Al Jazeera

Why Al Jazeera’s entry into the U.S. is a good thing

by News Sources 01.05.2013

Ishaan Tharoor writes: Let’s get the cynicism out of the way first. Yes, the takeover of Al Gore’s Current TV by Al Jazeera, a pan-Arab broadcaster headquartered in and funded by the Qatari state, is unlikely to send tremors through the current American media landscape. The revamped “Al Jazeera America” channel—and, yes, it will actually [...]

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Time Warner Cable drops Current TV upon sale to Al Jazeera

by Paul Woodward 01.03.2013

The launch of Al Jazeera America following AJ’s acquisition of Current TV is good news for Americans who currently depend on the meager offerings from the cable news channels. Time Warner Cable might have no corporate affiliation with Time Warner, owner of CNN, but its hard not to assume that AJ’s deeper penetration into the [...]

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Al-Jazeera’s political independence questioned amid Qatar intervention

by News Sources 09.30.2012

The Guardian reports: Al-Jazeera’s editorial independence has been called into question after its director of news stepped in to ensure a speech made by Qatar’s emir to the UN led its English channel’s coverage of the debate on Syrian intervention. Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s [...]

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Video: Qatari agenda drove Al Jazeera coverage of Bahrain says journalist who resigned in protest

by News Sources 03.24.2012
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Video: Al Jazeera journalist explains resignation over Syria and Bahrain coverage

by News Sources 03.21.2012
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Do the Middle East’s revolutions have a unifying ideology?

by News Sources 01.05.2012

Marc Lynch writes: “Why does every nation on Earth move to change their conditions except for us? Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression? How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?” That is how the inflammatory Al Jazeera talk-show host Faisal al-Qassem opened his program in December [...]

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Al Jazeera — voice of the Arab spring

by News Sources 12.07.2011

Mehdi Hasan writes: On Friday 11 February, thousands of Arabs spilled on to the streets of the Middle East’s capitals, from Rabat to Amman, to celebrate the downfall of the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mu­barak. Doha, in the sleepy Gulf emirate of Qatar, was no different: hundreds of youths brought traffic to a standstill on the [...]

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Do the Middle East’s revolutions have a unifying ideology?

by News Sources 12.01.2011

Marc Lynch writes: “Why does every nation on Earth move to change their conditions except for us? Why do we always submit to the batons of the rulers and their repression? How long will Arabs wait for foreign saviors?” That is how the inflammatory Al Jazeera talk-show host Faisal al-Qassem opened his program in December [...]

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Al Jazeera’s chief extols virtues of ‘journalism for the people’

by News Sources 10.07.2011

Roy Greenslade writes: The revolutionary fervour of the Arab Spring came alive last night at City University London in a lecture by Wadah Khanfar, the former director general of Al-Jazeera. In describing his reaction to the various uprisings, particularly in Egypt and Libya, he illustrated just what is meant by a journalism of attachment or [...]

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The resignation of Wadah Khanfar and the future of Al Jazeera

by News Sources 10.01.2011

Philip Seib writes: The resignation last week of Wadah Khanfar as managing director of Al Jazeera has provoked speculation that scandal lurks beneath his departure. Many have pointed to a WikiLeaks cable stating that Khanfar had succumbed to pressure from the U.S. in 2005 and played down civilian casualties in some of the network’s coverage [...]

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Listening Post – Al Jazeera’s change of guard

by News Sources 09.24.2011
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Wikileaks and the sudden departure of Al Jazeera’s Wadah Khanfar

by News Sources 09.22.2011

On Monday, Omar Chatriwala reported in Foreign Policy on revelations from cables newly released by Wikileaks on pressure applied to Al Jazeera by the Bush administration. On Tuesday, the Qatar government suddenly replaced Wadah Khanfar, the director-general of the al-Jazeera satellite TV network, with Sheikh Ahmed bin Jassim Al Thani, an executive at Qatargas and [...]

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Watch Al Jazeera broadcasting live from the center of Tripoli

by Paul Woodward 08.21.2011

Dennis Kucinich gets the prize for the worst-timed op-ed of the year: “Time to end Nato’s war in Libya” appearing today in The Guardian. As the war enters its sixth month, it is time for the US president and secretary of state to clean up the mess they’ve created with this needless military intervention, and [...]

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Al Jazeera journalist held in Israeli prison

by News Sources 08.16.2011

Al Jazeera reports: Samer Allawi, Al Jazeera Arabic’s Kabul bureau chief, has been brought before an Israeli military court, almost a week after he was arrested by Israeli officials when he tried to cross the border between Jordan and the occupied West Bank. Israeli authorities extended his detention by seven days and charged him with [...]

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Forget Goldstone — remember Gaza

by Paul Woodward 04.04.2011

Here’s a circle that should never have been closed. The Goldstone Report, once credited with having provided a hefty shove as Israel veered towards pariah status, is now being held up by Israelis as having unintentionally demonstrated why, when the need arises, Israel will be able to launch Cast Lead Two and once again chant: [...]

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Qatar, Al Jazeera and the Middle East

by News Sources 03.26.2011
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Ayman Mohiedin on Colbert Report

by News Sources 03.24.2011
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The fight for Libya

by News Sources 03.14.2011

The Guardian reports: Libya’s revolutionary leadership is pressing western powers to assassinate Muammar Gaddafi and launch military strikes against his forces to protect rebel-held cities from the threat of bloody assault. Mustafa Gheriani, spokesman for the revolutionary national council in its stronghold of Benghazi, said the appeal was to be made by a delegation meeting [...]

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In post-Mubarak Egypt, the rebirth of the Arab world

by News Sources 02.14.2011

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley see in the Egyptian revolution not simply the end of a repressive regime but the rebirth of the Arab world. In the newly emerging Arab world, the new Nasser is Al Jazeera. Egypt and Saudi Arabia, pillars of the Arab order, are exhausted, bereft of a cause other than preventing [...]

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The Al Jazeera Revolution

by News Sources 02.02.2011

Lawrence Pintak writes: Unlike the bland, state-owned Egyptian station, or its more conservative, Saudi-owned rival Al Arabiya, Al Jazeera has captured the hopes of the crowds gathering on the streets of Cairo. “The genius of Arab satellite TV,” Abderrahim Foukara, Washington bureau chief for Al Jazeera, once told me, “is that it [has] captured a [...]

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The thrill and fear of freedom

by Paul Woodward 01.30.2011

When a brutal regime is struggling to survive it turns to desperate measures. Even as low-flying Egyptian air force Lockheed F-16s are currently attempting to shake fear into the hundreds of thousands of people gathered now in the center of Cairo, the people are showing their increasing defiance. And even now the Obama administration remains [...]

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The Palestine Papers — live updates

by News Sources 01.24.2011

6:29 Ali Abunimah writes: One of the more astonishing revelations in The Palestine Papers — detailed records and minutes of the Middle East peace process leaked to Al Jazeera — is that the administration of US President Barack Obama effectively repudiated the Road Map, which has formed the basis of the “peace process” since 2003. [...]

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Al Jazeera owned the Tunisia story

by News Sources 01.21.2011

Reuters reports: As events unfolded in Tunisia, a country where Al Jazeera’s bureau had been closed, the channel again innovated among Arab broadcasters by using mobile phone footage and social media. It no longer has a news monopoly in the Arabic satellite TV space. And some viewers say it treads a fine line between reporting [...]

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The NYT’s view of “journalistic objectivity”

by Paul Woodward 12.23.2009

The NYT’s view of “journalistic objectivity” By Glenn Greenwald, Salon, December 23, 2009 I‘ve written many times before about Sami al-Hajj, the Al Jazeera cameraman who was abducted by the U.S. in late 2001, tortured at Bagram, sent to Guantanamo for seven years — where he was never charged with any crime and was interrogated [...]

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