This is from an AFP report about the launch of Al Jazeera’s English language news channel:
Dave Marash, the news channel’s Washington-based anchor … told AFP … “E[]verybody in American journalism is at worst curious and at best really interested, and even admiring, of what Al Jazeera English is all about.”
For Marash, 64, a lifelong and well-respected broadcast newsman who formerly worked for the American network ABC, the hallmark of Al Jazeera English (AJE) is to bring a non-Western perspective of world events to viewers and to challenge the global news supremacy of CNN and the BBC.
“All of our competitors, CNN International, BBC World and the American networks, concentrate about 80 percent of their news gathering resources in Western Europe and North America,” he said, sitting in his small office at the network’s Washington hub. “Al Jazeera English is going to concentrate about 80 percent of our news gathering outside of North America and Western Europe.”
There quite a lot of Al Jazeera stuff on Youtube, just search for ‘Al Jazeera’ to find it (or click here).
Some of it is impressive.
For example, look at the Africa coverage contained in the ten minutes of Al Jazeera news in the Youtube clip below.
The first news item is predictably about dodgy doings in Israel, but watch the clip beyond the Israel news, and ask yourself the question: Why can’t China do this?