Al Jazeera English

I have been a close follower of international news networks over the past 10 years. BBC and CNN are staples in my media diet. More recently (i.e., 2001+) and much less frequently, Fox News and Deutsche Welle (DW) are also consumed. The newest addition to the list is Al Jazeera English.

After watching so much US media, we get the impression that Al Jazeera is Al Qaeda's mouthpiece, that they slant the news so much that they are promoting hate against the US. I don't know that they broadcast over Al Jazeera Arabic, but I have to say that Al Jazeera English is fairly objective.

Now, before you go postal about my use of the term "objective", let me explain myself. No media outlet can be truly objective; all of them have their biases and prejudices. This cannot be avoided because the editors, writers and anchors are all influenced by their experiences and contexts, no matter how earnestly they try to be objective. The only question is how much they pepper their news with their biases and prejudices.

In my opinion, Al Jazeera is just as anti-US as CNN is pro-US. By "anti" I don't mean antagonistic or adversarial, but rather opposite or other side (as in thesis vs. anti-thesis). Now CNN, while it presents an American viewpoint, is still quite objective in its presentation of the news, and much (much) more ojbective than Fox News (they should broadcast Tears of the Sun as news while they're at it).

In other words, Al Jazeera English is not the firebrand terrorist mouthpiece that Western media portrays its Arabic cousin to be. It is fairly objective and balanced albeit with a non-Western bias. Al Jazeera English is not the "antidote" to Fox News; the former is much too tame for the latter. Fox News' equivalent in the Arab World, in terms of bias and firebrand commentaries, is Al-Manar.