Monday, November 27, 2006

MSNBC: "NBC News is characterizing Iraq conflict as civil war; White House denies" 

Wired News: "The Zune only frees up tunes for a limited free sampling period -- a policy that actually interferes with the rights of artists who want people to share their works freely." 

Al Jazeera in the US? 

One of my favorite podcasts is On The Media. It's irreverent, funny, timely, intelligent, flattering, even a little flirty. It comes out every Friday afternoon, and I always take my Saturday walk with OTM. Always good food for thought.

Two weeks ago they had two fantastic segments, one about Lou Dobbs, the iconoclast preacher of closed borders, the imitation-journalist of CNN, and the other about the English-language version of the Arab news network Al Jazeera, and get this, one of their anchors, Dave Marish, a semi-famous US journalist, is Jewish! They interviewed Marish, and he speaks right to me about the need for understanding, and I think it's amazing that the Arabs have hired a Jew to speak English for them.

It might seem like a small thing, but a very large segment of the Muslim world doesn't speak Arabic, and the only common language they have is English. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim country in the world, they get their news in English and now Al Jazeera, speaking with an American accent, will be there. Will it be different from the Al Jazeera they see in the Middle East? Yes, according to the OTM report, it will be.

It's good news for world peace, so it seems, but if you want to watch Al J in English in the US, you're can only get it on the Internet. They haven't been able to get distribution on any American cable or satellite networks. I'd love to hear an explanation why. Surely it can't because they're partisan or represent the views of terrorists? If that were true, and I kid you not, I'm not joking, they'll have to stop carrying Bush and Cheney who have wasted a lot more people than any of the terrorists they carry on Al Jazeera. We need to hear other points of view. The Judith Miller fiasco proved that even the most prestigious and supposedly courageous journalists in the US are owned by the defense industry.

This seems to be a commercial decision that we, as customers, may be able to influence.