I was fortunate to get Al Jazeera America for a couple of years through DirectTV, but most Americans didn't have access to it, and surprise! bad ratings equals cancellation. It wasn't perfect, but it was much better than any American corporate TV news. They did some hard-hitting documentaries (including one on the USS Liberty). They regularly did real stories about real problems around the world, not the phony distractions and manufactured-angry-drama-about-nothing that we Americans have become so used to.
Tracy Riddle Wrote:I was fortunate to get Al Jazeera America for a couple of years through DirectTV, but most Americans didn't have access to it, and surprise! bad ratings equals cancellation. It wasn't perfect, but it was much better than any American corporate TV news. They did some hard-hitting documentaries (including one on the USS Liberty). They regularly did real stories about real problems around the world, not the phony distractions and manufactured-angry-drama-about-nothing that we Americans have become so used to.
It is probably NOT just a 'ratings' 'thing', given the several attacks the US Military has been tasked against Al Jazeera. Anyway, it still exists in English here
http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/default.html#
I still have it here too. I wonder if RT will be the next casualty in the US? The thought of being completely reliant on western media for news would be really alarming.
We have it here too. It is quite good in many ways but I also found their coverage of some Middle Eastern events to be terrible as well. Definitely partisan to the owners political views. But for a lot of the coverage that didn't conflict with that, yes, it was a good source of information and definitely goes where the western MSM wont. There is no love from the US government for Al Jazeera.