{"id":3120,"date":"2006-11-29T00:00:59","date_gmt":"2006-11-29T07:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/29\/provocative-peninsula-al-jazeera-blazes-a-new-trail-in-english\/"},"modified":"2006-11-29T00:00:59","modified_gmt":"2006-11-29T07:00:59","slug":"provocative-peninsula-al-jazeera-blazes-a-new-trail-in-english","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/11\/29\/provocative-peninsula-al-jazeera-blazes-a-new-trail-in-english\/","title":{"rendered":"Provocative Peninsula — Al-Jazeera Blazes a New Trail in English"},"content":{"rendered":"

“If it’s newsworthy, it gets on the air, whether it’s Bush or bin Laden.”<\/font><\/p>\n

So began the first few days of Al-Jazeera<\/a>‘s English language news channel, a stream of glitzy slogans and swirling views of the Doha newsroom, punctuated by the occasional ad for a Qatari development corporation or Gulf state-based airline.<\/p>\n

The news reports show footage that in the United States one could only get watching sensational Spanish language shock shows<\/a>. On the day Pierre Gemayel<\/a> was assassinated (undoubtedly a “good” break for Al-Jazeera English’s kick-off), I must have seen the Lebanese minister’s brains splattered in clumps on his passenger seat 15 times.<\/p>\n

But supported by the impressive production quality are news and analysis shows which seem to still be trying to find their groove.<\/p>\n

One of the touted strengths of the channel, for example the fact that its Middle East experts would actually be from the Middle East, seems to also be a weakness: the guests many times can’t seem to finish articulating the answer to a question before, due to time restraints, the host must interrupt them to move on to a new subject or point of view.<\/p>\n

My favorite shows so far are Riz Khan<\/a> — sort of like Larry King but not obnoxious<\/a> — and People and Power<\/a>, a magazine-style news program. A recent show on the Palestinian government and political prisoners was fascinating and in-depth, if only because it showed and told me things I’d never have seen or heard on CNN. And for those of you who saw Control Room<\/a><\/em>, former US mouthpiece Josh Rushing<\/a> is now refreshingly “with them.”<\/p>\n

There is also plenty of non-Middle Eastern coverage. Just today I saw exclusive Al-Jazeera footage of battles in Chad, and a fluff piece on a show called 48<\/a> about Havana, which was (irkingly) light on the Castro regime. Last week I saw disturbing footage from 1994 of Argentine Jews staring in horror at the pile of rubble and bodies that was made of their community center in Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n

There’s a lot I am leaving out because I simply don’t have time to watch TV all day, but also because I want you to go to Al-Jazeera today and subscribe to the broadband service for $6\/month<\/a>. Of course, this is only if you’re in the US<\/a> — most other countries have companies which have agreed to provide the channel to their subscribers.<\/p>\n

The verdict is: Al-Jazeera rocks, and for now, I’m addicted. There’s definitely room for improvement, but at least it’s not full of the puke-inducing blatherings of self-important morons like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“If it’s newsworthy, it gets on the air, whether it’s Bush or bin Laden.” So began the first few days of Al-Jazeera‘s English language news channel, a stream of glitzy slogans and swirling views of the Doha newsroom, punctuated by the occasional ad for a Qatari development corporation or Gulf state-based airline. The news reports […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3120"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}