What are your thoughts on Al Jazeera English?

I don’t trust any of the news networks. That said, I think they all have some value. The more versions of a story you hear, the better chance you have of finding the facts somewhere in between all the opinions.

In my experience it’s lightly better than most American news networks. My only reason for saying that is that, in general, the intellectual level of the discourse in their articles and pieces seems higher. It also seems to me that they do less licking at the boots of empire, but that could just be because the empires over in that part of the world aren’t so big.

Well, they seem more likely to be kicked out from Muslim countries than CNN and BBC are. They are banned from operating in Egypt and Morocco.

Supposedly for being unfair in the eyes of these regimes. Why is that? Are they more threatening?

Do you know about the WikiLeaks cable claiming al-Jazeera changed coverage to suit Qatari foreign policy? I don’t trust al-Jazeera as far as I can spit, but with that said, I like to read some of their coverage and always, always use it as a spring board to seek out other information. The organization is funded and controlled by Qatar.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/05/wikileaks-cables-al-jazeera-qatari-foreign-policy

@bkcunningham No Idin’t know that… interesting, I will read that article!

I find Al Jazerra to be clear, concise, informative, and almost always evenly balanced. I watch it every day.

They carried video coverage of what was going on in Egypt yesterday that was much more thorough than that reported elsewhere. I have heard the Egyptian government shut them down there today.

As news channels go it I think it is one of the best. I have always found it to be informative insightful and well balanced. It is a bit disturbing that their offices have been bombed several times by the Americans.

I see it as more as an alternative to the most established outlets. It might be better and it might be worse than some, but at least there is another option for information in the world.

I think it’s funny that when I was in high school and people were talking about Al Jazeera being offered in English, it was considered the “terrorist news network”. and talked about how, if you visited it too much, government agencies would lock you up.

Now, I find it a very trustworthy news site, especially when you want something about the Middle East.

Everybody has a spin on the news.
Al Jazeera gets a pretty bad rap in the West, but it may not be totally deserved. They are not a tool of Middle Eastern radicalism.
I (certainly) know more English than I do Arabic, so Al Jazeera English is a good thing. At least we can follow news as it is broadcast in another part of the world.
Better than being clueless about what other folks are hearing.

All the corporate media exist for no other reason than to propagate the political dogma of their puppetmasters, preferably while turning a profit. Al Jazeera is a little more sinister than most, specifically because they seem to be the more “fair” of all the corporate media. Fox News is very clearly a neo-fascist bandwagon for mouth-breathers and sister-marrying troglodytes, and is therefore easily ignorable as a pack of utterly ludicrous lies by anyone with a triple digit IQ. Al Jazeera, on the other hand, will use an ocean of truth to hide a pint of poison, and is thus much more dangerous in the long run than Fox or CNN or any of the other lunatic liars.

Oh, it’s completely objective. But then, so is Al Qaida. In their minds.

Glossy, overtly left wing but fascinating none the less.

A friend of mine works at NASA and was very complimentary over a science piece Al Jazeera did covering their project. It was just the facts with no political spin whatsoever.
I can’t vouch for anything else.
Here is a piece describing the Parker Solar Probe . Very well done.

I wonder how Fox news would cover the same subject.