I’m shocked — shocked! — to learn that Al Jazeera is having trouble launching its English-language service.
It seems few in this country have an interest in granting a greater voice to the “Hate America First” crowd. On the other hand, some critics worry that Al Jazeera International will operate too close to the boundaries of sanity:
Ironically, in its quest to convince U.S. broadcast and advertising muckety-mucks that the new channel, led by a British-dominated management team, will be independent from its Arabic sister, al Jazeera has also managed to anger many in the Arab community.
“This is an Arab network from the Arab world-if people are going to watch a western point of view, they already have CNN, Fox, and the rest,” says Mohammud el-Nawawy, a professor at Queens University of Charlotte (N.C.) and coauthor of Al Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East.
It’s nice to know that students in one of our state’s fine private universities are exposed to such enlightened thought.