Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Is Al Jazeera America Covering America?

Readers know that I was pretty pleased when Al Jazeera America showed up as one of my Comcast channels. I was even impressed that they really were taking the trouble to cover American (and particularly United States) stories. However, since I used them as my source for the Navy Yard shootings, it looks as if their American coverage has been slowing down to barely a trickle. I tend to watch the 11 AM slot over an early lunch; and, while they have anchors in Doha (for world news in general) and London (for European news), they do not have an anchor in the United States. This leads me to wonder whether they may be having trouble getting press credentials. Today I found out about the Obama press conference through BBC World Service. I then did a spot check of Al Jazeera America, and they were there as well. However, the background news they reported about the events (or lack of events, if you prefer) leading up to Obama using a press conference to put his cards on the able about both the shutdown and the debts ceiling was, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. To they feel that the current political games in Washington are not newsworthy? There are certainly any number of people in both Europe and Asia who seem to be watching them very closely!

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