Al Jazeera comes to Full Channel
After extensive research, negotiations and technical preparations, Full Channel has made Bristol County, R.I. the fourth U.S. cable TV market to offer Al Jazeera English to its viewers. The Qatar-based news outlet launched an Arabic-language channel in 1996 and for years Al Jazeera was widely misunderstood by western audiences. After 9/11, many Americans falsely associated Al Jazeera with Osama Bin Laden and other Middle Eastern terrorist outfits. This reputation is due in a large part to remarks made by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld who claimed Al Jazeera was “inexcusably biased.”
In 2003, the BBC signed an agreement with Al Jazeera for sharing facilities, information and news footage. And in 2006 Al Jazeera launched an English-language network targeting the Western world. This year in particular, Al Jazeera English has received accolades and praise from politicians and journalists alike who applaud the network’s propensity to report the under-reported as it provided often exclusive coverage of the turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa. During testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in March, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called AJE “real news” as she criticized U.S.-based news networks for spending too much time on trivial news items such as Charlie Sheen’s breakdown and American Idol winners.
As of this week, Full Channel joins the three only other U.S. TV markets to provide Al Jazeera English: Washington D.C., Ohio and Burlington, Vt. The story has been covered by Providence Business News, WPRI-TV and Multichannel News.
Full Channel viewers will find AJE on channel 168. If you don’t live in one of these four markets you can watch a live feed of AJE online on YouTube or AlJazeera.net.
