Al Jazeera English

Recruitment [edit]

Veteran British broadcaster David Frost joined Al Jazeera English in 2005^[42] to host his show Frost Over the World.

Former BBC and CNN anchor Riz Khan, who previously had been the host of the CNN talk show Q&A, also joined. He hosts his shows Riz Khan and Riz Khan's One on One.

Former U.S. Marine Josh Rushing joined Al Jazeera in September 2005.^[43] He had been the press officer for the United States Central Command during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, and in that role had been featured in the documentary Control Room. When subsequently joining Al Jazeera, Rushing commented that "In a time when American media has become so nationalized, I'm excited about joining an organization that truly wants to be a source of global information...."^[44] Rushing works from the Washington D.C. broadcasting centre.

Former CNN and BBC news anchorwoman and award winning journalist Veronica Pedrosa also joined the team,^[45] along with CNN producer James Wright, and Kieran Baker, a former editor and producer for CNN, who had been Acting General Manager, Communications and Public Participation for ICANN. On 2 December 2005, Stephen Cole, a senior anchor on BBC World and Click Online presenter, announced he was joining Al Jazeera International.^[46]

The network announced on 12 January 2006 that former Nightline correspondent Dave Marash would be the co-anchor from their Washington studio. Marash described his new position as "the most interesting job on Earth."^[47] On 6 February 2006, it was announced that the former BBC reporter Rageh Omaar would host the daily weeknights documentary series, Witness.^[48]

The managing director for Al Jazeera English was previously Tony Burman, who replaced Nigel Parsons in May 2008.^[49]

Availability [edit]

The channel is available in many countries,^[50] mostly via satellite, sometimes via cable. The channel is also available online.^[51] Al Jazeera English provides a free HD stream on its website for unlimited viewing.^[21] It is available for free worldwide. They also provide a free stream on their YouTube page.^[22] It can also be streamed in lower quality live worldwide for free through Livestation. Previously, before Al Jazeera provided an official stream, a low quality RealVideo stream was available for viewing. Al Jazeera news segments are frequently included on the American public television program Worldfocus. Al Jazeera can also be streamed on any iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with a 3G or wifi connection using a free application.

Along with a free unlimited high-quality stream on the official Al Jazeera English website, Online subscriptions allowing unlimited viewing may be purchased from Jump TV,^[52] RealPlayer,^[53] and VDC.^[54] Headlines from Al-Jazeera English are available on Twitter.^[55]

Al Jazeera English's website also contains news reports and full episodes of their programs that can be viewed for free on their website. The videos are hosted by YouTube, where viewers can also go to find the videos.^[56][57]

Al Jazeera English is available in the UK and Ireland on Freeview channel 83, Sky channel 514, Freesat channel 203 and Virgin Media channel 622.

On 26 November 2009, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission approved "a request to add Al Jazeera English (AJE) to the lists of eligible satellite services for distribution on a digital basis and amends the lists of eligible satellite services accordingly."^[16][17] Al Jazeera English became available on Rogers Cable, Videotron and Bell TV on 4 May 2010.^[34]

In New Zealand, Triangle TV re-broadcasts various Al Jazeera programmes in Auckland on free-to-air UHF channel. TV One will start playing it 01:30 to 06:00 from 1 April 2013.

In April 2010, Al Jazeera English was taken off air in mio TV Singapore with unspecified reasons, according to the official Al Jazeera English website.

The channel initially began test streaming Al Jazeera English (then called "Al Jazeera International") in March 2006 on Hot Bird, Astra 1E, Hispasat, AsiaSat3S, Eutelsat 28A and Panamsat PAS 10. Telenors Thor, Türksat and Eutelsat 25A were added to the satellites carrying it. Eutelsat 28A carried the test stream on frequency 11.681 under the name "AJI".

On 7 December 2010, Al Jazeera said its English language service has got a downlink license to broadcast in India. Satellite and cable companies would therefore be allowed to broadcast Al Jazeera in the country.^[58] The channel launched on Dish TV in November 2011,^[59] and is considering a Hindi-language channel.^[60]

United States [edit]

Al Jazeera English's coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution led to calls for the channel to be aired in the U.S.

Al Jazeera English is available via satellite across all of North America free to air via GlobeCast World TV on Galaxy 19 on the Ku band in DVB format. As of 2011, only a small number of Americans were able to watch the channel on their televisions.^[61] Among the markets where it was available was were Bristol County, Rhode Island, Toledo and Sandusky, Ohio, Burlington, Vermont, Houston, Texas, and Washington, DC.^[62] Industry giant Comcast originally planned to carry Al Jazeera English in 2007, but reversed its decision shortly before the channel's launch, citing "the already-saturated television market".^[63] The two major American satellite providers, DirecTV and Dish Network, had similar plans but also changed their minds, with speculation that the decision may have been influenced by allegations by the Bush administration of "anti-American bias" in the channel.^[64]

With Al Jazeera's coverage of the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the channel drew acclaim and received renewed attention. The New York Times reported on 1 February 2011 that 1.6 million U.S. viewers had tuned in via Internet stream, and stated that new discussions were underway with carriers.^[65] The following month, it was announced that Al Jazeera entered carriage negotiations with Comcast and Time Warner Cable.^[66] Salon.com described the channel's English-language coverage as "mandatory viewing for anyone interested in the world-changing events currently happening in Egypt",^[67] while Huffington Post contributor Jeff Jarvis claimed it was "un-American" for operators to not carry the network.^[68] When Al Jazeera covered the Libyan civil war, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton noted an increasing American audience for the network, saying that "viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it’s real news. You may not agree with it, but you feel like you’re getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and—you know—arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news which—you know—is not particularly informative to us, let alone foreigners."^[69]

On 1 February 2011, Internet appliance Roku posted on its Facebook page that the English-Language Al Jazeera Live would be streaming on Roku devices through a private channel called Newscaster and also through the BBC channel. It permitted the announcement following unrest in Egypt so American viewers can watch the latest events going on in the Middle East. A Roku user must add the private channel Newscaster from the Roku website.^[70]

On 1 August 2011, Al Jazeera English began airing 23 hours a day in New York City as part of a sublet agreement with cable channel RISE, a former Spanish-language network, which is carried on WRNN-TV's DT2 subchannel (the other hours are used to meet FCC E/I and local programming guidelines). The network airs on Time Warner Cable on channel 92 and on Verizon FiOS on channel 481.^[71]

On 2 January 2013, Al Jazeera announced that it had acquired the U.S.-based cable TV channel Current TV for a reported $500 million. With this acquisition, Al Jazeera will launch a new channel, to be called Al Jazeera America, with a heavy dose of U.S. domestic news, to an estimated 40 million U.S. households—putting it in direct competition with CNN, MSNBC and Fox News Channel.

Current TV, founded by former U.S. Vice President Al Gore and businessman Joel Hyatt in 2006, made headlines in 2011 when it hired former MSNBC talk-show host Keith Olbermann, who moved his Countdown With Keith Olbermann program to Current TV—only to be fired a year later.

Criticism [edit]

As with Al Jazeera's Arabic counterpart, the network has received criticism from having bias from several sides.

Anti-American bias [edit]

Al-Jazeera English has frequently been criticized for having an anti-American bias, although some commentators have asserted that this has been lessening over time.

Emmy award winning journalist Dave Marash, who served as a veteran correspondent for ABC's Nightline, resigned from his position as Washington anchor for Al Jazeera English in 2008. Marash cited "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans and "anti-American bias".^[72][73]

It is often unclear whether recent discussions of anti-American bias at Al Jazeera are referring also to Al Jazeera English or only to Al Jazeera's Arabic-language channel. There are significant differences in tone between the English and Arabic-language channels. (According to bilingual Palestinian journalist Daoud Kuttab, "The English channel uses more neutral terminology; the Arab channel is much harsher.")^[74] An example of this is a 2011 claim by Bill O'Reilly that Al Jazeera is "anti-Semitic" and "anti-American" and a subsequent defense of Al Jazeera against these claims made by former Al Jazeera English anchor Dave Marash on the O'Reilly Factor.^[74][75] Another example concerns statements by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who in April 2004 denounced Al-Jazeera's Arabic-language coverage of the Iraq War as "vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable," but took a more conciliatory tone in a 2011 interview for Frost Over The World, Al Jazeera English's news and public affairs program hosted by David Frost, praising the network as "an important means of communication in the world."^[76]

On 12 October 2008, Al Jazeera English broadcast interviews with people attending a Sarah Palin United States presidential election rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio, with interviewees making comments about Barack Obama such as "he regards white people as trash" and "I'm afraid if he wins, the blacks will take over". The report received over 2 million views on YouTube^[77] Following this the Washington Post ran an op-ed,^[78] claiming the news channel was deliberately encouraging "anti-American sentiment overseas",^[78] which was criticized by Al Jazeera as "a gratuitous and uninformed shot at Al Jazeera's motives", as the report was just one of "hundreds of hours of diverse coverage".^[79] Criticism of an Anti-American bias has been dwindling as their coverage of the Arab Spring received wide acclaim and calls for the network to be added to U.S. television.^[80]

Subsequent endeavours have been seen as tests by Al Jazeera to see whether it can get rid of the hostility Americans feel toward it. One example was a day's worth of special coverage marking the 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.^[81] Al Jazeera has also launched The Stream, a show based in Washington D.C. that discusses social media, which targets an American audience.^[82][83] On 2 January 2013, Al Jazeera purchased the American channel Current TV, which it plans to rebrand as "Al Jazeera America".^[84]

Awards [edit]

2012 [edit]

• Webby People's Choice Award for News and Politics in the online film and video category, The Stream
• Royal Television Society: News Channel for the Year Al Jazeera won the award from the Royal Television Society for the first time. In doing so, it beat out the BBC and Sky News.^[85][86][87]
• Royal Television Society: Most Innovative Programme, The Stream
• George Polk Award for Television Documentary, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[88]
• The Franklin D Roosevelt Four Freedoms Awards, Freedom of Speech and Expression Medal
• Alfred I DuPont Award, Best Documentary, "Haiti: Six Months On"
• 71st Annual Peabody Awards Al Jazeera English received one of the 71st Peabody Awards for its coverage of the Arab Spring^[89]
• Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards: Grand Prize and Award for International Television, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[90]
• Scripps Howard Jack R. Howard Award for Television Reporting, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[91]
• Amnesty International Media Award for International Television and Radio, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[92]
• Golden Nymph for the Best News Documentary at the 52nd Annual Monte Carlo TV Festival, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[93]
• Cine Golden Eagle Award for investigative news documentary, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"^[94]

2011 [edit]

• Rory Peck Award, Best Feature, "Libya: Through the Fire"
• Foreign Press Association, Documentary of the Year, "Bahrain: Shouting in the Dark"
• Huffington Post Ultimate Media Gamechanger Award
• Freesat Award, Best News Channel of the Year
• Freesat Award, Coverage of a Single News Event, Al Jazeera’s Arab Awakening coverage
• Arab British Culture and Society Award
• Wincott Award for Best Television Coverage of a Business Issue, "Nablus: The Business of Occupation"
• Columbia University Journalism Award
• Promax Arabia Awards, Gold, Best in House Station Image
• Promax Arabia Awards, Gold, Best Promo Campaign
• Promax Arabia Awards, Gold, "Counting the Cost"
• TIME magazine, Top 100 most influential people, Ayman Mohyeldin
• Fast Company magazine, Most creative thinker of the year, Wadah Khanfar

2010 [edit]

• Association of International Broadcasters, Clearest Coverage of a Single News Event
• Freesat Award, Best News Channel of the Year
• Monte-Carlo TV Festival, Best Television News Item, "Mexico in the Crossfire"
• Amnesty International Award, International Television and Radio Award, People and Power
• CONCENTRA Award for Breaking News, Casey Kauffman’s "Baby Feras"

2009 [edit]

• International Emmy Awards Nomination, Finalist in Documentary Category, "Shooting the Messenger"
• International Emmy Awards Nomination, Finalist in News and Current Affairs, "Russia-Georgia War" and Witness’s "Return to Nablus"
• Concentra Award for Breaking News, "Up the Irrawaddy Delta"
• International Digital Emmy Award nominee non-fiction, 2008 US election special

2008 [edit]

• Foreign Press Association, News Story of the Year by a full member, Jonah Hull's "Russia-Georgia War"
• Association of International Broadcasters Editors Award, Sami Al Haj, suffering endured and courage shown
• Amnesty International Media Awards Best International TV Documentary, Tony Birtley's "The Lost Tribe - Secret Army of the CIA"
• YouTube European Partners Awards, Community Champion Award, Al Jazeera Network
• The Golden Nymph Award for Best 24-Hour News Program at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival. The jurors singled out Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's Gaza correspondent, for her bravery in reporting from the Gaza Strip. The station also received nominations in several other news categories, for example the Best News Documentary award for the report Inside Myanmar – The Crackdown^[95]
• CONCENTRA Award (2008), Breaking News, Tony Birtley’s "Inside Myanmar - The Crackdown"
• Royal Television Society Journalism Awards, Young Journalist of the Year, Hamish Macdonald
• Asian Television Awards, Best Current Affairs Programme, Tony Birtley’s "Inside Myanmar - The Crackdown"

2007 [edit]

• Asian Television Awards, Best News Report, Kylie Grey’s "Agent Orange"
• Association of International Broadcasters, Editors Award, "Everywoman"

2006 [edit]

• Association of International Broadcasters, Best Magazine or Documentary Programme, Abdallah el-Binni's "Prisoner 345"

See also [edit]

	Middle East portal
	Television portal

• International broadcasting
• Al Jazeera Balkans
• Al Jazeera Türk
• Al Jazeera

Competitors

Further reading [edit]

• Abdul-Mageed, MM, (2008) TripleC: Cognition, Communication, Co-operation, 6(2), 59–76 Online News Sites and Journalism 2.0: Reader Comments on Al Jazeera Arabic Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, 10 April 2009
• Abdul-Mageed, MM, and Herring, SC, (2008) In: F. Sudweeks, H. Hrachovec, and C. Ess (Eds.), Proceedings of Cultural Attitudes Towards Technology and Communication 2008 (CATaC'08), Nîmes, France, 24–27 June Arabic and English News Coverage on Al Jazeera.NET Muhammad Abdul-Mageed, 10 March 2008
• Tatham Steve (2006), Losing Arab Hearts & Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera & Muslim Public Opinion. Hurst & Co (UK), Front Street Press (US)

References [edit]

External links [edit]

• Official website
• Al Jazeera International Commissioning
• Media Blackout in Egypt and the U.S.: Al Jazeera Forced Off the Air by Mubarak, Telecommunications Companies Block Its Expansion in the United States Democracy Now, 1 February 2011