes Show,Vanguard and the Random 10 minute documentaries.It was such a different channel.

 

[Kelly]

I really wish the old current channel before the format change was still around it was such an edutaining channel.You had InfoMania,The Rotten Tomatoes Show,Vanguard and the Random 10 minute documentaries.It was such a different channel.

Thats is when I watched it....I really liked it.

 

[Optimus_Prime_]

I really wish the old current channel before the format change was still around it was such an edutaining channel.You had InfoMania,The Rotten Tomatoes Show,Vanguard and the Random 10 minute documentaries.It was such a different channel.

Yeah, it's become a copycat of so many channels these days. I like TYT, and have ever since they were on Youtube, but most of the shows now just seem like every else on MSNBC, FOX or CNN. Very sad they abandoned so many signature shows you couldn't get elsewhere.

 

[Incrediblejeff]

I knew by the time the added Keith Olbermann they were going to change everything.

 

[Kelly]

Yeah, it's become a copycat of so many channels these days. I like TYT, and have ever since they were on Youtube, but most of the shows now just seem like every else on MSNBC, FOX or CNN. Very sad they abandoned so many signature shows you couldn't get elsewhere.

I don't see how it is a copycat of any of the other news organizations. It just turned into a weird conglomeration of extreme left programming, and other weird shows. I haven't seen any other news organization that is as extreme one way as Current became over the past year and a half.

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

Speaking of 10 minute documentaries, they still exist , but moved to youtube on a channel called Vice.

 

[Midnyte_Sun]

I don't see how it is a copycat of any of the other news organizations. It just turned into a weird conglomeration of extreme left programming, and other weird shows. I haven't seen any other news organization that is as extreme one way as Current became over the past year and a half.

Lately they have been rerunning the hell out of The Marijuana Wars and the Mexican-American arms trade.

I guess they are pretty much done with documentaries.

 

[Shemtov]

That's not hijacking anything.

Please take your fingers out of your ears if you think Israel is being "nice" or "fair" to the middle east. They're as bad as Hamas. Brutal ethnic cleansers. Walk through Israel you see racially charged graffiti about Arabs everywhere, and the Government carries out some pretty ruthless actions against Palestinian civilians. They've killed Palestinians to a tune of 100 to 1 for every Israeli that has been killed.

You display the exact naivety that Question just referred to.

Before I saw this post, I was thinking that I might have been a little hasty in accusing you of trying to highjack the thread. I do know that people sometimes put extraneous issues into posts. It did look a little suspect but it wasn't enough for me to respond
HOWEVER, this post proves at least to me, that you were using this thread as a springboard to get into a discussion about Israel.
If tht was not the case, I would assume that the great majority of people would explain that they were going off on a slight tangent and meant nothing by it. But, instead, this post continued the tangent.