watching Al Jazeera International

HIYA!

I've been watching it on the internet for about 10 days or so. Since a day or two after it's inception. I like it okay but honestly, there's nothing so special about it for me. I'm glad to see what it's like but it's pretty tame. I often feel like Democracy Now! and even National Public Radio provide more thought- (and sometimes emotion-) provoking news.

I've known the name Noam Chomsky since universtiy and have been listening to lots of his lectures since I first arrived here in Korea. In some of his lectures he says that Al Jazeera is democratic and so of course, successive US administrations have criticized it.

Then when I heard on Democracy Now! that they were going to start broadcasting in English and that it would be accessible via the internet, I decided I wanted to watch. Glad to watch it but I don't see or hear anything spectacular or that I couldn't get in much more mainstream news programs. They even have sports. Yuck!

There's not that much criticism of the US. Certainly more critical of the US government than Fox News (which I used to watch in Thailand) but nothing that I've heard so vociferous against the US. A little while ago there was a show with a guy from the Iranian government, a guy from the Iraqi government, and a US military man in military uniform. The American was hardly sidelined, he got just as much respect and attention as the others, arguably even more than the Iranian.

And though the focus is on the Middle East, there is coverage of news around the world. There's a wide variety of programming. But the news show gets too much air time for me and the stories are too few. So there's lots of repetition, it seems to me. But this is a brand new program and who knows how things will develop. David Frost has a show on Al Jazeera Int'l but I haven't yet watched.

I wonder how this English language version compares with the Arabic language version. Some of the newscasters and others (like the weather lady) are white while some are not. I don't think I've seen any black hosts or hostesses but it's not all people from the Middle East by any means.

They say that no other news program has been launched on this scale. They say that billion English speakers around the world are watching. That's really hard to believe.

Enough,
Troy.