Our business model is simply not sustainable
January 13, 2016 12:53 PM   Subscribe

Al Jazeera America to shut down by April 2016.

NYT:
Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after it bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million. It promised to be thoughtful and smart, free of the shouting arguments that have defined cable news in the United States over the last decade. But meaningful viewership never came, with prime-time ratings sometimes struggling to exceed 30,000 viewers.
CNN Money:
The channel's end appears to have been prompted by the plunging price of oil, which dropped below $30 a barrel on Tuesday for the first time in 12 years. That's significant because Al Jazeera America is owned by Al Jazeera Media Group, which in turn is owned by the government of Qatar.
Al Jazeera America has sparked controversy recently, airing an hour-long report linking Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning to HGH doping alongside reports of newsroom turmoil.
posted by Existential Dread (73 comments total) 11 users marked this as a favorite
 
What is so sad is the egos who run the station would never think of exploring a sale!
posted by parmanparman at 12:58 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I guess I liked the idea of Al Jazeera America, and I liked what I saw in the half dozen times I managed to find it on cable and tune in over the past couple-three years, and well, there you go.
posted by notyou at 12:58 PM on January 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


Sad, but not surprising. Every time I watched it, all the ads were for things like those pads you put on the bottoms of your feet to draw out impurities.
posted by holborne at 1:06 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


I'm curious how much the name hurt them; for better or worse, it's a tough brand to sell in a country whose understanding of "The Other" is sometimes... less than nuanced.
posted by verb at 1:06 PM on January 13, 2016 [61 favorites]


It sounded like a nasty place to work, and the stories about sexism and antisemitism didn't exactly fill me with confidence.
posted by blahblahblah at 1:06 PM on January 13, 2016 [20 favorites]


In theory, I'd be a person who'd be interested in a non-crazy, non-stupid cable news channel but I just never watch TV news at all. So I guess that this is my fault.
posted by octothorpe at 1:07 PM on January 13, 2016 [32 favorites]


Bah, who needs in-depth reporting about the Middle East these days.
posted by XMLicious at 1:09 PM on January 13, 2016 [9 favorites]


"What is so sad is the egos who run the station would never think of exploring a sale!"

It's a mouthpiece of the government of Qatar. It'll be like the Kremlin thinking of selling Russia Today.
posted by I-baLL at 1:14 PM on January 13, 2016 [14 favorites]


Clearly this isn't a Super Bowl, because Peyton Manning wins again.
posted by drezdn at 1:23 PM on January 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


In theory, I'd be a person who'd be interested in a non-crazy, non-stupid cable news channel but I just never watch TV news at all. So I guess that this is my fault.

Part of the problem is that the people who are smart enough to avoid loud and stupid cable news channels are also the same people who are smart enough forgo having a cable subscription. If AJ America had a Roku app, I would've been curious enough to check them out, but since they didn't I never got to see even a minute of their programming.
posted by Strange Interlude at 1:23 PM on January 13, 2016 [26 favorites]


Mouthpiece or not, all the actual reporting I saw come out of there was genuinely thoughtful and nuanced.

I think octothorpe really is on to something. The market for thoughtful, nuanced reporting isn't interested in getting that from TV, because to some extent the medium inherently works against it. And we all know which people to follow on Twitter to get links to pieces that contain thoughtful reporting, so we have little need for a centralised network to help us find it.

We do, of course, need said centralised network infrastructure in order to actually pay the people doing the reporting, which is why modern journalism is in its current predicament.
posted by tobascodagama at 1:24 PM on January 13, 2016 [32 favorites]


It's okay. The niche of "impartial, thoughtful news outlet with owner who has a LOT of baggage" will now be picked up by the Las Vegas newspaper recently bought by Sheldon Adelson's 'family'
posted by oneswellfoop at 1:25 PM on January 13, 2016 [5 favorites]


My workplace is majority Asian immigrants and someone kept changing the lobby TVs from Fox News to AJE. I'm going to miss it when it's not there.
posted by desjardins at 1:30 PM on January 13, 2016 [21 favorites]


Mouthpiece or not, all the actual reporting I saw come out of there was genuinely thoughtful and nuanced.

Agreed. I also read their website a lot.
posted by sweetkid at 1:31 PM on January 13, 2016 [7 favorites]


Confusion to the slavelord Emir and his propagandists!
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 1:31 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't tell from the announcement, is this going to also shut down English-language Al Jazeera web articles? Or just the TV coverage specifically edited for the United States?
posted by Nelson at 1:33 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'll miss them, though I would always watch them online, rather than via cable.

For years, cable companies ignored Al Jazeera America, and didn't carry it... and then, when they did, most carried it in ways that lowered its audience significantly.
posted by markkraft at 1:36 PM on January 13, 2016 [10 favorites]


Come on. It's the only decent news station I get.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:40 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I would have watched the channel, if Comcast hadn't made it exclusive to their upper-tier plans.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:45 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


I can't tell from the announcement, is this going to also shut down English-language Al Jazeera web articles? Or just the TV coverage specifically edited for the United States?

They're shutting down all TV and digital operations in the US.
posted by holborne at 1:46 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


:( I don't watch cable tv, but the web site is one of my more regular news sources.
posted by eviemath at 1:52 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Does this mean that when oil drops -- and stays -- below $30 a barrel, we'll see the Putin-backed Russia Today go under? Because, if so, I'm thinking that might be a trade-off worth making, especially when faced with increased Russian hawkishness, tied to a public that is unwilling to accept that their corrupt economy deserves to be an even bigger failure than it currently is.

The current Russian 2016 budget -- where oil and gas make up 2/3rds of their total exports -- presupposes $50 a barrel oil prices. The US Dept. of Energy is estimating closer to $35. Goldman-Sachs is predicting a long-term drop in oil prices, with winners who modernize and losers who don't (i.e. A sanctioned Russia.) And the reality is probably going to be even worse than that.

Oil isn't just an industry with a huge glut, due to overproduction and new production from Iran coming online... it's a destructive, unsustainable, dying industry that might disappear in importance sooner than you think, driven by predictable and certain economies of scale and scientific innovation that makes oil's decline almost as good as inevitable.

It is not a good time to be a petro-nation... and it will likely remain that way, unless the GOP has something to say about it.
posted by markkraft at 2:00 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


There's a reason why OPEC isn't uniting to raise the price of oil, BTW... and I suspect that it's the same reason why nobody on the Titanic wanted to gun the engines after hitting the iceberg.
posted by markkraft at 2:12 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I would have watched the channel, if Comcast hadn't made it exclusive to their upper-tier plans.

Exactly, i've only seen it a few times(and mostly as youtube clips or online) because no one i know has ~premium cable~. not even my parents.

Cord cutting is real, and is probably a big part of what cut them off from their thinky-millennial audience(and just audience in general, but especially) that just doesn't even have cable, or if they do just have basic cable/iptv that came with their internet package.
posted by emptythought at 2:12 PM on January 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


I watch them about 2-3 mornings a week, as an antidote to the giggling idiots prattling about the lottery and the weather on my local news. I just love their reporting from Africa and Asia, in countries I barely knew existed, about education, industry, culture and so much more.

No other TV news source I'm familiar with ever showed me anything from these places, other than war. Although, sadly, I often find myself muttering about the abysmal living conditions. Watching A-J, for me, is a reminder of how lucky I am to have clean, running water.
posted by sixpack at 2:31 PM on January 13, 2016 [19 favorites]


And, for the record, it's part of my FIOS middle-tier package.
posted by sixpack at 2:32 PM on January 13, 2016


Part of this is also the demise of TV as a viable media. The Internet has had a devastating impact -- reducing the TV audience to a less than desirable demographic. Advertisers either select Al Jazeera America because they have a discerning audience or -more cynically- because AJA is a bunch of eyeballs you can buy cheap.
posted by Bdprtsma at 2:43 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


This is great! Presumably Al Jazeera International's video feed (which is totally different, and better) will no longer be blocked in the US.
posted by miyabo at 2:44 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


.
posted by Gelatin at 3:03 PM on January 13, 2016


It sounded like a nasty place to work, and the stories about sexism and antisemitism didn't exactly fill me with confidence.
I know. If only it could have been as open-minded as FoxNews.


I was saying on Twitter earlier, but the ideology of a news product and of the people who make it don't necessarily move in lockstep.

When I worked at Fox News (about 10 years ago now), senior and executive producers were just as likely to be women as men. The closest thing I saw to anti-Semitism was a supervisor making a secular Jewish colleague uncomfortable by strongly encouraging him to take Yom Kippur off when he had no interest. Many of my coworkers were Democratic-leaning, the head writer I worked under for a while was a Nader voter, some were immigrants, and not a few of my coworkers were openly gay and pro-gay marriage. Overall it was probably somewhat more conservative and slightly more traditionally religious than other media workplaces in New York City, but not wildly so.
posted by Jahaza at 3:06 PM on January 13, 2016 [13 favorites]


As someone who has worked on assignment for AJAM (documenting mock prison riots) I can't overstate what a loss this is. On the digital side, they were commissioning some of the most fearless photojournalism anyone had really seen in years, covering stories that no one else was even interested in touching for one reason or another. Singularly, they also paid an appropriate rate to the journalists who worked on those stories. A lot of us were kinda hoping their ascendency marked the beginning of a rebirth in journalism. This is such a blow.
posted by TheGoldenOne at 3:11 PM on January 13, 2016 [35 favorites]


OK, so apparently "mock prison riot" is a thing... I'm not exactly surprised, but huh.
posted by Jahaza at 3:13 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Sure, it had some flaws but the reporting was generally good quality and they frequently had correspondents in places that other news outlets wouldn't be able to find without Google Earth, let alone know anything about. I guess we need to get back to good ol contemporary in-depth reporting where the segment is 90 seconds long and the person being interviewed responds to questions with irrelevant talking points to a plastic faced correspondent that simply nods and smiles.
posted by Muncle at 3:22 PM on January 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


.
posted by allthinky at 3:30 PM on January 13, 2016


We do, of course, need said centralised network infrastructure in order to actually pay the people doing the reporting, which is why modern journalism is in its current predicament.

NPR does this for me, and is 80% of why I'm a member. That said, I hate losing another voice in the cable news landscape, especially one from a non-western institution, regardless of its problems.
posted by smirkette at 3:32 PM on January 13, 2016 [4 favorites]


Presumably Al Jazeera International's video feed (which is totally different, and better) will no longer be blocked in the US.

I would think so... Press release from AJ: Al Jazeera to expand digital services in US
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 3:43 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


If you stopped watching TV news long ago because it barely qualified as journalism as we understand the term, and you were unable to view Al Jazeera America, then you missed something that was pretty good.

Their news stories were much longer and more thoughtful than most anything you could find on television. They had not just more content, but actual context for their stories, something that largely disappeared from TV journalism long ago.

And, yes, I know for a fact that some people did not watch the show because of the name "Al Jazeera." They assumed it was Muslim propaganda. Too bad, really. Choosing between happy talk, corporate 90-second stories, right-wing Fox and left-wing Democracy Now...well, there is a gaping hole for relatively bias-free and informative TV news in America that will probably not be filled.
posted by kozad at 3:59 PM on January 13, 2016 [8 favorites]


This is great! Presumably Al Jazeera International's video feed (which is totally different, and better) will no longer be blocked in the US.

Yeah, I feel kind of mixed about this. I had enjoyed watching Al-Jazeera English (a separate, pre-existing entity) online before Al-Jazeera America was launched and AJE's feed was suddenly blocked in the U.S.

It certainly sounds like AJAM was pretty much toothless compared to predecessor, and paid dearly for it.
posted by psoas at 4:18 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I haven't gotten around to watching the SOTU yet, but we DVRd it from AJAM and I can't tell you enough how glad I am that we did. This station be missed.

Maybe they'll bring Ray Suarez back for a rebooted Talk of the Nation (if he's speaking to NPR again).
posted by ovenmitt at 4:54 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Mouthpiece or not, all the actual reporting I saw come out of there was genuinely thoughtful and nuanced.

I think there's a strong consensus that AJE may have been biased, and may have been a mouthpiece for Qatar, but was in no way a propatainment machine like RT was, and from all appearances, far less biased and unjournalistic than Fox news.

For what it's worth, Last Week Tonight used AJE clips on a fairly regular basis to underscore points they were making.

I'm not exactly a fan of Qatar, but Americans could do far worse than AJE as a news source. Even if you think some of its stuff was produced from a "Look at all these things that are terrible about America!" standpoint, it was still generally worth watching.

If it was a toxic workplace, then, it's another shame that managerial types ruined life for the workers, but that's pretty much normal for 25-50% of managers in America these days.

All in all, we're probably not better off without them, not unless somebody makes sure their investigative reporting still happens. But then, if somebody wanted to do the reporting on Last Week Tonight with more coverage, more frequent coverage (I don't know, maybe 2 hours per day, daily?) and less jokes, I wouldn't say no to that...
posted by Strudel at 5:30 PM on January 13, 2016 [6 favorites]


Oil isn't just an industry with a huge glut,
Can someone please explain to me how we have a glut of a non-renewable resource that is increasingly expensive to extract?
posted by Multicellular Exothermic at 5:57 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


it gotten cheaper and cheaper to clean up the production waste. which is to say, we don't
posted by eustatic at 6:07 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


oil is much more profitable when you don't have to concern yourself with pesky environmentalists and their concerns about groundwater
posted by eustatic at 6:08 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


From Talking Points Memo (the Josh Marshall one, not the Bill O'Reilly one): Was Al-Jazeera America Doomed from the Start?

tl;dr: TPM suggests that AJA's Qatari management assumed that they'd be able to shake up the American news market in the same way that they did in the Gulf States. This does not appear to have panned out.
posted by mhum at 6:14 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


Slightly related: so here in China, VPN's have long been a necessary addendum to the internet bill, and I've been browsing almost exclusively through one since before geo-blocking was a thing, and it's done wonders for my news consumption. Pick a server in a different country, and media streams are magically unlocked. It costs me far less than I'd spend on even basic cable, because there are thousands and thousands of competitors.

I'll miss AJAM too, but I was watching it mostly from way over here. You can too. Same applies for pretty much any news network anywhere, from anywhere...and it plays very nice with ad blockers. It kinda sucks that AJAM never had a donate button, because I would have used it.

I'm just sayin'. Don't forget you can do that too.
posted by saysthis at 6:42 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


Given the anti-Muslim sentiment in this country I was surprised it lasted this long. But even though I don't get from my cable provider, I figured it put some small amount of pressure n other news organizations to do a better job. I heard about this on the CBS news tonight, and nearly threw something at the TV when the anchor off-handedly commented that the Arabic Al Jazeera has "a reputation for being anti-American." Really, CBS?!
posted by TedW at 7:14 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]



posted by clavdivs at 7:24 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


I think it's more that there is little market for state propaganda mouthpieces. I am equally as uninterested in getting my news from the government of Qatar as I am Russia or Iran, no matter how funny they are.
posted by corb at 7:41 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


When I tried to read Al Jazeera, I found it mostly blocked, subtly, but definitely. I also felt the drag of more soft ware than I was choosing to use. So I quit trying to read about the ME there.
posted by Oyéah at 7:58 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Can someone please explain to me how we have a glut of a non-renewable resource that is increasingly expensive to extract?"

There is more production than demand -- especially when faced with an economic slowdown in China -- and *everyone* wants to sell as much of their oil as possible, as opposed to restricting oil output artificially, as OPEC traditionally does in such circumstances. .. and it's only going to get worse, with the lifting of sanctions on Iran.

Right now, there is a glut of oil, just waiting to be refined. With prices going so low, some speculators are talking about buying oil just letting it sit around for years, but the price keeps slipping lower, making this a good deal riskier than many would like.

A big part of the reason for this glut is that oil extraction technologies have improved. A lot of the US demand is now met with domestic production. The Obama administration also significantly increased fuel efficiency and a lot of inefficient vehicles have been removed from the road, thanks to a combination of cash-for-clunkers and an understandable reaction to higher gas prices in the past.

And in the background of all this, there are massive improvements in battery technology, making both electric vehicles and solar energy more practical and affordable. Those gradual yet inevitable improvements are leading towards a marketplace where electric vehicles will, in a few years, be both long ranged, affordable, cost less to fuel, cost much less to maintain, last longer, and outperform internal combustion engine cars.

It's a bit like the era of the very first, expensive digital music players, before the iPad, where better design, lower cost for memory and drives, and better performance were all basically inevitable, even if most people didn't see it at the time. But nobody seems to doubt Tesla's ability to design amazing cars.

Big auto makers are going in big guns, because they don't want to risk being left behind in a dead industry. The designs and marketing are already superb... cost and range-per-charge are the more limiting factors. Next year, Tesla plans on releasing a $35,000 electric car, while Nissan will also be coming out with a next-generation Leaf with increased range at a comparable price.

If you think that the price and demand for oil is weak now, wait until electric vehicles start to eat an exponentially growing percentage of that demand per year. No wonder that oil is basically a liquidation sale right now, with countries all trying to get as much money as they can, right away.

Yes, it's a limited commodity, but then again, so is coal... and nobody seriously believes at this point that coal will run out or even get majorly expensive before demand for it starts to seriously dry up.
posted by markkraft at 8:08 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I read this as

Al Jazeera: America to shut down by April 2016

and I thought "hyperbolic, but their point about the business model is well-made"
posted by AAALASTAIR at 8:48 PM on January 13, 2016 [15 favorites]


Well, shit. Al Jazeera America is the only one of the cable news channels that's worth a damn anymore. This is disappointing, but not surprising.
posted by homunculus at 9:11 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think it's more that there is little market for state propaganda mouthpieces. I am equally as uninterested in getting my news from the government of Qatar as I am Russia or Iran, no matter how funny they are.

What about the British government? The BBC is pretty successful, and I'd say there's quite a market for their service here in the states.

How significant is the Qatar connection? Is Al Jazeera really a mouthpiece, or is it more like the BBC? This is an honest question, because I really don't know. From the little I've seen of AJ, it didn't seem like propaganda to me.
posted by mokin at 9:25 PM on January 13, 2016 [2 favorites]


.

mokin: I counted myself among the handful of people who regularly watched and appreciated AJAM. I'd definitely characterize it more like the BBC. They focused on hard news, and with unusual depth (along with many original long-form documentaries). Their anchors would actually follow-up and press their subjects on lies or flimsy arguments, especially John Seigenthaler. I found them to be "objective", perhaps liberal by American standards. They're the only reason I have subscription TV now.
posted by rmannion at 10:10 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


You should of course keep the influence of Her Majesty's Government in mind while taking in BBC reports.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 10:13 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


I can't speak to AJA, as I don't have cable and when AJE became AJA the online feeds were cut off. But AJE was *great* and by no means a "mouthpiece". In every case when I have engaged with people presenting this view it turns out that the individual with whom I am discoursing never watched the channel. RT without any question serves a market in the US, but the product they offer is in no way similar to the news and editorial material that AJE presented. If AJA was half as good as AJE, this is a loss for journalism.

Why do I have such a pro-AJE opinion? Back before AJA, AJE offered their global English coverage for free 24/7 via the web and for rebroadcast, which meant that local-area cable providers and channels could run it for free. As did the cable-access channel I once worked for. Anytime there was some unbooked time, we ran AJE. As it happens, this included the Arab Spring and in particular during the events at Tahrir Square. No other news organization, print or time-media, had any remotely comparable coverage.

AJE also ran independently-produced documentaries, many centered on the US, produced largely by international journalists about life, events, characters, history, and traditions in the US. These were totally fascinating, and largely excellent.

corb says in part, "there is little market for state propaganda mouthpieces. I am equally as uninterested in getting my news from the government of Qatar as as I am Russia or Iran."

TedW notes that he "nearly threw something at the TV when the anchor off-handedly commented that the Arabic Al Jazeera has 'a reputation for being anti-American.'"

Strudel says, "I think there's a strong consensus that AJE may have been biased, and may have been a mouthpiece for Qatar, but was in no way a propatainment machine like RT was, and from all appearances, far less biased and unjournalistic than Fox news."

I've discussed AJE with various folks over the years, and corb's view, expressed directly and frequently by mainstream American media as cited directly by TedW and implicitly by Strudel, has been by far the most frequent viewpoint I have heard on AJE. Presumably there's conflation also with what is reported about Al Jazeera in Arabic in the English-language press, which may well be a fatal blow to the objective of establishing a uniform brand under the Al Jazeera name. So while I can't really offer a view on AJA, I have missed AJE for years now.
posted by mwhybark at 10:30 PM on January 13, 2016 [3 favorites]


.

The American audience doesn't seem to have the attention span to watch the news we should be watching, just like it doesn't have the willpower to eat oatmeal for breakfast every morning. Bring on the twinkies again!
posted by monotreme at 11:11 PM on January 13, 2016 [1 favorite]


Pity. I used to watch just the normal English language Al Jazeera in Sarajevo. And locally it was a regular,non - cable channel for awhile. I never got to see Al Jazeera America.
I like Al Jazeera simply for the fact it brought some variety to news broadcasting.it's too bad things went so wrong with Al Jazeera America.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 12:35 AM on January 14, 2016


Sorry, but your former organization's reputation is not built on how you and your colleagues talked behind the scenes; its based on what your organization actually did in public.

I think you may have missed the point of what they were saying. I hope.
posted by bongo_x at 12:43 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


And that's the way it is.
posted by lometogo at 2:16 AM on January 14, 2016


I think it's more that there is little market for state propaganda mouthpieces.

Yeah, what’s great about the US is that there’s no need for state media funded by the government, tv networks and newspapers are so good at doing propaganda independently and spontaneously! The power of the free market.
posted by bitteschoen at 2:18 AM on January 14, 2016 [5 favorites]


Hopefully this will stop attention being diverted from the its main English-language international channel. It is still far more in depth and considered than the BBC - and its non-bulletin programmes are actually worth watching, which seems unique among news channels - but it has felt less resourced in the last couple of years. The Americas and Asia Pacific in particular really seem to have plummeted down the agenda.
posted by garlicsmack at 4:31 AM on January 14, 2016


I think it's more that there is little market for state propaganda mouthpieces. I am equally as uninterested in getting my news from the government of Qatar as I am Russia or Iran, no matter how funny they are.

I haven't been impressed with RT the few times I've seen it but I really like AJ, NHK News (Japan), Deutsche Welle TV and radio, Radio France International, Raidió Teilifís Éireann (Ireland), Radio New Zealand, and ABC's Radio National (Australia). Yeah, there's bias, but to be honest the average overseas national news organization seems less biased than any private media source in the U.S. I have access to.

Not only on political and international relations topics but there's so much product placement and obviously paid corporate "news" stories it makes you want to barf. It's a travesty that anyone with internet access can get to all that, but so many people seem to be addicted to the domestic monoculture. Not to mention the people who get all their news from a single source.
posted by XMLicious at 4:58 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


I think for me it actually makes more of a difference not so much how much bias is in the average reporting, but whether or not a network is directly state owned rather than state influenced. It has nothing to do with what I feel about the government in question - it's because I don't know what their motivations are in presenting various stories, and where the national interest will come on display, and because there can be little directly against that government.
posted by corb at 6:13 AM on January 14, 2016


I mean, at least with state-owned media, you know their coverage will be biased in favour of their state sponsor.

Who the fuck is CNN's reporting biased toward?
posted by tobascodagama at 6:56 AM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


The taxpayer-funded media outlets XMLicious mentioned above, including one on my own insignificant island, regularly and vigorously attack the government of the day. Their independence is guaranteed by charter. It's an arm of the democratic process, and it's a good one.
posted by Wolof at 6:58 AM on January 14, 2016 [2 favorites]


"Who the fuck is CNN's reporting biased toward?"
Its corporate sponsor, and the whims of its advertisers and funding sources.

CNN and the business of state-sponsored TV news: The network is seriously compromising its journalism in the Gulf states by blurring the line between advertising and editorial

Report: why didn't CNNi air its own 'iRevolution' documentary?
posted by Blasdelb at 8:26 AM on January 14, 2016 [4 favorites]


Yeah, when I said "mouthpiece" I wasn't saying that all of their news is propaganda. A state-run media outlet can report news just fine until the state (who controls the funding) decides to slant a story here or lie about a story there for state purposes. Same way how corporate media does the same when a story might portray a major advertiser in a bad light. So with AJ, RT, BBC, etc. we have state-based bias and with CNN, MSNBC, etc. we have corporate-based bias. And with Fox News we have...uh... it's weird. It's not a corporate bias or a state bias but a Roger Ailes/Ruper Murdoch bias. But my main point was that Al Jazeera isn't going to sell itself since it's state run. It'd be like the British government selling the BBC which is a weird concept.
posted by I-baLL at 8:35 AM on January 14, 2016 [1 favorite]


With luck, Newsworld International will rise from the ashes to take back the spot in the channel guide that they sold to Al Gore to make his completely idiotic Current TV. It had the same problem of being of limited distribution (it was only available on the second highest DirecTV tier and was on very few terrestrial cable systems, which Current did manage to do better with), but had a very very low cost of operation since they didn't produce original content. They did, however, rebroadcast excellent news programs from many different countries.

Given how cheap transponder time is these days, I'm sure someone could make it work if they decided to bring back the original business model. It's still sad to see AJAM going away, but getting NWI back would be a decent enough replacement. There is still much good TV journalism being done elsewhere in the world, even if we in the US have gone back to the yellow days of yore.
posted by wierdo at 8:54 AM on January 14, 2016


Al Jazeera Plus (AJ+) is still running though. AJ+ produces online content and is based in the studios in San Francisco formerly occupied by Al Gore's Current TV.
posted by larrybob at 11:21 AM on January 14, 2016




They are/were one of the only news media outlets that hired and paid freelancers a fair rate. The stories were so good because the reporters were good, and the producers were good, and it's astonishingly cool to be allowed to run a story to ground and get paid to do it.

Do I think there was a bias? Individuals had their own biases, as do we all, but I think the reporting remained even handed and impartial. Their research was certainly better than most cable and even network news. They allotted more time per story, allowing for a depth that is rarely seen in American newstainment.

They just couldn't overcome the branding. They really failed to understand how the media marketplace works in this country, and got buried because of it.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 6:28 PM on January 15, 2016 [1 favorite]


"Who the fuck is CNN's reporting biased toward?"

The view from nowhere.
posted by phearlez at 1:55 PM on January 16, 2016


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