Posted on 01/30/2005 9:18:14 PM PST by RWR8189
The government of Qatar is pushing forward with plans to privatize al-Jazeera, the popular and controversial Arab television network that has often drawn the ire of U.S. administration officials, a network spokesman said.
Details of the plan are yet to be worked out and await a feasibility report that should be completed in coming months, said Jihad Ballout, a spokesman in the Qatari capital of Doha. Al-Jazeera is highly popular in the Arab world but has repeatedly drawn criticism from the Bush administration about its coverage of the war in Iraq and other hot-button issues in the Middle East.
Pressure from U.S. officials has caused the government of Qatar, which bankrolls al-Jazeera, to accelerate the spinoff, according to a report yesterday in the New York Times, which quoted an unnamed senior Qatari official.
Ballout said he has heard reports about such pressure but has no first-hand knowledge of it. He said he knew of no attempts to interfere with the network's independence and emphasized that al-Jazeera's code of ethics forbade it from succumbing to commercial or political pressure.
Ballout and a senior al-Jazeera journalist added that Qatar had always planned to privatize al-Jazeera. When the network was set up in 1996, the rough model was the BBC, which is bankrolled by the British government. The plan was for al-Jazeera to rely, after five years, on advertising dollars -- a model closer to CNN.
Although the network has succeeded in gaining viewers -- as many as 40 million daily -- it has had limited success in obtaining advertising, largely because private corporations in many Arab countries were unwilling to bankroll a media company that frequently drew the ire of Arab governments, said Ballout and the senior al-Jazeera journalist.
Still, in late 2003, Qatar announced it would begin exploring ways
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"Ballout and a senior al-Jazeera journalist added that Qatar had always planned to privatize al-Jazeera. When the network was set up in 1996, the rough model was the BBC, which is bankrolled by the British government. The plan was for al-Jazeera to rely, after five years, on advertising dollars -- a model closer to CNN."
Good. If they are following CNN as a model, they are destined to fail.
Adios Al Jezeera
Countdown to an Al Qaeda front company buying it. But wait, don't they already...
I thought that Qatar sided with the USA in recent Gulf war? Wasn't our Central Command hosted there?
Maybe Al-Jazeera turned on its own government's policies, much like the BBC ("Bagdad Broadcasting Corp?") turned on its British bosses?
Strange....
They might as well close their doors now, they'll save themselves a lot of pain. They're getting a really ugly name even in the Arab world.
Either provide alternative info or burn their channels out of the sky.
Word is out that the NYT is buying Al-J so they can start a new combined NewYorkTimesAlJazeera News Network, with many business synergies due to identical reporting and editorial content.
I think Murdock should buy it.
i twas beaten to the punch, oh well
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