Al Jazeera America Terminates All TV and Digital Operations (theintercept.com) 276
waspleg writes: Executives of Al Jazeera America (AJAM) held a meeting at 2 p.m. Eastern Time to tell their employees that the company is terminating all news and digital operations in the U.S. as of April 2016, resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs. AJAM has been losing staggering sums of money from the start. That has become increasingly untenable as the network's owner and funder, the government of Qatar, is now economically struggling due to low oil prices. The decision was made recently to terminate AJAM, which allows the network to terminate all of its cumbersome distribution contracts with cable companies, and re-launch its successful Al Jazeera English inside the U.S.
That sucks (Score:5, Funny)
Al Jazeera America was a great, unbiased source of news. I will definitely miss it.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't describe it as totally unbiased, but it did seem less biased than all the other options here in the USA.
Bingo. It wasn't totally unbiased, but they covered a lot of stuff that never made it into the 3-minute "news" cycle that most of the news outlets in the US live and die by.
Re:That sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important, then 5 minutes of commercials, repeated for a 24 hour period. Depending upon the channel this can change slightly to that the 22 minutes are news anchors giving partisan editorials lightly disguised as heavy hitting news, or entertainment news (Kardashians), or a "for a rebuttal let's go to the other political party for their reaction" segment, and whatnot.
Al Jazeera has fallen to the same problem as the other news networks: they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them. The other networks decided to sensationalize the "news" to bring in eyeballs rather than go under.
There's still the BBC. I get a lot of my news from them on the web or radio. I wish they had a streaming service that will go to a TV though.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important,
This is why I stopped watching the news. People love information, which is why the News is so popular, but watching a 'breaking story' where there is zero information and talking heads speculate over possible scenarios is just trash.
The sad part is that media is one of the pillars of a strong democracy, and by cheapening the news, it results in people switching off and caring just that little bit less.
Ironically when a story does break, the talking heads in here usually have far more insight than on TV. I remember when that jet went missing over Malaysia we had Pilots, Traffic controllers, Navy guys, GPS experts, all in here discussing the finer detail, then when I switched on the News it was the like the play school version by comparison.
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media is one of the pillars of a strong democracy
Niel Postman has an interesting book on this subject, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business [wikipedia.org], I don't know what to say about this book other than you should read it. It does not paint a pretty picture.
I too stopped watching, even listening to most news and I remember the exact time and place. And why [wikipedia.org].
The first casualty of war... (Score:3, Informative)
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Well, it's 3 minutes of news cycle, then 22 minutes of talking heads going on about nothing important, then 5 minutes of commercials, repeated for a 24 hour period. Depending upon the channel this can change slightly to that the 22 minutes are news anchors giving partisan editorials lightly disguised as heavy hitting news, or entertainment news (Kardashians), or a "for a rebuttal let's go to the other political party for their reaction" segment, and whatnot.
Al Jazeera has fallen to the same problem as the other news networks: they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them. The other networks decided to sensationalize the "news" to bring in eyeballs rather than go under.
There's still the BBC. I get a lot of my news from them on the web or radio. I wish they had a streaming service that will go to a TV though.
The most hilarious US 'news' I saw recently was CNN talking to some republican guy about Trump. The republican said "You guys talk about Trump a lot and I watch a lot of CNN. You never seem to cover the democrat primaries." The CNN talking heads didn't quite seem to know what to do and said "We'll cover that when time comes for the general election." which seemed incredibly dumb.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
That's because they would have to admit that Clinton has a serious rival for the Democratic nomination: Bernie Sanders. They would prefer that the sheeple did not consider this possibility.
Re:That sucks (Score:4)
What's to cover? You have the preordained candidate that the DNC is doing their best to rig the primaries in favor of, a grumpy crank independent Senator from New England who is making waves because he actually cares, and some other guy that has zero chance, but is hanging on anyway.
The only way that the Democratic primary race becomes anything other than 'dog bites man' is if Bernie runs the early table and wins Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. I don't blame the news networks for not carrying anything about that - it's not a race, and they refuse to talk about Hillary's dishonesty or flaws of character for fear of upsetting the preordained nominee and getting shut out during the general election.
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In a word: Roku. BBC has the iPlayer and there is a BBC News "Channel" on the Roku. You might need to route your traffic through a VPN, though.
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I've got Roku and there's no BBC on it. When I first got it there was BBC but it never did anything, like it was out of date or broken, then later it disappeared. It does have Sky News though but it's not quite the same.
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It does have Sky News though but it's not quite the same.
Sky is just another Murdoch outlet.
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There's still the BBC. I get a lot of my news from them on the web or radio. I wish they had a streaming service that will go to a TV though.
You could try https://www.filmon.com/tv/live [filmon.com] BBC News is there as well, you can cast it to chrome from a tablet. SD quality is free (with some ads)
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
they get paid based upon the number of eyeballs that watch them.
No, AJ actually has a lot in common with the BBC, including the fact it is state funded so does NOT rely on eyeballs for revenue. There's also the ABC/SBS network in Australia, it was born at the same time as the BBC and copied it's funding/organisational structure (we even had the same TV license scheme in Oz up until the late 60's). The reason a state funded TV network like the BBC works so well is because they are set up as an independent state funded corporation (the 'C' in BBC/ABC stands for 'corporation'), this is vastly different to a state run TV network that's used as a political megaphone by the ruling party.
The BBC/ABC are tasked with entertaining/informing the masses, they must cater for a wide range of tastes so almost by definition they will offend someone. More importantly they are also tasked with "keeping the bastards honest". They both do a pretty good job and have an enviable track record stretching back over half a century, which is why the masses who actually pay the operating costs overwhelmingly support their continued existence.
Finally AJ haven't "gone under" in the US, AFAICT they are just rebooting the US business to get out of a contractual money pit they dug themselves into. They don't need to make a profit to serve their "foreign relations" purpose in the US, but they can't continue to feed the current money pit. Cleaning up the first launch failure and re launching seems a sensible thing to do, it's almost certain they will do a better job after such an expensive training exercise. I wish them well, this kind of foreign relations exercise is infinitely preferable to firing missiles at each other.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
I wouldn't describe it as totally unbiased, but it did seem less biased than all the other options here in the USA.
Bingo. It wasn't totally unbiased, but they covered a lot of stuff that never made it into the 3-minute "news" cycle that most of the news outlets in the US live and die by.
All news sources will have some degrees of bias, whether it is intentional or incidental. In the end when we are exposed to a source of news, we should be aware of who sponsors it, who the target audience is, what the quality of research is and what their historical narrative has been.
Ideally if you the time, exposing yourself to multiple sources and understanding historical context is the best, but beyond a specific story, I doubt many of us can or will make that time. Saying that, that doesn't mean we shouldn't be open to different takes on the same story.
News cycle (Score:5, Insightful)
Here is a stunning example of how bad the USA news cycle can be.
This story would be the night 19 August, 1991. I was a graduate student living not too far from New York. The previous day, I'd heard ominous indications of a coup in Russia, probably trying to return to Soviet style government. Having been out of touch with news media for about 24 hours ("graduate student", remember?) I felt the need for an update, so I tuned my radio to a New York city "24 hour news" radio station.
After a full 30 minutes, they hadn't even mentioned it once. Then the announcer said "And now back to tonight's top story..."
"Finally!" I thought.
"... basements flooded in Long Island"
ARGH! I gave up. The world's second largest nuclear arsenal was potentially falling into the hands of hostile extremists, the Cold War could be restarting, and it didn't rate a mention compared to flooded basements.
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
It might have had some bias but I'm so used to CBS, MSNBC, CNN and FOX acting as propaganda outlets outlets that they seemed unbiased. It was refreshing to have a channel that mostly just reported the news.
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They had the paris shootings hours before cnn
What? CNN and Fox were both airing on-air interviews with people on the ground in Paris before police had entered the concert venue. You might dislike both of those networks, and really have liked AJAM ... but what do you gain by lying in a way that's so easily debunked? Really, what's the point?
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Depends on the subject. They are very blatantly biased and actually act as a propaganda tool for the Democrats when it comes to 2nd amendment rights issues.
Are they actually biased, or they just didn't agree with your views on the matter?
We have a govt broadcaster (funded by govt but with full editorial independence) always being criticised by the the Right for apparent Left wing bias. Independent analysis is done and never finds any,or if it does, it's the least biased of all media outlets. It seems that the Right will just complain more about sharing the platform with other, opposing points of view. Conservatism by it's nature does not like other points of
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Are they actually biased, or they just didn't agree with your views on the matter?
That's basically the same thing as bias. Agreement or disagreement is an opinion. I.e. saying "we think firearms are bad" is different from saying "a district court made a new ruling against private ownership of firearms today". One is stating an opinion, the other is reporting on current events.
Conservatism by it's nature does not like other points of view, ie it's conservative, whereas Liberalism embraces it (even if it's plain wrong)
That's blatantly false (and quite naive on your part.) Take for example the concerted effort to get Glenn Beck off of the air. If they don't watch his show, why did they even want it off of the air? Simple: They don
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I don't want my news to 'agree' or 'disagree' with anything. I want facts. Agreeing or disagreeing is opinion, and there's entirely too much opinion in the 'news' today.
That's the fucking problem.
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Depends on the subject. They are very blatantly biased and actually act as a propaganda tool for the Democrats when it comes to 2nd amendment rights issues.
Recognizing that most 2nd amendment rights advocates in the U.S. are raving nutjobs is not bias, it's contact with basic reality. This is but one of many issues where false equivalence is turning U.S. journalism into a farce.
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I bookmarked it in hope that I'd get unbiased news. After a while, the news links just seemed to be "Yahoo-like" clickbait.
Sensational, tabloid type news subjects.
I removed it from my news sources.
I wish I could find an unbiased news source but it's getting more-difficult to fine lately.
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You blame "deregulation" for causing the problem, seemingly deliberately ignoring the issue of regulatory capture that happens in any regulated industry you care t
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Deregulation caused this particular problem. We used to have laws limiting the amount of media one company could own, which included one radio station per market. This meant that there was room for lots of independent radio stations with their own emphases and biases. When that law was changed, small media just got gobbled up until most of the US media were controlled by a small number of really big companies. We had regulation, and lots of variety in radio. Then we removed regulation, and allowed capi
Re: That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
unbiased source of news
Ain't no such creature, son. The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter. Gets you a little bit closer to an objective truth, but even at that don't take any related reality too seriously.
The other half of the key (Score:2, Interesting)
Ain't no such creature [as an unbiased source of news], son. The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter.
Unfortunately, one manifestation of bias is failing to report news that runs counter to the bias. This leaves you without information. You can't apply filters unless you have a signal.
So he other half of the key is actually GETTING the reporting from sources with other biases.
Al Jazeera America and Russia Today have been two such sou
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You can sort of be aware of bias, and I think it's possible to have news without bias if one conscientiously avoids it. It's sort of like saying that you can't teach mathematics without bias because everyone has some innate bias. There might not be any objective truth in news, but there are the basic facts. If they cut out all the extra crap then they could focus on just the basic facts and have time to allow showing more basic facts rather than picking and choosing a small subset of facts (which increas
Re: That sucks (Score:5, Insightful)
The key is being fully aware of each source's biases and mapping the common ground among all of them, post-filter. Gets you a little bit closer to an objective truth, but even at that don't take any related reality too seriously.
Not necessarily. Argument to moderation [wikipedia.org] could put you further away from the truth, rather than closer.
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Actually, it takes a little more than that.
A biased source of news may still be professional about it. If a source of news regularly publishes lies, drop it.
Assuming they do keep a minimal journalistic ethics regime, however, you still need to try to watch the bias points. It's best to try and get your news from more than one source, and compare the presentation, headlines, and differences.
The problem with bias is that it is catching. Humans are affected by the things not said more than they are by the thin
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:That sucks (Score:5, Funny)
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Or just read the associated press feed raw without all the spin the channels add to it.
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That's actually hilarious. The AP feed is FILLED with pro-leftist bias. It's only marginally less biased than Reuters, and that's not saying much. The manifested hate for the right is practically seeping out of the ethernet ports on the AP's edge routers. "The channels" don't need to spin it, because the whole idea of syndicated journalism is that someone posts a story and the publisher just prints it (sometimes after modifying the headline for space considerations.) Hell, even Fox will sometimes post an AP
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The AP feed is FILLED with pro-leftist bias.
Reality generally is, too, at least relative to how far right the US has become.
Re:That sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
Reality has no bias, but it very much appears biased, because one entire side of the political spectrum (the Right) has abandoned it altogether and only exists inside a fantasy world where:
- the US is the only nation that matters, and Europe, Canada, and Australia either doesn't exist, or are considered to be socialist hellholes, even though they live longer, safer lives, with less violence, less poverty, more education, more freedom, less debt, better healthcare
- all the worlds scientists are engaged in a global conspiracy to force evolution and global warming, and other lies of satan upon the world
- the only knowledge worth having, be it political and economic theory, social studies, science, or philosophy, comes from the Bible
- more guns = more safety, even though the rest of the world has already patently disproved that notion many times over
- immigrants are evil people intent on killing us in our sleep, even though they actually commit crimes at a lower rate than the native population
- terrorist threats are imminent, terrorist = muslims, and the president is a secret member
- the entire constitution only applies to Christians, everyone else is SOL
- the "war on poverty" is a lost cause, even though history clearly shows that social programs (aka welfare) have reduced it and improved the quality of life of society's weakest members, and in other nations that have gone even farther than we have, have even lower rates of poverty
- trickle down economics works
- Obama/Clinton are felons, somehow, because 4 people died Libya, even though countless investigations by the very people blaming them continually fail to find them at actual fault, and also somehow Bush/Cheney are completely blameless for all that they did
- we somehow can't afford to take care of troops when they come home, but we can spend 1000x that amount on going to war in the first place
The list goes on and on and on.
So yes, reality effectively does have a bias, in the sense that only one side actually lives in and acknowledges it.
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I'm not disagreeing, but there is no effective conservative party in the US, unless you count the Democrats. The frontrunning Republican candidates are jokes, and the Democrats have a battle between a centrist (by US standards) and a guy who wouldn't be considered right-wing by Europeans. I think conservatives should form a political party sometime that would be, you know, conservative. You know, move slowly on things, value approaches to balanced budget, respect traditional US values, that sort of thin
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Yes, there's some pretty nutty people on the Right, just as there are on any side with that this many people involved. I'm more worried when I don't hear about the other side's cartoon characters.
The left's cartoon characters aren't leading candidates for President.
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But then you don't get any in depth analysis. Of course once you start doing analysis it becomes so much harder to avoid the bias. But the raws news feed doesn't give you perspective, you just get a jumble of facts without a way to tie the facts together.
For instance if the news feed says that a government report came out showing that the Oil Interoperability Index for July was 32.9, then what does that really mean for you? Is it up, is it down, is up better than down, how does it affect my daily life, w
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Riiight. Just like fox news is 'fair and balanced' and al sharpton's show on mslsd isn't race baiting garbage.
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Whoosh.
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True. A sad state of affairs all around. The state of the union is definitely not strong, and the future is in serious question.
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Eh, no. Al Jazeera is nowhere near the league of Fox. Seriously. Al Jazeera is far more balanced than almost any news source in the US, and FAR more balanced than news sources in Europe. In fact, in Northern Europe these days I'd call the "native" news sources being entirely anti-Jewish in its coverage of the Middle-Eastern conflict.
It was very refreshing to see a female reporter from Al Jazeera tear several new orifices in the Hamas leadership about their use of civilians as shields for their military oper
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race baiting: phrase used by conservatives when someone admits black people not only exist in the US, but are at a systemic disadvantage
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Al Jazeera America was a great, unbiased source of news. I will definitely miss it.
This is an attempt at a joke right? Yea, and NPR has less bias because it's not advertisement funded... Don't believe anything you see online, less than half of what a reporter says in print or pictures, and barely half of what you personally observe.
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NPR has less bias? They're biased by the views of their listener/doner base.
Re:That sucks (Score:4, Funny)
"They're biased by the views of their listener/doner base."
I've heard NPR being accused of a lot of things, but I've never heard them run a kebab commercial.
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It used to be anyone could go to the Al Jazeera English website and watch a live stream.
Then they tried to sell out to the cable companies in the US (and failed, obviously), placing IP blocks on their video stream for anyone browsing to their site from an IP address inside the US.
I hope they'll go back to streaming in the US so I can punish them for their dissent by blocking their ads and watching their stream in my browser.
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Really? I remember recently the really half assed article below was brought to my attention. This is so far from being unbiased or even vaguely researched it is funny. The author did no research into SBS and constantly describes something that is very federally illegal as if it was legal to do.
http://america.aljazeera.com/a... [aljazeera.com]
That article is also far from the first time I've seen them do something like this.
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Al Jazeera America was a great, unbiased source of news. I will definitely miss it.
That "woosh" I heard probably was that gazguzzler SUV that you didn't buy that might have shored up the oil prices that might have kept this alive.
Mixed bag (Score:2)
I'm bummed about losing Al Jazeera America, but I did miss Al Jazeera English.
I hadn't even realized that AJAM had a channel, though; I only read their content online and through the mobile app.
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Re: Mixed bag (Score:3)
Because those operations actually had viewers, AJAM peaked at 30,000 viewers for it's most popular shows - without viewers there is no advertising revenue, without revenue, no network.
This was the plan all along (Score:4, Funny)
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"This is not my beautiful house." (Score:2)
"I'm already in my Mom's basement!"
You mean I'm not? Then whose basement is this?
Difficult to sympathize (Score:4, Insightful)
Wasn't Qatar just funding it? (Score:3)
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Oh, yeah. There was this Islamic diktat from the time of Mohammed that Jews couldn't live in the Arabian peninsula under any circumstances. For this reason, after Mohammed's genocide of Jews in Medina, this was always banned, and the US shamefully grovels before those Arab sheikhdoms.
That's the other good thing about low oil prices - the al Thanis being unable to fund al Jazeera, and being forced to fold their US operations. Hope that the same thing happens to it everywhere outside Qatar.
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The US Government will, if requested, allow you to hold two separate US passports so that you can visit relatives in Israel with one, and go to some of the middle-eastern nations with the other.
Last time I checked, that was not necessary. When entering Israel, you can tell the customs official that you want your passport not to be stamped. You will get an addendum page instead, and your passport will not show any signs you were in Israel, so you can enter those Arab countries.
It's old information, so don't rely on it without verifying.
Also, when were you in Israel, and why didn't you contact any of the local LUGs? I'm sure we would have loved to hear you talk.
Shachar
Re: Difficult to sympathize (Score:3)
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Yea, but it's sad to see hundreds of Americans that work for the network ending up on the unemployment lines just because they worked for a propaganda venture of the Qatar government...
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It's an unfortunate truth that for everyone in communication arts who actually has a job doing what they desired to do, there are 20 people just as qualified standing behind them who never get a job in the field at all.
Once in a while, I hear from someone in the field who did something sensible like finishing college rather than taking an opportunity that was presented to them. It never comes again.
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Yea, bussing tables is a poor use of that journalism degree you got half of.. ;) Don't get me started on Actors, Artist and Musicians who to often don't choose the backstop of a college education and end up running a cash register at a big box store..
I'm glad that my offspring are condemned to STEM careers like their father. Get a one of those degrees and you might buss tables sometimes but it won't be all you can do. I thank my dad all the time for footing the bill and pushing me to finish college.
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Actually, I was referring to my own decision to take an opportunity to start a 19-year career in film computer graphics rather than continue my classes. You only get one opportunity like that, and I have indeed heard from people who were in the same situation and finished school, and their careers never took off. You can always go back to school.
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Re:Difficult to sympathize (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's difficult to sympathize with the economic plight of a government that wouldn't even let me board their national airline because of who I was born to.
But they aren't really pledging anything to you or anyone aren't they? In fact they are being smart and responsible by responding to their economic condition by cutting expense instead of doing business that is costing them money. Good for them
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In 1987 a guy named Brian Wilson did a hunger strike on train tracks at the Concord naval weapons station, and was run over by a diesel locomotive at high speed. He lost both legs and ended up with a plate in his skull, but survived. I don't know much about the situation or how it was that the train wasn't stopped. What I do know is that the train operator went through many years of psychotherapy and wasn't ever really OK after that.
The problem with putting yourself in front of something like that is that t
Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things (Score:5, Informative)
I just read this article (which I missed back in June): a number of ex Al-Jazeera employees are (were?) suing the company due to sexism, anti-semitism and a pro-Arab agenda. [variety.com]
In many ways, it seems that it wasn't a very healthy journalistic environment.
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Re:Al-Jazeera USA was doing some shady things (Score:4, Informative)
Fun fact: Arabs are just as Semitic as Jews, so describing anti-Jewish bias by Arabs as "anti-Semitism" makes very little sense.
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You sound like someone who has never actually watched the station. In fact, you sound like the average idiot Republican. Good job!
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The Intercept wants them to be another FOX News (Score:4, Insightful)
Rather than fill a market gap for strong-voiced journalism with a focus on domestic counter-terrorism policy and the Middle East
Because screaming about how America should be afraid will really help the Al Jazeera brand. Yeah right! American cable news is so heavily politically slanted that you have to take everything with a kilogram of salt.
I'm more likely guessing the problem came from "purchased Current TV in late 2012 from founder Al Gore for $500 million." I'm guessing the bought a lemon of a company from someone who they thought was trustworthy. Also, whenever you have foreign management take over an American company instead of starting from scratch you have issues. Established American corporate culture rarely mixes well with foreign work cultures.
And nothing of value was lost (Score:2)
I watched AJ America a few times. I found it indistinguishable from the other cable news stuff except the advertisers were more obscure. It was available free for years on all the streaming platforms; if it mattered it would have had an audience.
I think it comes down to demographics. Old people watch cable news and they've picked their poison from among CNNMSNBCFOXNEWSBBCMURICAETAL. AJ America offered nothing compelling to them. The young have almost lost the ability to find a cable news network on a
Ahhh... at last (Score:2)
I watched the Arab Spring online on Al Jazeera English and really appreciated the live coverage. (Well, the hours of the live video feed from the cameras around the square in Cairo got a bit snoozy, but anyway...) Then Al Jazeera America (and their exclusive cable contracts) started up & I lost live coverage of anything because I wasn't a cable subscriber. I'm hoping this change puts things back to where they were.
al Jazeera on Arab Springs (Score:5, Interesting)
Current TV (Score:2)
What will Hillary watch for news? (Score:2)
Hillary was a big supporter of AJAM back when she was in the State department [npr.org]
Those "cumbersome distribution contracts with cable companies" generated millions of dollars for AJAM - they are reason Al Gore got so much for his failed 'Current TV' network.
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No. That is patently false. Al Jazeera America was launched in late August of 2013. The article and network Clinton was referring to was Al Jazeera, and specifically the Al Ajazeera English service.
AJAM was rubbish; long live AJE (Score:4, Informative)
Living in the UK I get Al Jazeera English (AJE) over the air for free; frankly it's my preferred TV news source here (sorry BBC.)
However every time I'd travel to the US, all I could usually get there was Al Jazeera America (AJAM); which I found frankly rubbish. The programming was all different and appeared to me to have been clearly designed to not be too harsh or distant; I suspect in order to try and not frighten the squeamish/sheltered US audience too much. Obviously that did not work out so well for them.
I hope now they find a way to push AJE out to the US TV providers; while it has it's flaws, I think US residents could greatly benefit from their excellent international news and documentaries (I highly recommend their "Witness" series in particular.) Yeah it's funded by government of Qatar, but after years of watching I've only detected their influence on the editorial process a handful of times (In reality I'm guessing it's usually AJE self-censoring; news around the royal family specifically seems to be a sensitive area.) When in doubt, France 24 is usually a good double check.
Finally I'd just say that I find AJE's coverage of Africa news/events some of the best out there; I really hope that does not change.
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This.
I was a loyal watcher of AJE on the web: by far the best TV journalism avaiilable in the U.S. Then they started AJAM, which sucked, and blocked access to AJE from the US. (Thanks, Al Gore!) Why is it that media organizations which produce perfectly good journalistic content for consumption outside the U.S. produce dumbed-down, shallow garbage as soon as it's specifically intended for a U.S. market? CNN is the same way: CNN International is still a pretty good (not great) news channel. I saw HLN (forme
Re:WTH Qatar? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why, many exciting activities:
*Funding wars and terrorism
*De facto acquiring deeply-troubled airlines to use as a means to circumvent EU airline ownership laws
*Promoting slavery
*Bribing everyone at FIFA
*Pissing matches with fellow Arabs to see who has the most expensive $_item, the tallest vaguely-phallic architectural piece, largest airline, etc
*Organizing huge events to pretend they're a civilized country (see "slavery" and "FIFA")
And I'm sure I missed a few.
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And I'm sure I missed a few.
One that you missed - financing the building of mosques in countries regardless of whether or not there is a shortage of mosques or enough Muslims. Essentially, their way of promoting dawa, or Islamic proselytization in those places.
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Dear Al Jazeera
Serves you right! Nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah
- Peyton Manning
P.S. Get back to showing those Osama videos
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How about just protecting the country borders they currently have and the citizens who reside there? Are you OK with that?
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Uh, if we used THAT standard, Arabs would have to leave all countries - Syria, Egypt, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, et al and move back to the Arabian peninsula. Turks would have to leave Turkey and move back to Turkmenistan.
Yup, and "Native" Americans would have to walk back to Asia where they came from. Or not. The entire history of the world involves cultures sloshing around from one place to another.
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I once heard NPR called "National Palestinian Radio". Not commenting on the accuracy of that but I thought it was pretty funny.
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