News, Info, and Opinion from the Spawn of Satan (DLC-PPI)

[Eric Beck]

Brad DeLong wrote:

>Another thing I don't understand: I don't understand how a network 
>[Al-Jazeera] that reported that Jews were told beforehand not to go 
>to work in the World Trade Center on Sept. 11 gets classified as a 
>"serious news outlet." What, then, could possibly be an unserious 
>news outlet?

Here's what Edward Said said in a recent interview. ("TO" is The 
Texas Observer, in the person of Debbie Nathan.)

TO: What did you think of Fouad Ajami's New York Times Magazine 
article in November about Al-Jazeera's being extremely biased, and a 
danger to the United States?
ES: It was preposterous. Ajami-who I should tell you is an 
ideological opponent of mine-was extremely shoddy and I thought 
hysterical in his presentation. His conclusion that Al-Jazeera is 
anti-America was simply wrong. I watch Al-Jazeera. There is a very 
large range of opinion, some of it pro-American, some of it 
anti-American. The announcers present the news as it occurs in the 
Arab world, obviously differently from the way the Israelis and the 
Americans present the news, but why shouldn't that have a status of 
its own? Why should just one version be the accepted version? And 
certainly it's a much freer, more diverse range of discussion than in 
any American media. For instance, you've got much wider coverage than 
normally available here of what was taking place in Afghanistan 
before the American invasion or bombing began. Al-Jazeera had three 
or four people inside Afghanistan, one of whom was a casualty of the 
American bombing of their main office in Kabul. And [on news programs 
dealing with Palestine] they regularly put on Israeli spokesmen, many 
of them very fluent in Arabic. They'll not only have Hanan Ashrawi [a 
member of the Palestinian Legislative Council and the Arab League's 
Arab Media General Commissioner] and the head of some institution in 
Gaza and some spokesman for Arafat, but they'll bring someone from 
the [Israeli] foreign ministry, somebody from the Army, to talk about 
what the Israelis think they're doing, and they're given quite a bit 
of time.

http://www.texasobserver.org/showArticle.asp?ArticleFileName=020215_b1.htm