In his book Three Blind Mice, media journalist Ken Auletta talks about how the first Gulf War brought CNN to prominence. He writes:
It wasn’t until the war in the Persian Gulf began in January 1991 that the cable revolution became dramatically apparent. Viewers realized that CNN, not the three networks, was a primary source of up-to-the-minute news. And they were getting the news the way they wanted it — instantly and without interruption from soap operas. For as long as the war held their interest, viewers could choose for themselves when to watch the news as easily as they could flick to an HBO movie, an ESPN basketball game, or a Disney cartoon.”
Although much has changed over the last 20 years, world events are still capable of bringing new channels for news to the forefront of American attention. This last week the riots and protests in Egypt brought the Qatar-based Al Jazeera English (AJE) to our attention with irresistible images of protestors throwing tear gas canisters back at police, buildings and police vehicles burning, and praying protestors attacked with spewing fire hoses. The best Western media could do was rebroadcast Al Jazeera’s video.
But if you wanted to watch AJE yourself, chances are you had to go to the network’s website because virtually no American cable companies carry the channel. Why? Ryan Grim at the Huffington Post calls it “corporate censorship.” In essence American cable and satellite providers are afraid that there will be a backlash targeted against them for presenting an Arab-owned news channel.
I’ve found some indication that both DirectTV and Dish carry or have carried AJE, but it’s not clear to me how available it is there.
As of Sunday, Egypt had revoked Al Jazeera’s license to broadcast from Egypt and had pulled the accreditation of the network’s reporters. While Al Jazeera is still actively covering the news from Egypt, this obviously limits what they can do.
I hope this doesn’t mean that America will stop paying attention to AJE. While I certainly would not want it to be primary news source, I value it the same way that I like getting the BBC and CBC on my satellite radio, and C-SPAN on cable.
Of course, with the growing power of streaming video over the Internet, perhaps it no longer matters what the cable companies do. According to the Huffington Post, AJE’s web traffic was up more than 2,000 percent this week.
