What do Hosni Mubarak and the major United States cable companies have in common?
They have banned Al Jazeera.
That's a shame, because Al Jazeera has great "on the ground" coverage and literally speaks the language of the tumultuous happenings in the Middle East. But in 99 percent or so of America, the only place you can follow Al Jazeera's English channel is on a live feed on the Internet.
According to The New York Times, "cable and satellite companies in the United States have largely refused its requests to be carried."
As you can read in a 2004 BuzzFlash interview with the director of "Control Room," the riveting documentary on the network, Al Jazeera is a Western-style news operation. It is owned by the oil-rich and pro-US Qatar government.
Reporting with the kind of vigor you expect from serious journalism, Al Jazeera takes on all comers. During the invasion of Iraq, the US bombed the Al Jazeera Baghdad bureau from the air and killed a staff member. Currently, the Palestinian Authority claims that Al Jazeera reported on an embarrassing story in collusion with Israel.
Al Jazeera must be doing something right. It is a station that manages to tick off a lot of governments and movements, as well as corporate broadcasting in America.
