al-Jazeera: seeking the truth?
There's a news network out there that claims to value truth and objectivity over "the scoop," although in some regions of the world, such as Afghanistan and Iraq, they get the scoop anyway. Am I talking about Fox News? No, it's al-Jazeera.If I do a brief comparison between the two, the first thing I notice is: al-Jazeera doesn't tie up my computer's resources with annoying Flash animations. (Something I don't much care for from anyone.) Fox doesn't have a "code of ethics" or an "about us" linked from their home page; al-Jazeera does. Where I favor Fox is that they have room to talk about sports and entertainment of unique interest to Americans, but al-Jazeera doesn't have that in their mission -- they believe the whole world is their audience. Admittedly, to some Americans that may seem boring -- even to me when I want to read about sports.
It's fairness that grabs me about al-Jazeera. They pull no punches, whether they are talking about terrorists or the American military. To me, this is far more difficult than being fair in coverage between Democrats and Republicans, and Fox News doesn't do even this particularly well. I mean, Democrats won't shoot you if you don't give them equal time or a positive spin. (Well, not most of them, anyway.)
One place where the two organizations are closely related: they both got off the ground in 1996. That makes them both very young businesses in my view, even though news moves so fast they may be growing old. They both faced struggles from the outset -- Fox claims they started up "amidst predictions of failure" and al-Jazeera claims that their television network "sent shockwaves through the whole Arab world from its very first day on air." I could argue these two networks are both entrepreneurial in their way -- except that we know Fox's money comes from a conglomerate, and could guess that al-Jazeera gets its money from someone near a lot of oil.
I'm just saying that for my money, since I care about the whole world, and a fair spin on the news, I'd go for al-Jazeera ahead of Fox News any day.
Labels: character
posted by Ron @ 7:17 PM
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