Friday, May 27, 2011

Aljazeera

The biggest problem i have with Aljazeera is not political and is not that it has become a pure voice for the Arab counter-revolution and for the dreadful Saudi-Qatari alliance.  The problem is that it has become an example of bad journalism.  I tuned in this morning to watch the news and I only got propaganda.  Pure propaganda.  They basically have become like trash talk radio in the US: they open the phone lines and--unlike US trash talk radio--they treat their anonymous callers like their own correspondents and ask them questions about political developments in Syria (the country of choice these days).  And if the callers offer opinions that diverge from the agenda of Aljazeera, they are immediately shut off.  Aljazeera the other day did not even cover the speech by Nasrallah, when it used to extensively provide live coverage of his speeches.  Maybe it over did it in the past, just as it now underdoes it.   Today, they barely covered the massive demonstrations in Tahrir Square, while allowing anonymous callers to report to them on Syria.  They had a Youtube footage of a "massive demonstration" in a Syrian town when I was able to count around ten people.  When it comes to Syrian developments, one has to struggle hard.  On the one hand, you get crude and weird propaganda on Syrian regime TV (where they spend hours on technical topics, like "food security" or "irrigation in the 21st century"), and on the other hand you have the sensational and unreliable Saudi and Qatari propaganda outlets.  One suffocates in these conditions.  It is fair to say that Aljazeera suffered its most serious blow to its credibility since it went on the air.