Getting the News from Al Jazeera

I would like to believe that I am not the only citizen of the United States of America that recognizes Al Jazeera as a valid news source. Indeed, this past Sunday I cited Al Jazeera (which in turn, cited PolitiFact) for its article about the killing of Renee Nicole Good at a rally in Minneapolis. This was facilitated through my xfinity television service. Mind you, this was not a simple matter; but it was not that difficult.

All that was necessary was engaging YouTube, which is one of the applications that xfinity supports. YouTube has a Web page for Al Jazeera English, which includes both a live feed and hyperlinks to individual previous reports. Usually, I can watch half an hour of world news at 11 a.m. and appreciate both the diversity and how informative each report is. Furthermore, news about the United States is provided by reporters living in our country, most of whom are broadcasting from the District of Columbia.

Mind you, xfinity also provides a BBC News America channel, which tends to serve as a useful complement to CNN. What is important, however, is that I do not want limit myself to news from a single source. Some time ago there was a channel that liked to boast that it knew how to distinguish fact from opinion, but it never bothered to let viewers know how it managed that balance! To be fair, however, no one really knows how to manage it! However, the least I can do is respond to any report by asking myself, “Can I find another point of view?”