Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S.
Jeanwah
Posts: 6,363
1/30/11
WASHINGTON - Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can't do is watch the network directly.
Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. - including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. - cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.
The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet's website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.
Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.
The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one," he said, citing the Bush administration's public hostility to the network.
"There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that's changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem," Burman said.
Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera. The Canadian experience, he said, should put those fears to rest. In Canada, national regulators can require cable companies to provide certain channels and Al Jazeera ran a successful campaign to encourage Canadians to push the government to intervene. There has been extremely little negative reaction over the past year as Canadians have been able to view the channel and decide for themselves. "We had a completely different process and result here in Canada -- a grassroots campaign that was overwhelmingly successful," said Avi Lewis, the former host of Al Jazeera's Frontline USA. (He now freelances for Al Jazeera while working on a documentary project with his wife, Naomi Klein.)
Media critics have begun to push for Al Jazeera's inclusion. "It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it," wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. "Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can."
Al Jazeera follows a public broadcasting model similar to the BBC, CBC and NPR and is largely funded by the government of Qatar, which Burman said takes a completely hands-off approach to content. Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. "As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes," he said.
Burman said that he will use the experience with the Tunisia and Egyptian uprisings in upcoming meetings with cable providers as the network continues its push. Comcast did not respond to requests for comment.
"Why in the most vibrant democracy in the world, where engagement and knowledge of the world is probably the most important, why it's not available is one of these things that would take a PhD scholar to understand," Burman said.
--
UPDATE I: A reader emails to say that Al Jazeera programming is also being carried by the satellite channel LinkTV, which can be found on channel 9410 on Dish Network and 375 on DirecTV.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/3 ... 16030.html
WASHINGTON - Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can't do is watch the network directly.
Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. - including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. - cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.
The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet's website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.
Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.
The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one," he said, citing the Bush administration's public hostility to the network.
"There was reluctance from these companies to embark in a direction that would perhaps be opposed by the Bush administration. I think that's changed. I think if anything the Obama administration has indicated to Al Jazeera that it sees us as part of the solution, not part of the problem," Burman said.
Cable companies are also worried, said Burman, that they will lose more subscribers than they will gain by granting access to Al Jazeera. The Canadian experience, he said, should put those fears to rest. In Canada, national regulators can require cable companies to provide certain channels and Al Jazeera ran a successful campaign to encourage Canadians to push the government to intervene. There has been extremely little negative reaction over the past year as Canadians have been able to view the channel and decide for themselves. "We had a completely different process and result here in Canada -- a grassroots campaign that was overwhelmingly successful," said Avi Lewis, the former host of Al Jazeera's Frontline USA. (He now freelances for Al Jazeera while working on a documentary project with his wife, Naomi Klein.)
Media critics have begun to push for Al Jazeera's inclusion. "It is downright un-American to still refuse to carry it," wrote Jeff Jarvis on Sunday. "Vital, world-changing news is occurring in the Middle East and no one-not the xenophobic or celebrity-obsessed or cut-to-the-bone American media-can bring the perspective, insight, and on-the-scene reporting Al Jazeera English can."
Al Jazeera follows a public broadcasting model similar to the BBC, CBC and NPR and is largely funded by the government of Qatar, which Burman said takes a completely hands-off approach to content. Al Jazeera is the scourge of authoritarian governments around the Middle East, which attempt to block it. The network, however, covers much more than the Middle East, and now has more bureaus in Latin America than CNN and the BBC, said Burman. "As proud as we are of our Middle Eastern coverage, we are in other places in the world that are never, never seen on television in American homes," he said.
Burman said that he will use the experience with the Tunisia and Egyptian uprisings in upcoming meetings with cable providers as the network continues its push. Comcast did not respond to requests for comment.
"Why in the most vibrant democracy in the world, where engagement and knowledge of the world is probably the most important, why it's not available is one of these things that would take a PhD scholar to understand," Burman said.
--
UPDATE I: A reader emails to say that Al Jazeera programming is also being carried by the satellite channel LinkTV, which can be found on channel 9410 on Dish Network and 375 on DirecTV.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/3 ... 16030.html
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2015: 9/23 NY, 9/26 NY ... 2016: 4/28 PA, 4/29 PA, 5/1 NY, 5/2 NY, 6/11 TN, 8/7 MA, 11/4 TOTD PA, 11/5 TOTD PA ... 2018: 8/10 WA
2022: 9/14 NJ ... 2024: 5/28 WA, 9/7 PA, 9/9 PA ---- http://imgur.com/a/nk0s7
That's just sad, man. :(
Oh yeah! I managed to find that after posting this thread luckily.
If you mean American mainstream media, that's the problem...
I only watch Californication, Entourage, Boardwalk Empire, and Mets baseball.
TV is a waste of time.
http://english.aljazeera.net/
Does no one truly care about what's going on over in Egypt? :shock:
i think it's similar to the amount of news related to the cyclone in australia ... global issues will never be a major concern for many unless it involves them directly ... what we are seeing in tunisia and egypt and jordan for that matter should be putting everyone in defcon 2 as far as i'm concerned but so should global warming ...
so ... to answer your question ... there are people who care but most do not ...
When the price of oil increases to a point that it hurts their pockets, they will 'care'.
Most Americans won't really care about what is happening there (people rioting in a bit of a backward country). They should - this can/will have huge impact in the Middle East - maybe not to America's liking.
As for global warming, blame the politicians, far-right conservatives, and liberal radicals who have used the issue to further their careers, pet projects, and power. It's too bad as it's impossible to have a civilized debate on the issue. You can't sort the bear shit from the barley.
i think she (and I) is referring to the people here ...
i'll refrain from dragging this thread into another GW thread but let's just say i disagree ...
I don't know about everyone else here, but I've found the Egypt crisis to be fascinating. I do think that the Tunisia uprising flew under the radar but Tunisia was a relatively unknown nation prior to 2011 and it was viewed as an isolated incident. I'm pretty good with world geography and I even had to study the map to find out exactly where it was. Sorta like Botswana. Out of sight, out of mind.
Egypt is at an awkward cross-roads. If Mubarak does step down, does a new group try to gain power? Does the military disband? If an anti-American group takes over, will US aid stop? Will mass starvation take place? Kinda scary.
The second part of this story: How far does this spread? I'm sure the leaders of Iran, Jordan, Yemen (I'm assuming they have leaders and government) and other impoverished nations are sweating this out.
My analysis: The best thing that Mubarak could have done is announced he was resigning in one month and that new elections would be held on March 1st. As it stands now, I think we are headed for a Mexican standoff.
it is fascinating ... part of me feels like those uprisings should be happening here ... although my ideology would like to see open and transparent democracy take its place - i fear that, similar to iran, the fundamentalists will take over and we are trading one regime for another ... i am hoping tunisia will be different from egypt and that of jordan ...
That said, frankly I've been disappointed by how little coverage it's gotten on my main source of news, NPR(adio). Could be that they happen to be covering the topic when I'm not listening of course.
Either way, as much as I ignore American MSM, I can't understand why people think any other large, financed news group is any more worthy, whether it be BBC, Al Jazeera, or whathaveyou.
I agree that this sort of uprising should be happening here...but I posted a link in another thread that I think is the reason this is happening in Egypt: the IMF changing the food credit/distribution program in Egypt. This has left a lot of people without food. If this was strictly about 'regime change, democracy, and wealth redistribution', as we're being consistently told, then yes, the US should be seeing this kind of uprising...seeing as how the imbalance between rich and poor is greater in the US than either Egypt or Tunisia.
But we don't hear about this. Aside from their offer to 'help' (puke), I have not heard one mention of the IMF in the MSM coverage of this.
:roll:
If you think we're all pathetic, wtf are you doing here? Nothing sadder than the ol' 'if you don't like it, leave' comment.
The gap between poor and wealthy may or may not be bigger in the US than in Egypt, but I'd wager the gap between poor in the US and poor in Egypt is pretty big too. That's the key. Until you see white folks hawking their Bimmers for bread, ain't nothin' gonna change in this country.
(Side note: Cooper claims he has been punched in the head ten times so far ... either Egyptians are horrible at punching people or he is exaggerating)
Murbarak's decision-making in this crises is resembling Andy Reid's time management skills after a 2-minute warning ... in other words, not good.
But... the first people to be affected by food shortages and a failing economy will (obviously) be the poor.
The difference between the poor here, and the poor in Egypt is that the poor here can, generally, still afford to feed themselves. The food shortages we're seeing now are just the beginning....oil keeps rising, we keep destroying farm land, and mother nature keeps trying to 'shake us off'....
How much would food prices need to inflate for the 45 million Americans living below the poverty line to start having difficulty providing food for their families? I'm betting not much.
By Josh Levy, February 9, 2011
When the political upheaval in Egypt erupted late last month, many Americans hoped their cable news networks would be quick to cover the unfolding events. Instead, outlets like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News failed to cover the crisis in Egypt at all, and then struggled to play catch-up with international news organizations.
Meanwhile, Al-Jazeera English was gaining admirers across the globe for its around-the-clock, in-depth coverage of the protests and politics as they unfolded. The outlet was beating the American news channels at their own game. As the New York Times’ Brian Stelter wrote, “While American television networks were scrambling to move reporters and producers into Cairo, the Al-Jazeera channels were already there.”
Unfortunately, unless you lived in Washington, D.C.; Toledo, OH; or Burlington, VT you couldn’t view Al-Jazeera’s coverage on your TV because the cable operators don’t offer it; you had to settle for a live feed on your computer (if you had access to the broadband to support the stream).
In a better world, the major cable TV operators would be carrying Al-Jazeera English and dozens more news channels. And some notable advocates, including media critic and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis, have called for greater adoption of Al-Jazeera in the U.S. But right now, cable giants like Comcast and Time Warner Cable refuse to carry them, leaving interested viewers — and the public interest — in the lurch.
Then, out of the blue, Roku — the little box that lets you stream HD versions of Netflix, Hulu Plus and dozens more Internet video channels right on your TV — announced it had added the Al-Jazeera English live feed to its news channel. Roku enables cord cutters like me who, in the pursuit of media freedom, gave up expensive cable TV subscriptions to stay tuned to many of the shows and movies they like.
Thanks to its addition of Al-Jazeera English, Roku users around the country can now watch coverage of Egypt in the same manner as those in D.C., Toledo, Burlington, and other parts of the world: on their TVs.
Roku’s move was a thrilling taste of what online TV might look like if big cable loses its grip on channels and viewers. Imagine if more channels, sick of waiting in virtual holding pens to be allowed to join cable lineups, instead just joined up with Roku or one of its competitors. And then imagine if viewers followed these channels off the cable reservation, cut their cords and relied solely on little Internet boxes for their TV content.
It would be a shiny future for online video. Except the cable giants won’t stand for it, and are using all their power to stop it: The cords that pipe in your cable TV also deliver the Internet, and big cable is all too eager to exploit that fact, threatening to throttle or block content they don’t like or that competes with them.
Independent online video efforts are running into problems left and right, and the cable giants are trying to stymie them for as long as possible while they test out their “TV Everywhere” offerings — which is their attempt at rolling out online video services without allowing subscribers to “cut the cord.” Thanks to loopholes in a recent FCC decision, there are a number of ways Comcast and friends could degrade or throttle Netflix, Hulu and other channels offered by Roku.
It’s true that with more innovations like Roku’s addition of Al-Jazeera English, the future of online video could be bright. But if big cable succeeds in squashing competition and stifling innovation, it could also get really, really dark.