Credibility is the lifeblood of any news organization. Here in North America we have a variety of outlets from which to choose our daily dose of celebrity fluff disguised as newsworthy events. The latest is the inane or rather insane buffoonery of Charlie Sheen making all the newscasts across the continent. How relevant is that?
I have spent some time this past while surfing the various news channels trying to gauge how the North American media is doing with its coverage of the uprisings in the Middle East, particularly the events in Libya and Egypt.
CNN
While CNN keeps kidding itself that it is number one in the world, I personally have seen little improvement in its selection of shallow topics, continuing boosterism of Barack Obama and company. Meanwhile they continue to portray as negative, dangerous or stupid, anything Republican, anything regarding the Tea Party movement or anything to do with Sarah Palin.
As for its little sister network HLN, well the primping and preening of the graduates of the Sarah Bernhardt School of Emoting and Facial Messaging continues unabated. The drama queens disguised as hosts or news presenters do more to draw attention to their girlish giggling, beauty pageant smiles and inane observations on subjects of which they are totally ignorant drags on and on.
If they are not giggling, they are screaming out what their issues are, apparently thinking we are all deaf. And if you think I am being sexist on this one I’m not. The hyper-animated men are just as bad.
On April 13 2010, Jim Walton, president for CNN Worldwide, part of Time Warner, had this to say: “We’re (CNN) the only credible, nonpartisan voice left. And that matters.” Oh really Jim? If so, you are hiding it very well in your broadcasts. He was reacting to the fact that both Fox News and MSNBC are ahead of them in the ratings.
Fox
Actually Fox News is so good, we in Canada are not allowed to watch it, at least not on cable, thanks to lobbying by the totally lame mainstream media and government interference through a Soviet-Style agency called Canadian Radio and Television Telecommunications Commission (CRTC). Seems the tender ears of Canadians can’t tolerate truth in journalism. But we’re not worried we don’t get much of that up here.
MSNBC
Moving on, I recently spent some time watching MSNBC. I was drawn to them because of their straightforward, no-nonsense approach to their news segments. It thought they were pretty good until we got to programs such as Hardball with Chris Matthews a rabid Liberal (Democrat I assume) who should change the program name to Goofball. Petty is the only word I can find to describe the content.
Through all this I am happy to report finding a news source that is straightforward, uses no computer driven gimmicks, has not ridiculed one person and whose hosts very seldom interrupt their guests to make sure the right message is getting through and who apologize for interrupting on the occasions when they do.
That network is Al Jazeera.
While I realize some of you might be aghast at the thought since the network, with offices in Doha Qatar, Washington and London, has been branded by the North American media as sympathetic Islamic terrorism or are anti-American. I have seen not a shred evidence to support such claims.
And if you don’t believe me ask U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton what she said when addressing the U.S. Foreign Policy Priorities Committee of her thoughts on Al Jazeera. Here is a posting on Time.com by Ishaan Tharoor.
“Al Jazeera has been the leader in that [it is] literally changing people's minds and attitudes. And like it or hate it, it is really effective... In fact viewership of al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it's real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which, you know, is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners.”
I find Al Jazeera a refreshing, credible alternative to the pap machines from which we have to choose.
I’m with you Hillary.
