“If it’s newsworthy, it gets on the air, whether it’s Bush or bin Laden.”
So began the first few days of Al-Jazeera‘s English language news channel, a stream of glitzy slogans and swirling views of the Doha newsroom, punctuated by the occasional ad for a Qatari development corporation or Gulf state-based airline.
The news reports show footage that in the United States one could only get watching sensational Spanish language shock shows. On the day Pierre Gemayel was assassinated (undoubtedly a “good” break for Al-Jazeera English’s kick-off), I must have seen the Lebanese minister’s brains splattered in clumps on his passenger seat 15 times.
But supported by the impressive production quality are news and analysis shows which seem to still be trying to find their groove.
One of the touted strengths of the channel, for example the fact that its Middle East experts would actually be from the Middle East, seems to also be a weakness: the guests many times can’t seem to finish articulating the answer to a question before, due to time restraints, the host must interrupt them to move on to a new subject or point of view.
My favorite shows so far are Riz Khan — sort of like Larry King but not obnoxious — and People and Power, a magazine-style news program. A recent show on the Palestinian government and political prisoners was fascinating and in-depth, if only because it showed and told me things I’d never have seen or heard on CNN. And for those of you who saw Control Room, former US mouthpiece Josh Rushing is now refreshingly “with them.”
There is also plenty of non-Middle Eastern coverage. Just today I saw exclusive Al-Jazeera footage of battles in Chad, and a fluff piece on a show called 48 about Havana, which was (irkingly) light on the Castro regime. Last week I saw disturbing footage from 1994 of Argentine Jews staring in horror at the pile of rubble and bodies that was made of their community center in Buenos Aires.
There’s a lot I am leaving out because I simply don’t have time to watch TV all day, but also because I want you to go to Al-Jazeera today and subscribe to the broadband service for $6/month. Of course, this is only if you’re in the US — most other countries have companies which have agreed to provide the channel to their subscribers.
The verdict is: Al-Jazeera rocks, and for now, I’m addicted. There’s definitely room for improvement, but at least it’s not full of the puke-inducing blatherings of self-important morons like Lou Dobbs and Bill O’Reilly and Joe Scarborough.