But now: US viewers seek Al Jazeera coverage
english.aljazeera.net
english.aljazeera.net
Watching AJ reminds me how human-interest and emotion-centric the local news has become. The Egyptian coverage on CNN is nauseating. Yesterday a caller phoned in from Cairo and was falling over his words just spilling massive amounts of useful data and the anchor woman interrupts him to ask him about his feelings.
That's a perfectly reasonable and straightforward argument which raises eyebrows only because it hints at the idea that feminism had some negative effects.
The comparison to Al-Jazeera might not be sound, however--masculine emotional reserve is a characteristic of Anglo-Saxon/Germanic/Northern European culture, not necessarily Arabic culture.
[1] Feminism, as a natural consequence of advancing the position of women in society, questions gender roles by necessity. This is what makes the reference to Thatcher so inept--Thatcher advanced in a male-dominated profession by following a masculine gender role; Thatcher's Britain was willing to accept a woman PM, but only so long as she governed like a man. This is a far cry from what feminists would like to see.
The basic argument, if I undertand it correctly, is that women should be able to achieve success in any given field by doing things that women are stereotypically interested in. So, for example, they would consider Silicon Valley to be patriarchal because there isn't any role for women who only read People and US Weekly.
I know someone will accuse me of being sexist, but this was actually the consensus from the Women and Entrepreneurship class I took in college, albeit it wasn't phrased in exactly this way.
However, this is unrelated to the grandparent comment, which was (perhaps facetiously) primarily discussing feminism and political correctness, not logical fallacies.
In a male-dominated society, the news is still controlled not by men or women but by money, in the form of advertising revenue.
In a male-dominated society women are stay at home housewives, with time to flip through the channels and shop for household goods, making them a very important consumer demographic and a prime target for advertisers.
Therefore, television news would be 'emotional' and targeted to women.
I don't see how my argument is any less baseless conjecture than yours.
Plus, your counterargument is still pretty flawed--under traditional gender roles, most news is of no interest to women, and wouldn't be targeted to them, which is why news was traditionally aired during evenings, and nights when men were home, while soap operas and talk shows were aired during the day when housewives were home alone. (Come to think of it, your local network affiliate schedule still looks a lot like that.)
For those wondering, he is not making this shit up:
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/dawkins.html
"The feminist 'philosopher' Luce Irigaray is another who gets whole-chapter treatment from Sokal and Bricmont. In a passage reminiscent of a notorious feminist description of Newton's Principia (a "rape manual"), Irigaray argues that E=mc2 is a "sexed equation". Why? Because "it privileges the speed of light over other speeds that are vitally necessary to us". Just as typical of this school of thought is Irigaray's thesis on fluid mechanics. Fluids, you see, have been unfairly neglected. "Masculine physics" privileges rigid, solid things."
Excuse me while I die laughing. I haven't read that in a while. There is the inkling of a valid point there, but it's all thrown away by shit like describing PM as a 'rape manual.'
Just remember: these people are not representative of modern feminist thought!
EDIT: oh shit i forgot about this paragraph:
"The privileging of solid over fluid mechanics, and indeed the inability of science to deal with turbulent flow at all, she attributes to the association of fluidity with femininity. Whereas men have sex organs that protrude and become rigid, women have openings that leak menstrual blood and vaginal fluids... From this perspective it is no wonder that science has not been able to arrive at a successful model for turbulence. The problem of turbulent flow cannot be solved because the conceptions of fluids (and of women) have been formulated so as necessarily to leave unarticulated remainders."
I mean, my wife and mother are both feminists. And they both have (or are getting) graduate degrees in electrical engineering. And they're both masters of "rationalism and emotional reserve" -- so in a very glaring way, your argument here contradicts my experience.
The disregard for ratings is of course possible because they are funded by an oil rich dictator. He is not benign - no such dictator exist - but if the only good thing he ever did was create AlJazeera, then I would still be forever grateful.
Of course, in the true spirit of Make Something People Want, the disregard for simple ratings is what is causing AJ's growth in viewers around the world. A good chunk of people want real news, and these were the same people who propelled CNN to dominance, back when they had invested in news.
What's nauseating is knowing they broadcast that because they show what people want to see.
Step 1: Locate Egypt on a map...
It's not on snopes yet, but it seems unlikely that Fox's cartographers would be that incompetent (especially since they probably buy their map imagery from a third party); this is most likely a photoshop job. And while it's amusing, I'd rather stick to disliking Fox and News Corp. for their blatant partisanship and pandering than feeling superior to them over something that's entirely fiction.
Not really. There have been a number of instances of that from US domestic news services in the last ~10 years (Czech Republic labelled as Switzerland, Spain labelled as France, …).
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/10/why-i-lo...
In an increasingly globalized economy where we need much better coverage of international events, US news networks are going to find themselves scooped and out reported by Al Jazeera again and again. It's an impressive news agency, and to think, we bombed their offices twice in the last 10 years by accident[1].
ref:
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_coverage_of_the_Iraq_War#...
Similar to how a pipe fitter in West Texas reading HN once a month wouldn't really help them understand the culture that exists in the Y!Combinator/startup world, watching AJ when there is a crisis without watching it regularly leads you to impose your own cultural lens on the issues. I lived in a Central Asian country for three years, and it took me about two years to really understand how much I didn't understand the local culture.
Please don't take this question as conspiracy theory flame bait. I'm just curious about what is known about this.
A la carte seems like a huge incentive for the cable companies to drop channels, and offer a lesser product for what comes out to be a higher price.
"# Forcing cable operators to sell each channel separately (a la carte) would reduce the size of the potential audience for each channel, adversely affecting a network’s ability to attract the same level of advertising dollars. Networks would also incur much higher marketing costs to persuade customers to purchase their programming. As networks lose the advertising revenues that make up the bulk of their programming and operating budgets and face higher marketing costs, they would need to increase the license fees paid by cable operators in order to continue to deliver high quality and diverse programming.
# These higher license fees would be reflected in higher retail cable prices. To the extent that customers were unwilling to pay the higher a la carte prices for certain networks, those networks would have no choice but to reduce the quality and attractiveness of their programming or go out of business."
Also:
"Mandatory a la carte could cause the demise of many existing basic programming services and hinder the creation of new ones, reducing choice and diversity."
[1] http://www.ncta.com/IssueBriefs/ALaCarte.aspx?view=2
I don't usually parrot industry group talking points. However, in this case, we're debating about what the cable industry would do if a la carte were forced on them, and I think they've already answered that question.
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/01/28/dahl_...
The section "Turning On" describes the process that led Buckeye Cable System in Ohio to start carrying Al Jazeera. I think it directly addresses your question.
This hit the front page a few days ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2156195
They basically figured out that they were only going to get paid for this cycle if there was a Republican candidate who actually had a shot at winning, so they buried all of McCain's opponents and completely censored the entire grassroots movement.
BBC has reasonably good coverage of American politics, but it's not written for Americans so there's a lot of cognitive overhead. Because of this it doesn't really make sense to read it like a newspaper, though their take on specific issues is often good, albeit brief. Many of their article are barely more than headlines.
And PBS is decent, but it's mainly targeted at people 60+ and retired. Waiting until 7pm for news from last week just isn't viable for people who actually need to know what's going on.
I'm sorry that's just ridiculous. Not only do they have a website that's constantly updated, the news they present is timely according to the importance of the event. They usually have a mix of a) news that happened that day, b) follow up stories from events from the past few days or week and c) long term international news (Haitian recovery, Peru's economy, etc.). And then they have ~5-7 minute rundown of the headlines from that day. Recently they've been devoting almost the entire program to Egypt.
I seriously cannot understand HN's infatuation with Al Jazeera English. It's simply a more sophisticated version of CNN or BBC. I guess if you're looking for a 24 hour news, then yeah, go with Al Jazeera English. I've watched it for their live coverage of Egypt, but I can't imagine watching AJE every day.
(One underappreciated thing nobody has over NPR News, though, is Robert Siegel. God I love that man's voice, and his English. I'd happily listen to him interview the phone book. The phone book wouldn't say anything, but Siegel's questions would be exquisite.)
But all practice some degree self-censoring, where they. for example, beep out language deemed offensive
More importantly all have some degree of bias. (Let's not get into the discussion of who is and more or less biased and in which direction.)
The only true way to get the news these days is to watch from different viewpoints and form your own opinion. That's all Al Jazerra is asking for. They are also offering coverage of news that is otherwise unavailable - isn't that a good thing?
I don't watch Fox, MSNBC, or the rest unless I have to, so it's not an issue of who's better or the least biased as much as it is who will waste my time least.
I thought this interview was a good look into their policy and goings-on:
http://globalgrind.com/channel/news/content/1903649/the-bin-...
They are censored, by a tiny emirate which I don't care about, and even then they test limits of their own sandbox there. It's not like Qatar has a huge global influence and alliances it must watch over. And their own self-censorship regarding Qatar is one of omission, rather than, say, creative reporting.
Al-Jazeera is good for us because it holds the four major forces in the region accountable and on their toes: the regimes, Israel & America, Iran, and Saudi Arabia and its Jihadi minions.
Al-Jazeera angered everyone when it broadcast a program calling the Arabic language obselete and said university students should be taught in English to compete in the global economy. Stuff like that doesn't buy you a lot of friends.
I couldn't find them on Google.
Thanks!
I subscribe to al-Jazeera and listen to their podcasts. If you speak Arabic, here are the "Op-Ed" episodes (they're both transcribed, so paste into translator if you don't speak Arabic):
The realities of the Arabic Language واقع اللغة العربية
http://www.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E85691E0-6E17-4941-B7A4-2...
I'm trying to remember which program had the expose on oil revenues. Give me a few more minutes.
Update:
Here is another episode (not the one I have in mind) largely devoted to bad-mouthing their sponsor:
The Gulf Cooperation Council and the steps toward reform.
http://www.aljazeera.net/channel/archive/archive?ArchiveId=1...
In fact, typing the few keywords into their site's search returns overwhelming results of content critical of the Qatari crown.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera#Editorial_independen...
I mean, I don't get Al Jazeera on my TV because I don't have cable or satellite anyway. I do have Netflix, etc, though.
they are! I haven't seen any news network that has such high priority for having live feed on the internets. they literally have their live feed at almost every internet video delivery provider - youtube, real media, livestation, you name it...
These are seriously hardcore journalists with a very global perspective. I suspect they're currently being flooded with resumes from disgruntled / disgusted / dismayed reporters at CNN, MSNBC, and even FOX - all of whom would give up their first-born to get back into real reporting, instead of the dreadful corporate infotainment that's busy getting relegated to the sphere of complete irrelevance and risible self-parody.
"Through investigative and on-site journalism, our ultimate goal is to bring greater awareness, painting a more complete picture of the Middle East's realities. Armed with more information, we believe the people of this region and further afield can make better choices to guide their lives - hopefully ones that will lead to a more peaceful and democratic future, regardless of where they live."
ivi.tv will give you a stream with bandwidth requirements that works on any connection, degrading all the way to a slide show if it has to.