Al Jazeera
View the trailer for Control Room, a documentary about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command, as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
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Al Jazeera is one of my favorite media outlets (I'm proud to call two of it's reporters my friends). Al Jazeera is not the "mouthpiece of radical Islam" as many in the Bush administration have labeled it. It is fair (for the most part) in it's reporting of events in the Middle East. Of course, there is the occasional bias, but it's no more than the amount of bias contained in American and British reporting.
From Wiki: "Al Jazeera (Arabic: الجزيرة) , meaning "The Island" and/or "The Peninsula" is an Arabic-language television channel based in Doha, Qatar. Its willingness to broadcast dissenting views, including on call-in shows, created controversies in the autocratic Persian Gulf Arab States. The station gained worldwide attention following the September 11, 2001 attacks, when it broadcast video statements by Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders...Al Jazeera claims to be the only politically independent television station in the Middle East. It now rivals the BBC in worldwide audiences with an estimated 50 million viewers...It is widely believed internationally that inhabitants of the Arab world are given limited information by their governments and media, and that what is conveyed is biased towards the governments' views. Many people see Al Jazeera as a more trustworthy source of information than government and foreign channels. Some scholars and commentators use the notion of contextual objectivity, which highlights the tension between objectivity and audience appeal, to describe the station's controversial yet popular news approach. As a result, it is probably the most watched news channel in the Middle East.
Increasingly, Al Jazeera's exclusive interviews and other footage are being rebroadcast in American, British, and other western media outlets such as CNN and the BBC. In January 2003, the BBC announced that it had signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities and information, including news footage." Read more at Wikipedia.
There's a great documentary called Control Room (2004). It is about Al Jazeera and its relations with the US Central Command, as well as the other news organizations that covered the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Made by Egyptian-American filmmaker Jehane Noujaim, the film was distributed by Magnolia Pictures and can be found in most major video rental shops in large cities throughout Europe and North America.
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posted by FreeCyprus at 2:26 PM
27 Comments:
I don't know if it'd be a wise idea for us Americans to wander on over to AlJazeera.net, what with the NSA and their 'activities'.
@Woozie
Is there in Us
a muslim channel?
Woozie, yes indeed the NSA is the largest United States government intelligence gathering agency.
Its eavesdropping mission does include the Internet but if it's taking it's billion-dollar budget and spending all it's time sitting there analyzing each and every visit to the Al Jazeera site (when there are tens of thousands of other "dangerous" sites), then America's in real trouble.
ergo, I don't think Al Jazeera is a "Muslim channel" anymore than CNN is a "Christian/Jewish channel"
;-)
It's an Arab channel showing news from around the world focusing more on stories affecting the entire Middle East. (well that's my opinion anyway...others feel free to debate it)
Great post!
I agree with you, Al-Jazeera is not a "terrorist" affliated news channel.
And I, nor any other American, should not stop visiting their site just because the NSA is watching!
I have already tracked many a goverment agency visiting my blog, including many from the National Counterterrorism Center, & I could care less!
The United States goverment is causing our country to regress back to almost McCarthyism, & it is not right.
Keep visiting those sites deemed "terrorist" in nature, keep posting the truth, regardless of whether or not the US goverment likes it!
Protect the 1st Amendment!
Sappho, thanks for standing up for your American First Amendment.
The Bill of Rights is one of the most beautiful American creations (can I add baseball and jazz to that list?)
al-jazeera is very independant, it is so independant and free thinking that they once banned it in some arab countries such as lybia. However america is not so democratic as it claims and they tried to bomb it!!! And don't forget their cameraman is in guantamino bay (for filming US bombing of afghanistan) and one of their journalist is under house arrest (for reporting both US invasions). well that is democracy for you!
take care freecyprus
Your blog is very pertinent that is why I linked it to my favorits. I hated to see all the brutality and barbarism of Iran in DrZin's FlickR photos.
Abraço
Joaquim
Woozie looks like terrified
watching Al-Jaz....
it seems to me weird....
P.S
Youtube is not working...
Our videos have been lost?...
Here is an URL..
you can record the videos
in your PC
http://keepvid.com/
Al Jazeera: I can't speak for portuguese, you now!I see it as main source of information in Middle East and I follow news originated form there in same perspective as I watch BBC or CNN...Am I wrong?!
Al Jazeera was pressed by US to fire
the journalist Yvonne Ridley?!
Aljazeera Sacks Yvonne Ridley
So Al-Jazeera has relations
to US....
Things are more complicated...
Did you hear that?....
Ahmadinejad has become a blogger
joshua, thanks. Yes the pictures were disturbing, especially the young girl blind folded
Al-Hajeji, you're right. You can see in the documentary "Control Room" Al Jazeera staff discussing how they told the American military "Ok, this is EXACTLY where our building is so please, please remember these co-ordinates and don't bomb us" (ok i'm paraphrasing)
So what happened? The US military bombed them.
Al Jazeera was recently criticized by Iraq's new provisional government for "incitement."
In response they issued the following statement; "These kinds of allegations will not prevent the channel from pursuing its long cherished editorial independence, or its adherence to professional principles and internationally recognized media practices."
Editorial independence?
Hmmm...Fox News can learn a thing or two from Al Jazeera.
ergo, thanks for the links, yes I know about the firing. We're still trying to figure that one out because it's seems HUGELY OUT OF CHARACTER for Al Jazeera to fire someone because a country (especially if it's the US) asks for the firing.
From what I've heard...she, like some Al Jazeera staff, was indeed anti-Bush and anti-war in Iraq. The difference though was that she had apparently lost her objectivity as a journalist.
This loss of "objectivity" and the fact that there's some personal issue between her and Abdulaziz Ibrahim Al-Mahmoud (she attacked him for shopping at Marks/spencer and some other issues...) I think are the real reasons she got sacked.
Belinha, thanks for stopping by.
Yes I think you are right.
I think Al Jazeera staff's claim that Yvonne Ridley lost her "journalistic objectivity" may be valid (even George Galloway distanced himself from her):
"Critics have accused her of defending the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and his campaign of violence in Iraq and Jordan, describing the victims of the November 9 2005 Amman bombings in Jordan, which saw 60 persons killed and 115 injured as Iraqi collaborators, Saudi, Indonesian and Chinese intelligence officers and the upper echelons of society. The outpouring of public outrage manifested in spontaneous demonstration she described as staged and the work of "Jordanian troops out of uniform" and "government lackeys" together with "Christian and Muslim Bedouins" who had all been commandeered or paid to demonstrate by the Jordanian government and the CIA. Al-Zarqawi was denounced by his family after the bombings, a move that Ridley thought "cowardly." She said of al-Zarqawi himself that she would "rather put up with a brother like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi any day than have a traitor or sell-out for a father, son or grandfather" – a reference to Jordanian royal family. [11].
At a meeting of the Respect party on 6 June 2006, following a police raid in Forest Gate, East London, on 2 June 2006, Ridley urged all Muslims in Britain to "boycott the police and refuse to co-operate with them in any way, shape or form," including "asking the community copper for directions to passing the time of day with a beat officer." Her comments were labelled as "sheer, undiluted madness" by Shadow Home Secretary David Davis, who added that "To not co-operate would be of no benefit to the Muslim community; no benefit to the police; and no benefit to the security of our country." [12] George Galloway, leader of the RESPECT Coalition to which Ridley belongs also distanced himself from her comments, saying "Our policy is not that we should withdraw co-operation from the police."
Control Room trailer
She wasn't fired for being anti-Bush as the guy who fired her is anti-Bush as well. She got fired for questioning her boss shopping at jewish clothing store
and if she was boy, jew or muslim, I fire her too if she question me as boss
that's life
From Wikipedia-link
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yvonne_Ridley
....Overly-Vocal and Argumentative Style
was incompatible with the station’s programme.She won her case for unfair dismissal against the channel, but was asked to return in May 2006 when the station lodged an appeal against the Qatari court decision.
Is now in the Channel?...
:?
I got the documentary Control Room and try to get friends and family to view it, as well as Weapons of Mass Deception and Why We Fight. Trying to educate people to reality is like pulling wisdom teeth with your fingernails. But we must persevere.
Ergo, you missed the sentence immediately before the lines you are quoting:
"After her departure from Qatar, she published an article about her experiences there. She won her case for unfair dismissal against the channel, [5] but was asked to return in May 2006 when the station lodged an appeal against the Qatari court decision."
What it means is...she was asked to return to the country, to Qatar, because Al Jazeera was appealing the court decision so she had to be in the country to be in the courtroom.
She is NOT working for Al Jazeera.
seven stones, thanks for your post.
Keep fighting the good fight.
Here's some discussion of the "Bomb Al Jazeera Memo" supposedly written by US President Bush:
The Al Jazeera bombing memo is an unpublished memorandum made within the British government which purports to be the minutes of a discussion between United States President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair. The Daily Mirror published a story on its front page on 22 November 2005 claiming that the memo quotes Bush speculating about a U.S. bombing raid on Al Jazeera world headquarters in the Qatari capital Doha and other locations. The story claims that Blair persuaded Bush to take no action.
Trago a língua de «Camões». A língua portuguesa. É uma língua antiga repleta de saudade e de fado. Aqui em Lisboa-Portugal é o paraiso dos silêncios filho de almas nobres e desvarios sem guarida.
não sentimos a guerra mas morremos devagar...devagar.
Obrigado(thanks) pela visita ao meu blog.
Paulo
I've posted new links under "Hellenic Links"
ERT Satellite (Greek) - Live Feed
Hellenic Radio
RIK Satellite (Cyprus) - Live Feed
some interviews with Jehane Noujaim, woman who made Control Room documentary:
Inside 'The Control Room' at Al-Jazeera
"Jehane Noujaim's first feature documentary was Startup.com with Chris Hegedus. She spoke to us (BBC) about making Control Room and her experience of Al-Jazeera."
>>>>>
A friend of mine on MSN just asked what Wiki has on the 2006 Israel-Hizbullah war. Here it is:
2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict
>>>>>
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