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Comment by bradleyankrom | Hacker News Reader

I've found Al Jazeera's (English) coverage of the region to be informative. YMMV.

Honestly, it’s a good counter to get both sides of the coin. At the moment you’ll find BBC, CNN, NYT et al on one end and Al Jazeera on the other. I also look at DW for a more balanced approach. Don’t consume from one camp!

Fair call on CNN and DW, but the NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera, and the BBC switches around with whatever the current government is.

> NYT has always been at least somewhat aligned with Al Jazeera

Hard disagree: the NYT adopts a weird passive voice that goes against its house style, along with headlines with no subject when it comes to events in Gaza[1]. Al Jazeera consistently names the doers of the verbs.

1. Once you're aware of it, it becomes impossible not to notice. It is the Wilhelm scream of news coverage.

This is such an important point, and I wish it were more widely spoken about. As a daily NYT reader, I noticed a profound shift in the early days of the current admin. I might be off on the timing, curious to know what other daily NYT readers have to say. It's an incredibly effective technique given the relative subtlety, and in my experience it seems to exhaust the mental resources of the critical reader.

You're very very off on the timing: the first year of the genocide (and the majority of the official casualties) was under the previous administration. The bias on Gaza was observed across the board from the start (and arguably for the last 70 years).

NYT is also frequently silent on certain news stories that paints U.S. in a bad light that I consider noteworthy enough. Whenever I encounter a story I want to know more about I check all the mainstream reporting; Reuters and CNN would have it most of the time (even if not in a neutral tone) but NYT often doesn’t cover it at all or bury it in a sentence or two in a related, milder story. Not gonna name specific instances but you can pay attention from now on and you’ll see a pattern after a while.

Just be aware that DW is literally government propaganda. If you want news from a German perspective, it's great; however its purpose is explicitly to give the German governments POV.

Al Jazeera is a private news organization mostly funded by the state of Qatar.

It is not "the other side of the coin". Qatar is very much on the US side, and opposite to Iran.

Their reporting is fine, and I typically find it more informative than the US news sources. But let's not pretend you are getting the Iranian side of the deal here.

Particularly, my favorite news sources for the war is, oddly enough, FT

Yeah, I'm really just looking for less Americanized coverage from the region. Al Jazeera is fine, I'm glad to hear any other recommendations for sources. (thanks for FT)

Out of curiosity, which news sources do you recommend/advocate for covering the middle east?

Al Jazeera is effectively a terrorist mouthpiece. They lost their independence long ago.

Perhaps informative as a study of institutional bias and government interference.

No? Sources? It's possible that Qatar's government has some editorial control over the Arabic content, but my understanding is that the English operations are separate.

It's the same company, English operations can't be separate.

https://factually.co/fact-checks/media/should-i-trust-al-jaz...

https://apnews.com/article/b39b94d6847f4ee6acafd6ad2da7e963

Those don't really add to your argument. The Kashmir issue sounds like a mistake that Al Jazeera tried to address. The Factually analysis indicates that Al Jazeera is generally reliable for news, with caution advised for coverage of highly-political events and editorials, which I think is typical of any media organization.

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