The Revolution Was Televised — by Al Jazeera

Political change in Egypt was admirably chronicled — and made possible — by the journalism of Al Jazeera, the TV news operation based in Qatar. Egyptian authorities shut down the network’s Cairo bureau in a futile attempt to forestall the inevitable, but the Arabic-language broadcaster kept delivering detailed news about the popular uprising to people across the Middle East and North Africa, where it really counted.

Al Jazeera’s name means “the island” or “the peninsula,” a reference to Qatar, where it was founded. But Al Jazeera English is stranded on a desert island in America — no major cable or satellite provider carries it. Over-the-air provider MHz Networks in Northern Virginia makes AJE available for free here in Washington, so we got real coverage of events in Egypt. The rest of the U.S. got celebrity gossip and blather.

We don’t know what will transpire in Egypt, but Americans cannot know it in depth if our media continue the absurd xenophobic blocking of Al Jazeera. It’s the kind of thing Mubarak would do. Oh, wait; he did.

 

Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Tags: Al Jazeera, Egypt, journalism, media, Middle East, Mubarak, news, television