*Ø* Blogmanac | US media could learn from al-Jazeera
By Jon Faine
"Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language cable TV news service, has just celebrated its seventh birthday. I was there to witness it.
"I had met three al-Jazeera staff at an international media conference in Dublin, where they had debated the international coverage of the Iraq war with 200 war reporters from around the world.
"The al-Jazeera version of the war -- with one exception -- was vastly preferred to that presented by the US media.
"Assistant Secretary Brian Whitman, of the US Department of Defence, was greeted with total disbelief by the veterans, who scorned his pronouncements. The al-Jazeera staff were given a hostile reception by the colleagues of several dead journalists, whose corpses had been shown graphically on the Arab service. But otherwise, their coverage was regarded as accurate and balanced.
"The debate about the war went all day. Gathering socially afterwards, I wangled an invitation to visit their studio in Doha, in the tiny sheikdom of Qatar in the Gulf ...
"Abused by many Western governments -- and commentators -- as being a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, al-Jazeera is also decried in some Muslim countries as being nothing but a front for the CIA. As Omar Bec Merhebi, head of news gathering, said: 'We must be doing something right if everyone is abusing us.'"
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(Jon Faine presents the morning program on ABC Melbourne 774.)
By Jon Faine
"Al-Jazeera, the Arab-language cable TV news service, has just celebrated its seventh birthday. I was there to witness it.
"I had met three al-Jazeera staff at an international media conference in Dublin, where they had debated the international coverage of the Iraq war with 200 war reporters from around the world.
"The al-Jazeera version of the war -- with one exception -- was vastly preferred to that presented by the US media.
"Assistant Secretary Brian Whitman, of the US Department of Defence, was greeted with total disbelief by the veterans, who scorned his pronouncements. The al-Jazeera staff were given a hostile reception by the colleagues of several dead journalists, whose corpses had been shown graphically on the Arab service. But otherwise, their coverage was regarded as accurate and balanced.
"The debate about the war went all day. Gathering socially afterwards, I wangled an invitation to visit their studio in Doha, in the tiny sheikdom of Qatar in the Gulf ...
"Abused by many Western governments -- and commentators -- as being a mouthpiece for Osama bin Laden, al-Jazeera is also decried in some Muslim countries as being nothing but a front for the CIA. As Omar Bec Merhebi, head of news gathering, said: 'We must be doing something right if everyone is abusing us.'"
Continue here
(Jon Faine presents the morning program on ABC Melbourne 774.)
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