It's time for Comcast to start carrying Al-Jazeera English
Will Bunch: It's good that you can see this award-winning journalism online, because you can't see on your cable TV in most major American cities.
It's time for Comcast to start carrying Al-Jazeera English
America's leaders seem to have a love-hate relationship with the Middle Eastern TV network Al-Jazeera -- one week they're denouncing it as an agent of Islamic extremism, and seemingly the next week they're giving it interviews trying to woo "the Arab Street." But as the network -- which includes a fully English-language outfit called Al-Jazeera English, or AJE -- has shown for the last year, there's no better source for comprehensive coverage of one of the most important stories in the world today -- the so-called "Arab Spring." And Al-Jazeera English somehow manages to cover events in the region without cutting away every five minutes to remind us that Whitney Houston is still dead.
This week, Al Jazeera English won one of America's top two journalism prizes, a George Polk Award, for its fearless coverage of one aspect of the uprising. Here's the citation, and a link to the broadcast:
The George Polk Award for Television Documentary will recognize the courageous work of Al Jazeera English reporter May Ying Welsh and field producer Hassan Mahfoodin developing "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark." When Bahrain banned foreign journalists during the Arab Spring protests, Welsh remained, working undercover with Mahfood to produce a film that gives a voice to the protesters for democratic rights and presents a harrowing, on-the-ground view of their brutal suppression. The documentary highlights the unbridled power of security forces in a key American ally on the Gulf.
It's good that you can see this award-winning journalism online -- because you can't see on your cable TV in Philadelphia or in most other major American cities, since Al-Jazeera English has been all but blacklisted in this country. Some groups -- including the Occupy Philadelphia crew here -- have been on the warpath about this, but Comcast doesn't seem to listen:
On Monday, Philadelphia police and Comcast security guards barred demonstrators from entering the building as a group. Rethink leaders Xi Wang and Mike Haack were admitted briefly under escort. They brought the signatures, printed on 1,000 pages and tied with a ribbon, to the mail room for delivery to Comcast officials.
"While we are not currently in discussions, we have met with representatives of Al-Jazeera in the past," Comcast said in a prepared statement. "We regularly examine our channel lineups and talk with a wide range of programmers to ensure that we are bringing the content that our customers want the most."
The signatures had been collected online through Change.org, a website that promotes social change through Internet petitions.
Believe it or not, I had been willing to cut Comcast some slack on this -- it's not like there's an unlimited number of channels...OK, so there's like 999, and a bunch of them are empty. But still. Then, today, a day after Al-Jazeera's Polk award, I read this:
Sean "P. Diddy" Combs and Earvin "Magic" Johnson will be hosts and owners of new cable channels which Comcast (and maybe others) will launch later this year and early next.
Two new channels geared to the Hispanic audience - one with direction by the legendary Hollywood film director Robert Rodriguez - are also in the Comcast pipeline.
P.Diddy's music-themed service Revolt aims to give the likes of BET and MTV a run for the money, combining urban-slanted artists and news with a social networking component. "We're coming with a new energy, we're coming with something that people are going to want to tune in to see," shared the media mogul with an MTV reporter recently. Though best known for his rap hits, P. Diddy's Bad Boy Entertainment has also produced hit cable shows like "Making the Band." Revolt will launch in 2013.
Not that there's anything wrong with all that. But Comcast's stated commitment to diversity is still a joke, if it's adding so much new programming yet still afraid to offer American viewers the original journalism and different perspective offered by Al-Jazeera English. To make room for P. Diddy's Revolt while continuing to censor the revolt against dictatorial rule in Bahrain is an insult to your intelligence, and an insult to the people of the Philadelphia area.
Fair, Balance, Unbiased? Al Jazeera English is the best MSM news station. Its better than CNN, Fox and their network, MSNBC.— flyersfan89- I'm all for diversity of thought, why can't the Pinky Inky do the same?— Tom813
- How much more traffic does Dan Gross get over Trudy Rubin?— sadim
- Ok, so you're all for Al-Jezeera because they stand up for those who speak out against their government, but you don't like it when places like Fox speak out against your boy Barry. Classic.— savetherepublic
- Fox news is where all the kids who were taunted long ago with “liar liar pants on fire” by the other kids
ended up being employed.
They all belong to the SSRU.
Sickly Sycophants R Us.
Membership is by nomination only, and self improvement is not possible. - "diversity" is anti-value--and the new racism.
Advocates of "diversity" claim it will teach students to tolerate and celebrate their differences. But the "differences" they have in mind are racial differences, which means we're being urged to glorify race, which means we're being asked to institutionalize separatism.— John_Galt 
Comment removed.- Nearly forty years ago, in 1962, Ayn Rand delivered a speech at the Ford Hall Forum entitled, "The Fascist New Frontier." Her speech harshly criticized the administration of John F. Kennedy for its violation of rights.
She intended to include a copy of this speech in her second nonfiction collection, but Random House Books editor, Bennett Cerf, would have none of it. Rand claimed that Cerf initially touted the idea, even endorsing the notion of titling the collection after the talk.
While the speech was printed in pamphlet form, it did not receive publication in a Rand book collection until the second edition of The Ayn Rand Column, published in 1998 by Second Renaissance Books.
Rand began her speech by quoting from a work endorsed by that noted collectivist and mystic, Adolf Hitler. In 1920, der Fuhrer laid out his program for achieving social justice
http://home.earthlink.net/~rdmadden/webdocs/American_Fascism_Revisited.html
- this is for— Jimmyjammsjames
Thanks for showing your stupidity!
Put that on your gravestone jimmy sham
and thanks for sharing......lol - "Like Hitler, Rand finds in nature, in man's struggle for survival, a "logical foundation" for capitalism.
Far from privileging the collective over the individual or subsuming the latter under the former, Hitler believed that it was the "strength and power of individual personality" that determined the economic (and cultural) fate of the race and nation.
Here he is in 1933 addressing another group of industrialists:
Everything positive, good and valuable that has been achieved in the world in the field of economics or culture is solely attributable to the importance of personality.... All the worldly goods we possess we owe to the struggle of the select few.
And here is Rand in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (1967):
The exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants....It is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further."
Garbage and Gravitas
Corey Robin
May 20, 2010
- Savetherepublic: Al Jazeera English provides balanced news coverage. Fox is not news, which is why we call it Faux. They are party hacks and mostly morons and mouthpieces for the right wing vigilantes like you— intelliwoman
- Comment removed.
- -dumbwoman, and MSNBS is what??? Sgt. (I know nothing, NOTHING!!) Schultz, Mr. Radical Mancow, Groucho Olbermann, Larry O'dumbell, Chris Madthews, etc. are all party hacks, morons, ignorers of the truth, left wing vigilantes. As libby as you probably are I don't think even you could out do these treasonists and liars who would rather ignor the truth to save the person they support then see the country actually get better!!!— sarah89
- I've never called for FNC and in fact I've defended the right of them and any other conservative channels (paging Ed Snider...) to exist. But I think there's also a free speech obligation to correct any false information broadcast to the American people, and unfortunately Fox has done a lot of that.— will
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