Al Jazeera

In conversation with Katie Engelhart

Is the news network’s reliance on Qatari donors skewing its objectivity?

Freedom from Pain shows global War on Drugs hurting patients

I was impressed and humbled with the performance of the al-Jazeera news network during the recent revolution in Egypt. As CNN floundered and Fox News simply ceased to have even vestigial relevance, al-Jazeera seemed, for a moment, to be living up to its promise as a bridge between the Arab world and the West—if not transcending that promise and becoming something greater: a tribune of the Arab peoples and their neighbours; an influential, omnipresent witness of precisely the sort that the students in Tiananmen Square lacked; and, perhaps, one of the world’s essential institutions of news.

Y’know, when I was living in France, a big part of my newsgathering day was devoted to watching Al Jazeera English, a surprisingly vibrant, engaging, thoughtful and generally-non-jihad-endorsing all-news television network. Under former CBC exec Tony Burman, Al Jazeera is now pushing hard for a chance to broadcast (well, cable-cast) in Canada. You can learn more about them at this website. On the other hand, if you’re the sort who doesn’t want Al Jazeera in Canada, then this website will be more your style.

Gideon Levy, a prominent journalist at the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, has been criticized and praised in his home country for writing a column in which he describes Al Jazeera English’s correspondent in Gaza, Ayman Mohyeldin, as his “war hero.”