HILLARY LAVISHLY PRAISES AL-JAZEERA AND TAKES A SWIPE AT OUR MEDIA
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/03/hillary-clinton-calls-al-_n_830890.html
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Wednesday that Al Jazeera is gaining more prominence in the U.S. because it offers “real news” — something she said American media were falling far short of doing.
Clinton was speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and she said the U.S. is losing the “information war” in the world. One of the reasons she cited for this was the quality of channels like Al Jazeera:
We’re the most technologically advanced country in the world, so slowly but surely we’ve been trying to take back the airwaves in Afghanistan against Taliban with the most primitive kind of communication equipment. Now, take that as one example where I don’t think we were very competitive, and we have worked like crazy to change that, and then go to the most extreme where you’ve got a global, a set of global networks, that Al Jazeera has been the leader in, that are literally changing people’s minds and attitudes.
Clinton contrasted that network with the U.S. news media:
And like it or hate it, it [Al Jazeera] is really effective. And in fact viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.
During the height of the crisis in Egypt, The Huffington Post’s Ryan Grim wrote about Al Jazeera and the fact that it is unavailable to most homes in the U.S.:
Media critics have begun to push for Al Jazeera’s inclusion. “It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it,” wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. “Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can.”Al Jazeera follows a public broadcasting model similar to the BBC, CBC and NPR and is largely funded by the government of Qatar, which Burman said takes a completely hands-off approach to content. Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. “As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes,” he said.
Jeff Jarvis, in the article referenced by Grim, explains, “we can watch AJE on the internet. But as much of an internet triumphalist as I am, internet streaming is not going to have the same impact-political and education impact-that putting AJE on the cable dial would have. I can watch AJE in the Zurich hotel room where I am now; I want to be able to watch it on my couch at home.”
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