[BRIEF NOTE] On the desirability of Al-Jazeera in everyone's homes

[rfmcdonald]

A Global Voices post highlighted the new popularity of Al-Jazeerah English thanks to its excellent coverage of the ongoing revolution in Egypt. It's apparently not on most cable packages in the United States, perhaps for the same reasons that it was rather controversial with its alleged anti-Semitism and links to terrorism. Still, here in Canada it got carried my the major cable television networks in May 2010, after it was approved in November 2009 by the federal government regulator. Hopefully American cable operators will bow to the new demand for the channel in the marketplace. As the The Globe and Mail's television critic John Doyle noted, the channel's doing great.

Watching TV coverage of the crisis in Egypt over the weekend was not always such a bizarre experience, but it was a bracing reminder of the limitations of TV news at such times. First, the Egyptian government’s shutdown of the Internet and other communications methods meant that most TV coverage relied on a limited amount of footage being repeated endlessly. Often, on CBC NN, a reporter was on the phone while footage that was not connected to the report aired. CNN went in for punditry over the weekend, having very limited access to knowledge of what was happening on the ground. Sometimes, they were talking to American tourists in Cairo who peered out the window and described what they saw.

This kind of story flushes out the good, the bad and the stupid in TV news. It’s as obvious as a poke in your eye that TV news wants an understandable, familiar narrative to emerge. What’s unfolding has to have a story arc, just like a movie. So, the lack of a discernible opposition leader in Egypt flummoxed everybody. TV news producers and reporters long for a straightforward story about an underdog overcoming obstacles and rising to power on a wave of popular support. That wasn’t happening.

[. . .]

The most incisive coverage came, of course, from Al Jazeera English, which is easily available in Canada, unlike the U.S. market, where it is rarely offered to cable or satellite customers. Here, anyone can get it at a cost of about $2 a month. This is a situation in which Al Jazeera surges to the fore in coverage – it knows the region better than any other broadcaster and is better staffed there than any other outfit. The seriousness of its journalism stands in startling contrast to what CNN and Fox offer.

Will this make it as a global broadcasting of note on the model of CNN?