How Al-Jazeera Could Make a Global Splash

As'ad AbuKhalil in his important Angry Arab News Service blog notes: "Al-Jazeera (Arabic) has regained much of the credibility among Arab audiences that it has been losing in recent years, my criticisms notwithstanding. Its coverage of Gaza has -- in my impression -- mesmerized Arab audience."

I try to watch some Al-Jazeera (English) on the web from time to time, some good stuff, but it still feels like warmed over BBC. I had suggested to Al-Jazeera (Arabic) reporters years ago -- shortly after 9-11 and periodically since then -- that they simply have a channel and web stream of Al-Jazeera (Arabic) with English subtitles. Some of the most crucial aspects of Al-Jazeera (Arabic) are the images it shows anyway. And this could be a major step toward a meaningful global dialogue that is so desperately lacking. Additional plus: this would help people learn Arabic.

The fact that Al-Jazeera came out with a BBC-type English-language channel that is comprehensive but not vibrant -- it doesn't feature the lively debates that the Arabic channel does -- is I think partly a consequence of political compromises and party a result of looking at viewers as markets rather than as citizens. If the top brass had a sense of mission and urgency, I'd think they'd have done the obvious and had an English subtitle feed. And they still can...

Additional obstacles toward global dialogue: CNN International is better than CNN but CNN International isn't available in the United States. People in other countries who watch CNN International probably assume it is available in the U.S. and probably therefore think the people of the U.S. are psychos because they don't realized just how bad U.S. media are.

BBC is getting worse and worse, for a crit of the BBC's coverage, see Muhammad Idrees Ahmad at the Electronic Intifada.