THE COUNTERSPIN program on FAIR features Ken Picard of Seven Days.
The GUARDIAN has done a piece on Tony Burman, the new boss of Al Jazeera.
In Burlington, New England, where a tiny city-owned broadcaster with a few thousand subscribers carries Al-Jazeera, complaints from locals prompted the company to announce that it will be taken off air, but a local Republican representative is supporting its continued presence, Burman claims, and that decision could be reversed.Hmmm, I wonder who the Repub is. Any guesses?
Mr Burman will be attending next week's public forums on the Al Jazeera presence in Burlington.
TWO NEW HAMPSHIRE PAPERS with Vermont readership have editorials:
VALLEY NEWS (NH)
Channeling Free SpeechCiting the Valley News editorial, the KEENE (NH) SENTINEL writes
Al-Jazeera English on TV
***
Given what passes for television “news” programming in America these days, it's not astonishing that some viewers would like to banish a channel or two from the satellite or cable menu. That, however, seems quite different from what's going on in Vermont’s largest city, where Burlington Telecom is under pressure to drop the English language service of Al-Jazeera, the Arab-owned network based in Qatar.
As it happens, Burlington is one of the few places in the United States where Al-Jazeera English can be seen, others being Washington, D.C., Houston and parts of Ohio (figure that one out). It is largely invisible in this country because, in the words of the International Herald Tribune, “the reputation of its Arabic sibling as the preferred outlet for videos from Osama bin Laden has made the English-language version too hot to handle for some U.S. cable operators.”
Urging the municipally-owned Burlington Telecom to join the blackout is something called the Defenders Council of Vermont, whose 15 or 20 members conceive it as their mission to “educate the citizens of Vermont about the nature, reality and threat of radical Islam.” It seems not to have occurred to the Defenders that pulling the plug on an Arab-owned news service might not be the best way to educate Vermonters about the political and social perspectives of the Islamic world. Or that anyone offended by the programming has recourse to the TV viewer's ultimate trump card -- the remote.
This is not the only irony involved in this story, though. As the Associated Press reported earlier this week, the executive director of Burlington Telecom, Chris Burns, was only too happy to oblige the Defenders Council. He announced that the channel would be removed, but Mayor Bob Kiss put on the brakes until public reaction could be more thoroughly gauged. Perhaps in the meantime, the mayor will introduce the telecom director to the First Amendment, which, after all, is not only about the right to voice unpopular opinions but also about the right to hear them. If democracy is based on the notion that citizens best govern themselves by sorting through conflicting opinions in the marketplace of ideas, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense for a government entity to restrict the range of ideas about public affairs that are offered in that marketplace. It wholly contradicts the nation's democratic faith to believe that Americans are unable to distinguish between ideas that have merit and those that are spurious.
Beyond that, it seems to us that one of the gravest threats to national security in the 21st century is the extent to which America remains ignorant of the world and of how that world views this country. It is perhaps telling that BBC World, the BBC's round-the-clock news channel on which Al-Jazeera English was initially modeled, is also largely unavailable in the United States. In a dangerous world, Americans live in isolation at their own peril.
It is also worth noting that the English language service of Al-Jazeera recently hired as its new managing director Tony Burman, a former editor in chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. He plans to increase coverage of news in the United States heading into this fall's presidential election; invest in more news bureaus; and present “more provocative” news programming and investigative journalism. In short, Al-Jazeera English proposes to do what major American broadcast news organizations used to do.
What Al-Jazeera says
[I]t seems to us that one of the gravest threats to national security in the 21st century is the extent to which America remains ignorant of the world and of how that world views this country. It is perhaps telling that BBC World, the BBC's round-the-clock news channel on which Al-Jazeera English was initially modeled, is also largely unavailable in the United States. In a dangerous world, Americans live in isolation at their own peril ...
I was doing some research for a blog I run about the International Herald Tribune, and came upon your blog. Which then engaged me.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering if you might like to take a look at www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com You might find it an interesting prism through which to see the world, and follow more closely, and easily, the IHT.
Kind regards,
Ian
www.ianwalthew.com
www.ihtreaders.blogspot.com
www.aplaceintheauvergne.blogspot.com
On Al Jazeera:
ReplyDeleteI have been trying to engage Rabbi Glazier in email conversation on this issue with the intention of forwarding the dialogue to Jay for use on the blog, but the Rabbi will not respond and continues to run his original anti-Arab fatwa on Temple Sinai's web page from when this controversy began...Of course we welcome Tony to Burlington and hope to hear from him what the network is up to at this critical moment with AmerIsrael about to attack Iran!
-Patrick
I wonder if lobbyists in Burlington keep pace with transnational media & audience dynamics?
ReplyDeleteThe fact that (as the once Israeli Deputy Premier) Shimon Peres would set aside some time to visit the headquarters of Aljazeera News Channel in Doha will not surprise observers of the region's media scene. Peres also appeared in an special interview on the 24 hour news channel launched only in November 2006.
The attention and engagement accorded to AJ belies and dismisses what some alarmists portrayed to regarding this new channel with a multi-dimensional perspective to current affairs.
Shimon Peres' visit to the headquarters of Aljazeera News Channel in Doha would have shocked those oblivious to the region's media scene. In recent years, a dynamic transnational media has emerged that interacts with an engaging and critical audience that makes its own choices to reach its own conclusions. Peres endorsed the need to communicate with a sizeable audience by appearing in an interview programme on this news channel established recently.
The attention and engagement accorded to AJ sends a message on how seriously the newly established channel is taken by important regional players.
An Italian scholar of the Arab media, Donatella della Ratta rightly suggests that the West should seriously consider before blaming or blocking channels like Aljazeera that are in fact educating tools to inform rather than a medium providing an embedded version from a warring side. Her analysis is a wake-up call for those who believe that pouring $62 million on Al-Hurra can make the US image right in the Middle-East.
Instead of making wrong choices and pursuing wrong approaches that are just goose-chasing and witch-hunting exercises US needs to befriend with the ones that capture and portray the facts professionally and far effectively. The fact that Peres made it a point to appear on the channel reflects the significance of reaching out to an audience genuinely interested for peace in the region. This leaves cynics on the wrong foot when it comes to the realities of the Middle East.
It is an hour of reckoning for critics to come out from his age of denial, dismissal and disapproval of those he dislikes and differs with. Another factor that merits due consideration is what the viewers in Israel prefer to see. BBC World has been dropped by Israel's satellite provider Yes TV in favor of the Al-Jazeera English. The Guardian, London dubbed it as 'the first major distribution blow the corporation's international news channel has suffered since al-Jazeera's English-language service began broadcasting'. Although BBC World will still be available in Israel via cable, it will lose around 50% of its audience in the country as a result of being dropped by Yes. Al-Jazeera English signed the carriage deal with Yes in November 2006, but the damaging consequences for BBC World have only just emerged, remarked media commentator Tara Conlan. The true proof of responsible activism is in promoting and not preventing pluralistic viewpoints.
Alternative and accountable media is what the global audiences deserve and watch groups should put their energies to ensure the availability of such options.
Hi - note from the Arabic alJazeera side - please forgive the poor English.
ReplyDeletealJazeera was BBC Arabic at one time - the BBC lost it's Arabic license over broadcasting a few more scandels than the Arab governments could put up with.
When BBC Arabic was taken off the air it's employees, reporters and studios in Doha became alJazeera.
The bradcasting style of the Arabic alJazeera is as open as the BBC at least - else it's British Arabic speeking reporters went back to London, that was the deal - and many did go back over editorial issues and are now with the newly launched BBC Arabic.
This month about 20 Arab minsters of propaganda met in North Africa to gag Arabic satalite media, it's how they took BBC Arabic off the air nine years ago - but these days are a lot different - no one really asked or wondered why BBC Arabic was taken off - alJazeera Arabic however has a much louder audiance with the internet around these days :)
Peace