and for more on media

[winterbadger]

from my friend Dana, I got this link

Forget Fox News and CNN. To Really Get a Global Perspective We Need Our Cable Operators to Carry Al Jazeera English

Now, while I've watched AJE before, I've not watched their coverage of the Egyptian crisis. So I can't saw whether their coverage ahs indeed been "relentless, thorough and unbiased". From what I've seen of them in the past, they are often relentless and thorough, but not what I would call unbiased. On the other hand, they are pretty professional . And they don't (that I know of) just make $#^O& up. :-) Yes, they have an undeniably different perspective. But that's a good thing.

Getting all your news from pseudo-news outlets like The Daily Show and Fox News is not good. But if that's the McDonald's Happy Meal of information, only going to one source for news is a course of always eating the same meal, over and over again. Lentils have all sorts of health benefits, but if you eat nothing but lentils for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you're going to be missing out on things you need to keep going.  

Try AJE sometime--even if you don't find it fascinating, think of it as eating your carrots and broccoli. :-) And if your cable operator doesn't carry AJE, bug them until they do. And until then, catch it on the Web.

Other English-language services from the Middle East include Al Arabiya, Al Alam (English service website currently down), and Al Hurra (the USG's Arabic news service). I don't know of a cable network broadcasting from Israel, but I've always found Haaretz reliable and informative.

Comments

[ariedana.livejournal.com]

They really have been very non-biased in the current story. In fact, after Mubarak fell yesterday, the anchor had to specifically ask the chief reporter in Liberation Square, who had been arrested twice since the protests started, to drop his impartiality for a moment to give his true thoughts on the moment. Contrast that to Anderson Cooper, who I do love but who was shaken in a bad way by his Cairo experience, beginning his show all week by listing all the ways Egyptian government officials had lied that day.

Yes, the coverage has been dramatic, but because the events were themselves dramatic. And AJE stuck to the story throughout.

AJE not unbiased but generally fair

[kathy lariviere (from livejournal.com)]

AJE was certainly instigating some of what's been happening in Egypt, if only by giving it such prominence on their shows. That being said, they generally try to be fair and refer to Israel as Israel. I think Al Hurra is far more biased (just in a different way) and far less professional. I don't bother with it.

Re: AJE not unbiased but generally fair

[winterbadger]

I think one of the many differences between AJE and AH is that AJE's bias is that of the editors and other news staff, while AH works to a script from the funding organizations. I wouldn't say they make %&*$ up the way Fox does, but they certainly have an agenda and work to promote it as an "enterprise goal".