Thursday, December 31, 2009

AlJazeera versus Al-Arabiyyah TV

I have been watching more Aljazeera as of late because it has been suggested to me that watching Al-Arabiyyah TV (the private TV station of King Fahd's brother-in-law) is bad for one's mental and physical health. But forget about politics, Aljazeera is so much more informative and sophisticated as a news organization. The reporters of Aljazeera take what they do seriously (some too seriously), and the round up of the news is a very nutritional source on world affairs. AlArabiyya's formula is simple: ignore all the news that bother Zionism (Palestine and American occupations) and focus on Iranian conspiracies (real and imagined) and give a lot of attention to fluff: sleaze, entertainments, and sports. Just compare the websites of the two networks and you see what I mean. Yesterday, I wanted to see their coverage of Gaza: and for Al-Arabiyya TV there is only one revolution and one injustice in the entire world, and it is in Iran. But the propaganda of Al-Arabiyya is becoming more and more crude and vulgar, by the day. And if you see the most-read-items on Al-Arabiyya, it is rarely politics: sleaze and crime is what they do to lure readers. But that only confirms what polls by Zogby and the University of Maryland have shown: that when there is a news story, Arab viewers flock to Aljazeera and not Al-Arabiyyah.