Posted on 03/14/2006 5:05:59 PM PST by Aussie Dasher
Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based Arab TV network often described as Osama bin Laden's propaganda outlet, wants to broadcast in the United States but is running into difficulties finding outlets that would allow it to have an English-language channel in America.
According to the New York Sun, a planned Al-Jazeera English-language channel due to go on the air in May has yet to find cable or satellite outlets that would allow it to peddle its wares across America.
The planned network, staffed largely by veteran Western journalists, was supposed to launch in March, but the target date was recently pushed back, the Sun reported.
"They need some sort of entree into American homes," a former CBS news executive, Alvin Snyder, who ran the American government's international television broadcasts in the 1980s, told the Sun. "They have to attract not only distributors in the U.S. market, but sponsors."
"We are still negotiating distribution in the States," a spokeswoman for Al-Jazeera, Rana Jazayerli, said in an e-mailed statement to the Sun. Lindsey Oliver, a former executive with CNBC Europe was supposed to visit America last week to continue talks with potential outlets, but the visit was abruptly canceled. The spokeswoman explained that Oliver "is meeting with cable and satellite providers and sorting through offers and options."
According to Broadcast & Cable magazine, Oliver reports having had several second-round meetings with U.S. cable operators after allaying near universal fears they have had that the network could be linked to a terrorist organization.
B&C reported that one cable operator offered the network a carriage agreement, but Oliver has not yet accepted it, as the deal would put AJI on an Arabic tier, which could be "misleading,” she says, as the network programs are in English. The original Arabic-language Al Jazeera is available in the U.S. via EchoStar’s Dish Network and several U.S. news organizations use its often controversial footage of the Middle East on their broadcasts.
"In the States, there’s always a skepticism,” she says. "We’re a credible news organization full of individuals with experience and journalistic integrity.”
One sticking point is the reputation it's Arab-language sister network in the U.S. has earned a reputation as an unabashed mouthpiece for terrorists and radical Islamic extremists.
According to an April 2003 story in Britain's The Register, Al-Jazeera launched an English-language Web site at the end of March in Britain and this immediately came under fire on several fronts. It was hacked, Network Solutions was tricked into allowing the domain to be hijacked, and U.S. host DataPipe gave it notice after what Al-Jazeera claimed was pressure from other customers, The Register reported.
Al-Jazeera has been accused as being bin Laden's main propaganda outlet, taking delivery of his videotapes and broadcasting them, according to The Register, which noted that it once showed footage of the bodies of two dead British servicemen, and of captured troops paraded by the Iraqis. Moreover, it broadcasts far more harrowing pictures of civilian casualties than Western outlets are prepared to run.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused Al-Jazeera of promoting terrorism and "vicious lies" and played a major role in the Iraqi government's banning of Al-Jazeera from Iraq. The State Department has complained about "false" and "inflammatory" reporting.
Al-Jazeera has sought to tone down criticism of its alleged pro Arab extremism by hiring two well-known newsmen with international reputations, "Nightline" correspondent David Marash, and a renowned BBC interviewer, David Frost.
Frost, hired in October 2005, defends Al-Jazeera: "For all the people who think it's anti-American, there are various countries in the Middle East who think it's too pro-Western. I would say the jury's out on Al-Jazeera. Obviously, we all suffer from the handicap of not being able to sit there and watch in Arabic," said Frost.
Marash joins Bureau Chief Will Stebbins, hired last year from Associated Press Television News, at the New York center, one of four the network will operate around the world. Forty staffers have been hired for the Washington, D.C., center, which will ultimately have 90, according to Broadcast & Cable magazine.
While the new channel promises it will be "accurate, impartial, and objective," Marash argued in an interview with the Sun that one of CNN's pitfalls was its attempt to present news from an entirely neutral perspective.
"They tried to create a kind of artificial all-the-world's point of view, which was in many ways a classic American journalist's point of view. 'We're nonpartisan. We are objective. We can do this from some perspective in space,'" he told the Sun.
Both men have stressed that the new network will be editorially independent of the existing one, though they have never said precisely why such an assurance is needed.
Just think "Moozie-Gore TV"!!!
Gee, what "horrible" news, lemme go grab a tissue to wipe my tears! (of laughter...)
It would be interesting to see Al Jazeera in english... the big suprise might be that its not as different as most people think from ABC.
DirecTV picks them up I'm cancelling and switching to any program provider that refuses this garbage.
I would watch it only long enough to get the advertisers so I could write and boycott them. Maybe if I was lucky someone else would post the list of advertisers and save my blood pressure spike.
A "chill wind" is blowing. [hoot]
"In the States, there’s always a skepticism,” she says. "We’re a credible news organization full of individuals with experience and journalistic integrity.”
BWAH-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
With the alphabet networks, CNN and MSNBC available, it's kind of redundant, isn't it?
I'll just smearja...
I think it'd be GREAT if these people ran a broadcast here. It would make Americans realize what racists and xenophobes really are, and what Muslims really are told to think by the imams.
(From the Article)
QUOTE:"I would say the jury's out on Al-Jazeera."
I don't think so...
I think the jury is not only back, but the platform is being built and a cool and professional masked gentleman is twisting some new hemp rope into a clasically perfect noose...
Any seconds to that opinion?
We'll do the same here.
Not to worry.
The useful idiots of the University of Missouri Journalism School will
probably find some way to help out their Islamic fellow-travelers:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1577182/posts
Uhhh, yeah. They made an astounding "entree" on September 11th, 2001; and immediately afterward. The whole sponsorship thing will prove a tough nut to crack. Perchance CAIR and the Palestinian Center for the Arts will subsidize this propaganda. Distribution and syndication may prove even more problematic. Many people that work in the industry might possibly determine that technical issues simply preclude this content's PID stream and encrypt/decrypt algorithm from being compatible with our current technology. Or that their hardware/software vendor is not compliant. The possibilities are stunning.
The sound I heard in my head after readin this was the 'Haa Haa' from one of Bart's little friends on the Simpsons ...
Seconded!!!!
I do believe you're referring to Nelson.
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