Robert Fisk, Richard Murphy and Azzam Tamimi discuss the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. Does he deserve the prize? And what has he achieved? Or was the award granted in the hope he would succeed in the future?
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I still can’t get over how much more edifying al Jazeera’s coverage is than the network and cable news in the US. Since I don’t have a tv, I don’t even know if they’ve allowed it into any of our cable packages yet, and I can see where they make compromises not to be too insulting to our media and power élite, but, sheesh. It’s like night and day. Talking heads are actually making substantive points, not screaming over each other, and the issues get explored instead of turned into propaganda. Even though I already saw this yesterday, I watched it again, just to marvel in the restfulness of it.
Fisk is at the top of his game here isn’t he? He’s in fine form with his blood pressure rising and steam practically coming out of his ears. He’s a known quantity for us. All the superlatives have already been used up.
I get Al Jazeera near Washington DC on the independent MHZ channel, which used to be a local PBS affiliate. It’s part of my basic cable subscription, but I couldn’t project the size of the audience. I’d be guessing if I said the other cable providers carry it. All I can say is that it’s correctly tagged within the News category so anyone flipping the the news category would see it. Absolutely no cross-channel advertising for it. You’d have to stumble upon it to find it.
Of course their coverage is much more in-depth and they take on subjects BBC and CNN wouldn’t dream of covering. Not that I’d know much about what’s on CNN, since I never watch CNN with good reason. I just saw a one-hour special on Al Jazeera about the immanent extinction of indigenous tribes in the Amazon and efforts to save them in Columbia. Poor things are being forced out of the jungles by the violence between FARC and the Columbian army.