printI first saw Wafa Sultan, an Arab-American psychiatrist who regularly exposes Islam’s true hue, on Al Jazeera. Well, not quite; Al Jazeera is banned in the land of the free. This particular broadcast was made available on the Internet by the Middle East Media Research Institute. What I saw of the Al Jazeera program was fair and balanced. Unlike “Fix News,” it was also intelligent—the moderator made reference to, gasp, Samuel P. Huntington. Most of “Fix News’” bimbos and beaus have no idea who that American intellectual is. At the time, I wrote:
“For my money, if Al-Jazeera continues to provoke viewers with the likes of Sultan, I’ll be signing on when they start to transmit here. It’s a whole lot better than enduring Chris Matthews’ incestuous love-ins with ‘The ‘Hardball’ hotshots.’ That’s when MSNBC’s Tucker Carlson, Joe Scarborough, and Rita Cosby aka ‘Throaty McHuskington,’ who each torture us independently during their respective programs, combine to amplify the unedifying effects.
As for the girls at CNN—Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, and Anderson Cooper appear indifferent to professional competition. Edgy reporting elsewhere never rubs off on this crew. They prefer to kvetch interminably about colorectal, breast, and lung cancer; anorexia nervosa, and Katrina. In this stream of soporific, soft-news stories, Wafa Sultan is indeed a rarity.”
Speaking recently to my fervently pro-Israel father in South Africa, he said: “The only fair shake Israel ever gets in this country’s media is from Al-Jazeera. The women anchors are also beautiful and refined,” he added. That’s more than you can say of say, Laurie Dhue—an anchor with a foghorn for a voice and a neck as thick as an ox’s. Dhue modulates her voice and pulls faces to ensure the viewer knows exactly where she stands on the issues. Kimberly Guilfoyle’s shrieking voice and large overbite are also something to behold. And have you seen Fix’s Red-Eye female representatives? Loud, crass, and crude doesn’t begin to capture their charms.
In “Bring the Real World Home,” Roger Cohen of the New York Times confirms what I surmised about Al Jazeera:
“A year after its launch, it reaches 100 million households worldwide. Its focus is on ‘reporting from the political south to the political north,’ as Nigel Parsons, its managing director, put it. The world it presents, more from the impact than the launch point of U.S. missiles, is one that must be understood.
Yet, the network has been sidelined in the United States. Representative Jim Moran, a Democrat from Virginia, told me: ‘There’s definitely an attitude here that these guys are the enemy. But in the Mideast, Asia and Europe they have a credibility the U.S. desperately needs.’
Moran met recently with Al Jazeera English executives seeking to extend the service’s Lilliputian reach here. Right now, you can watch it in Toledo, Ohio, through Buckeye Cablesystem, which reaches 147,000 homes.
Or, if you’re in Burlington, Vt., a municipal cable service offers the network to about 1,000 homes. Washington Cable, in the capital, reaches half that. Better options are YouTube or GlobeCast satellite distribution.
These are slim pickings. Al Jazeera English is far more accessible in Israel. Allan Block, the chairman of Block Communications, which owns Buckeye, told me: ‘It’s a good channel. Sir David Frost and David Marash are not terrorists. The attempt to blackball it is neo-McCarthyism.’
Block, like other cable providers, got protest letters from Accuracy in Media, a conservative watchdog. Cliff Kincaid, its editor, cites the case of Tayseer Allouni, a former Afghanistan correspondent jailed in Spain for Al Qaeda links. This is evidence, he suggests, that ‘cable providers shouldn’t give them access.’
Most cable companies have bowed to the pressure while denying politics influenced their decisions. ‘It just comes down to channel capacity and other programming options,’ Jenni Moyer, a Comcast spokeswoman, told me.
Nonsense, says Representative Moran, blaming ‘political winds plus a risk-averse corporate structure.’
These political winds hurt America. Counterinsurgency has been called armed social science. To win, you must understand the world you’re in.
Comparative courses in how Al Jazeera, CNN, the BBC and U.S. networks portray the Iraq war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should be taught in all U.S. high schools and colleges. Al Jazeera English should be widely available.”