WEB EXCLUSIVE
KEN PICARD of 7D did an interview this week with former Pentagon spokesperson-turned Al Jazeera reporter, Josh Rushing.
Rushing and Al-Jazeera English Managing Director Tony Burman, will talk about the network and answer call-in questions TONIGHT at 6-6:45 p.m. on Channel 17, CCTV. For more information, call Sam Mayfield at Channel 17 at 862-3966, ext. 19.
Rushing will also speak tomorrow night at the public forum of Burlington Telecom's two citizen oversight committees on whether to continue airing the network. | Tuesday 11 June - from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. in the Hauke Conference Room at Champlain College.
Some of 24 Oranges’ most memorable posts
2 years ago
The debate around Al Jazeera offers an opportunity to establish whether Burlington residents are better off with diversity in news channels.
ReplyDeleteIt is pertinent to heed to what top defence officials who have served as key positions till recently have to say about the US media.
In General Ricardo S. Sanchez's observation, the four years of American media's coverage of the Iraq war continues to be problematic due to a near lack (if not total absence) of accountability.
A recent example best illustrates of what the American viewers miss out if their right to have alternate sources of information are continued to be denied. One wonders how many viewers in USA watched "Daylight Robbery" aired on BBC One on 10 June 2008?
This episode in the Panorama serial investigates claims that as much as $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or not properly accounted for in Iraq.
The programme had many revealing references on the fact when the US goes to war, corporate America goes too. "There are contracts for caterers, tanker drivers, security guards and even interrogators, many of them through companies with links to the White House."
"Now more than 70 whistleblower cases threaten to reveal the scandals behind billions of dollars worth of waste, theft and corruption during the Iraq war."
"A total of $23bn (£11.75bn) is under scrutiny. The US justice department has imposed gagging orders which prevent the real scale of the problem emerging."
Had American tax payers an easy access to alternate information sources such as AL Jazeera it wouldn’t have taken them several long years to question the wisdom of the “cakewalk” bunch i.e. the likes of Ken Adelmen who misled the American media by claiming “measured by any cost-benefit analysis, such an operation would constitute the greatest victory in America’s war on terrorism.”
Thus encouraging and embracing alternate sources of media has become increasingly important at a time when many US media organs tiptoe around issues in fear of overstepping their boundaries. 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. For a fraction of such amount spent on facilitating wider access to alternate sources like Al Jazeera English help American view the actual realities faced on ground from diverse sources.