Al-Jazeera Launches Site In English
The Religion of Peace (tm) now has it's own mouthpiece: Al-Jazeera has set up an English-language web site.
The al-Jazeera Arabic satellite channel, which drew criticism for airing Osama bin Laden's unedited comments after the Sept. 11, 2001, hijack attacks in the U.S., attracted further rebukes Sunday by broadcasting Iraqi television footage showing five U.S. prisoners of war. Articles on the English-language site's first day were sure to antagonize American readers. One feature looked at the influence of the Israeli lobby in Washington. Another, headlined "Coalition of the Willing Has Become a Joke," made light of the "obscure" countries in the U.S.-led coalition. Another, titled "Misinformation Basra," cast doubt on American military assertions about its military success in the southern Iraqi city.
Yet the site also showed its potential as an information resource. An eyewitness account from a correspondent in Baghdad described damage from U.S. bombing to civilian areas and a historic palace. Like many other articles, the item gave no information about its writer and was simply attributed to "al-Jazeera."
Being a primarily Arabic-language news source, Al-Jazeera has the potential to tell stories from a perspective that CNN and others simply cannot. What Al-Jazeera lacks now is credibility. The network has previously been little more than a mouthpiece for Arabic governments and radical Islamists. If Al-Jazeera can overcome that reputation, they might just have something. If they cannot- and that is still an open question- no one in the West will take them seriously- in English or in Arabic.
