{"id":1721,"date":"2008-10-19T10:31:46","date_gmt":"2008-10-19T09:31:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=1721"},"modified":"2008-10-19T10:37:09","modified_gmt":"2008-10-19T09:37:09","slug":"al-jazeera-english-the-mouth-of-the-south","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/10\/al-jazeera-english-the-mouth-of-the-south\/","title":{"rendered":"Al Jazeera English – the mouth of the south?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Counter-HegemonicJ<\/span>ames Painter<\/strong><\/a> has just produced a study called Counter-Hegemonic News<\/em><\/strong> [download pdf<\/a>] – looking at Qatar’s Al Jazeera English<\/strong> and Venezuela’s Telesur<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

I have to say, in the case of AJE, I think both the personnel and the traditions they draw on are simply those of conventional foreign news.<\/p>\n

My – admittedly – flip summary of Al Jazeera English is that it looks like Sky News<\/strong> after a coup d’etat<\/em> by the foreign desk.<\/p>\n

Painter bases his conclusions on a rather lengthier and more rigorous analysis:<\/p>\n

AJE is consciously following a weak political agenda by covering far more news from the south. There are pitfalls to such an approach. Ignoring or down-playing events in the West can mean a viewer will miss out on what actually drives a large part of international relations.<\/p>\n

Covering under-reported parts of the world in great depth may be a very worthy policy, but it may sound like an Oxfam or UN channel and put off viewers if the journalism does not remain sharp-edged. Putting more ‘voices of [the] oppressed south’ on air can slide into too uncritical a view of their actions or proposed solutions to their suffering, or it may focus too much on a ‘suffering south’ at the expense of an ‘assertive south.’<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He concludes:<\/p>\n

AJE’s arrival should be elebrated for its attempt to correct the cultural and information bias of the main Western TV channels…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Telesur, on the other hand…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Painter has just produced a study called Counter-Hegemonic News [download pdf] – looking at Qatar’s Al Jazeera English and Venezuela’s Telesur. I have to say, in the case of AJE, I think both the personnel and the traditions they draw on are simply those of conventional foreign news.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[139,2408,1880,1876,145,1879,1877,1878],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journalism","tag-al-jazeera-english","tag-journalism","tag-news-channels","tag-qatar","tag-sky-news","tag-telesur","tag-united-nations","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1724,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions\/1724"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}