Winnipeg cable company won't carry Al-Jazeera

Winnipeg.cbc ^ | 7-18-04

[veronica]

WINNIPEG - Winnipeggers waiting to see Arab news station Al-Jazeera shouldn't hold their breath.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has approved the Arab news channel for broadcast in Canada, but placed strict conditions on cable providers who carry it, to ensure no material considered "abusive comment" is aired.

Peter Bissonette, president of Shaw Communications, Winnipeg's major cable service provider, calls the conditions "onerous."

"What the commission has said is that if you carry them, you have to monitor the signal 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to ensure they comply with the Canadian broadcasting standards," he explains.

"We would have to have somebody sitting at a monitoring station who has the ability – who speaks Arabic for one – and who, for 24 hours a day, can monitor the programming content, and who also understands the implications of the Canadian broadcasting standards."

Bissonette says the CRTC conditions, combined with low demand in Winnipeg, means carrying Al-Jazeera would be "unworkable."

The network, which broadcasts 24 hours a day from Qatar on the Persian Gulf, regularly receives video and audio tapes said to have come from al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Recently, the network has received videos of hostages in Iraq shown being held or killed by their captors.

Critics of Al-Jazeera, including the Canadian Jewish Congress, say the network broadcasts anti-Semitic programs. The White House has criticized the network's coverage in the war in Iraq, saying it's inaccurate and has an anti-American bias, and authoritarian Arab governments have shut down its offices in several countries.

The network, known as the CNN of the Arab world, is already being watched by some Canadians using "grey-market" technology that the CRTC considers illegal.

[Clive]

Rogers cable, servicing Toronto, also won't carry it, and for the same reasons.

[Paleo Conservative]

Of course Fox News is completely out of the question.

[Larry Lucido]

So they refuse to carry it not because it is violent and hateful, but because they would have to censor the violence and hate and that would be inconvenient.