Al-Jazeera in Burlington

June 5, 2008--When Al-Jazeera tried to launch in the U.S. a spin-off version, Al-Jazeera International, they ran into opposition in the form of Accuracy in Media (AIM). AIM produced a DVD entitled Terror Television: The Rise of Al-Jazeera and the Hate America Media, which exposed Al-Jazeera's anti- American biases and support for terrorism.

In September of 2006, AIM commissioned a poll to gauge Americans' view of having Al-Jazeera air in the U.S. The poll results showed that by a margin of 2-1, Americans think the U.S. government should oppose giving the new channel access to the U.S. media market.

The AIM Press Release of September 13, 2006, points out that:

Al-Jazeera International, an English-language sister network to the Arabic Al-Jazeera, has been desperately seeking carriage on U.S. cable and satellite systems. It has hired well-known media figures such as David Frost, Dave Marash and Riz Khan, and its expensive new television studios are under construction on K Street N.W. in Washington, D.C.

But the new AIM poll finds that the channel's launch is opposed by more than one-half (53 percent) of the American people, a figure which dwarfs the number of those (29 percent) supporting it. What's more, 38 percent of the American people were adamantly against the channel.

In a FOX News televised debate with the then top U.S. journalist at Al-Jazeera English, Dave Marash, AIM's Cliff Kincaid reported on documented evidence that captured terrorists in Iraq had testified that they were motivated to go to Iraq to kill U.S. soldiers by the images they saw on Al-Jazeera's Arabic stations. In addition, he pointed to documentation of close connections between Al-Jazeera and the former regime of Saddam Hussein.

Kincaid also pointed out that Retired Army Intelligence officer and columnist Ralph Peters, who is nothing if he is not is blunt, called their correspondents "Killers with Cameras." He has written that "Al-Jazeera is so consumed by hatred of America and the West that the network would rather see Iraq collapse into a bloodbath than permit the emergence of a democracy sponsored by Washington." Rather than deny these allegations, Marash simply insisted that Al-Jazeera English would be free from influence of the parent company and not have the same biases.

Well, as they say, "That was then, this is now." Recently, Marash has stepped down from the station, citing a "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.
Americans are not the only ones with a beef against Al-Jazeera. In a February 2007 blog entry, AIM reported that the Iraqi government issued the following statement: "The Al-Jazeera channel continues in its overtly hostile attitude towards the Iraqi people and continues to contribute to the spread of death and destruction by adopting a line that is frankly hostile to the Iraqi people and government. We condemn this attitude and call on parliament to take a firm position on this channel and resort to all legal means to prevent it continuing its hostile policy."

The result of AIM's heroic efforts was that no major cable station in America was willing to carry Al-Jazeera English. In spite of all the nationwide opposition to carrying Al-Jazeera English, however, Burlington Telecom - a local municipally owned station - decided to carry it. [more...]