Video Blog: "When you've got a ****** running for president"...
You've probably heard of Al Jazeera before; most likely with followed by the words Osama Bin Laden if you're watching the news media in the United States. For some reason Al Jazeera has a mysterious label placed upon it of being a radical propaganda spreading news organization with tied to those spooky freedom hating terrorist. Truth is, Al Jazeera started as a devision of the BBC World News Service back in 1996 to deliver news to the middle eastern region. The network faced with censorship demands by the Saudi Arabian government, and was shut down after two years of operation.
Many former BBC World Service staff members joined Al Jazeera, together they introduced a level of freedom of speech and of the press on television that was previously unheard of in many of these countries. Al Jazeera presented controversial views regarding the governments of many Persian Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar; it also presented controversial views about Syria's relationship with Lebanon, and the Egyptian judiciary.
Prior to September 11, 2001, the US government had lauded Al Jazeera for its role as an independent media outlet in the Middle East, US officials have since claimed an anti-American bias to Al Jazeera's news coverage. As the station first gained widespread attention in the West following the September 11th attacks, when the network broadcasted videos in which Osama Bin Laden justified the attacks. This led to significant controversy and accusations by the United States government that Al Jazeera was engaging in the fore mentioned propaganda on behalf of terrorists. Al Jazeera countered that it was merely making information available without comment, and indeed several western television channels later followed suit in broadcasting portions of the tapes.
On November 13, 2001 during the US lead invasion of Afghanistan a missile strike destroyed Al Jazeera's office in Kabul. Nigel Parsons, managing director of Al-Jazeera's English service said the channel's viewership is growing in the U.S., despite the service being shunned by major cable or satellite providers in the country who say there is no market.
"We are even making inroads in the United States, not only via cable and satellite," Parsons said at a branding forum in Singapore. "Our service is available via broadband ... we now have tens of thousands of subscribers in America, dispelling the notion that Americans aren't interested in foreign news. They must be, they're fighting two wars."
Parsons also said a distribution tie-up between the network and YouTube has been "an astonishing success," with almost 100,000 viewers downloading videos every week, and many of them from the United States.
Al-Jazeera could not immediately provide exact figures on U.S. online subscriptions and YouTube viewers. YouTube Inc. is owned by Google Inc.
In America, one of the few cable companies in the country to offer Al-Jazeera in its cable packages is city-owned Burlington Telecom, which serves 1,200 households in Vermont's largest city. The channel is also on the air in Houston, Washington, D.C., and parts of Ohio.
Learn more:
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera
Thanks to Sharonb for originally sharing this video.
