A Review of Al-Jezeerah and other news stations

So, its been a few weeks now and I've gotten a chance to really get a feel for Al-Jezeerah, so I thought I'd post my review.

First, the most important issue: trustworethiness. The style of journalism that Al-Jezeerah uses reminds me of the BBC reporters who-- rather mercilessly sometimes, but always to the benefit of the public-- tend to hound their interviewees and not let them avoid giving a real answer. They back up their information alot. I am impressed with the amount of references and the effort to get as many different opinions on an issue as possible. I also really appreciate how they report things and events in Europe and the Americas that other western news stations do not. Different things catch their reporter's attentions, than ours.

On the bias-factor they rate pretty average. I treasure them for their outside, sometimes overly critical view of Europe and the Americas. They don't cut us any slack, but to a person who is interested in international relations, the insight into the Middle Eastern view of us, is like the choicest green apple sucker in a candy shop full of pink and red. Honestly though, they only criticize us about as much as our leading parties criticize whatever other party is ruling for the moment, and a mite less than FOX criticizes everybody but itself.

Obviously their bias tends to lead them to showing the Middle East and North Africa in a slightly kinder light. They've been doing a running series where they talk about Media blind spots around the world-- places where the freedom of speech is limited. They've talked plenty about the Indian and North African regions, but at the end of one of their programs they did a very quick two minuete story on how Arabia is censoring the internet and tracking its citizens on it. It was very cursory but I would have thought, considering Arabia's importance in the Middle Eastern population, that it would have a much bigger story. I apprechiate the increased and in-depth coverage of North Africa on Al-Jezeerah but I don't find myself listening to it to find out events in the Middle East, so much as attitudes.

For example, they did a piece on how the International Criminal Court called for the arrest of the leader of Sudan, in responce to the crisis in Darfur. The Sudanese people went out on the streets in protest, claiming that they did not recognize the ICC, and why should their president be arrested when former President Bush roamed free? Basically the whole article was about how the Middle East saw this, not as a just law and mandate, but as evidence of the predjudice the europeans and americans have for muslims.
My responce to which, is this: ITS FREAKIN DARFUR GENOCIDE MAN! OF COURSE WE'RE GONNA ARREST HIM!
but it goes to show how very sensitive the Middle Eastern people are feeling right now.

Al-Jezeerah also seems to be preoccupied with the changing face of journalism these days, and they talk about the influence of facebook and twitter a lot. As a journalism student, I find these pieces very interesting and exciting, but to someone less interested I can easily see them wondering why Al-Jezeerah seems to do more reporting on reporting than doing actual reporting. It may just be because of their Media Blind Spots series that the subject comes up so often though, it may not be like this normally.

Between my 3 news stations, NPR, BBC, and Al-Jezeerah, I still find the BBC is best for the least biased content. Al-Jezeerah provides some of the most in-depth, well researched content, and NPR is good for local and national news.