Changing the news agenda
Al Jazeera's English service gets into its stride
Despite US protestations, nobody can surely now be in any doubt that "Al Jazeera is the new frontier" as Sir David Frost claims in their trailers. Looking at the English language service (Sky channel 514) one can only be impressed by the sheer quality of the coverage and presentation. Perhaps, given the fact that Al Jazeera was founded by former staff of the BBC's Arabic Service, it's hardly surprising.
Of course, Middle Eastern coverage is particularly in-depth. Iraq and Gaza you would surely expect. But in particular, looking at the way the assassination of Pierre Gemayel was covered, in the complex and multifaceted context of the Lebanon today, was particularly revealing. The station had people 'on the ground' all over Lebanon, offered shots and coverage that absolutely nobody else had obtained (in the family home for example), and employed reporters who were pointedly not afraid, for example, to give a Hezbollah MP pointed questions about Syria's involvement in the country. Throughout the coverage, we saw aspects and angles that were not visible elsewhere - even on News 24, which came in second in its depth of coverage of the story, ahead of CNN and the rest.
But international coverage also appears to be strong - and different. What other channel, for example (apart from perhaps a local station in the US), is covering the struggle of Carrie Dann and the Western Shoshone indigenous people against the US government to keep their land - site of some of the richest gold-bearing rocks in the country - from being sold off to multinationals? I have not seen this story elsewhere.
This is certainly place for a different perspective - and one in which "honesty, integrity and storytelling", as one presenter puts it, do indeed, on the face of it, seem centrally important. Time will surely tell if it is as unbiased and objective as it claims to be, but in any event Al Jazeera's English language service offers a unique, new and vitally important, perspective that I recommend wholeheartedly to readers, if only to compare with other news outlets.
You may get a surprise.
