Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April • Hacker News Board

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#191

Post by stvswn » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 12:28 AM UTC

ck2 wrote: post #116

ConceptJunkie wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be a lot different, but in that same universe, the entire population of the Earth was killed by a virus spread by unicorn poop, so be glad it didn't happen.

You consider a couple votes by the supreme court changing everything to fairy tales? It really, seriously, could have been in favor of Gore. Not far fetched at all. In fact they could have declined to hear the case entirely, which they probably should have done.

I know. Really makes you think, right? Think of all the bad things that have happened in the past 16 years. Now imagine they didn't happen. Wow. Just one vote.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#192

Post by ZenoArrow » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 12:28 AM UTC

13thLetter wrote: post #148

hackuser wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CNN, MSNBC, and the traditional alphabet networks on the left An important point, I think: The propagandists, most prominently today the News Corp outlets such as Fox and the WSJ, want to portray the whole world as ideologically driven. It innoculates their followers against anything anyone else can say (e.g., 'it's all left-wing propaganda, don't even bother') and justifies their own propaganda. But everyone is no…

Eh, for one thing, ideology in journalism can be just as much what you choose to report on as how you report on it. You could find right-wingers who will complain at you all day about how CNN/NBC/whoever spend virtually no time reporting on things which make the current Administration look bad and lots of time reporting on things which make their opponents look bad, and it'll be hard to say they're wrong. I doubt it'…

> "I doubt it's possible for the news to be truly non-ideological for this, and many other, reasons."

It's more straightforward than you might think, you just have to give airtime to conflicting views, and make sure discussion of news stories are conducted respectfully.

I understand what you're saying about it being possible to show bias just by what news stories you choose to cover, but inviting on dissenting voices helps tackle that issue. If you expect intelligent debate from your news sources, you'll spot it when it's absent.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#193

Post by profeta » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 12:36 AM UTC

peckrob wrote: post #162

profeta wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't it air on any open channel? when i got my friends to watch the world cup at home i attached a $5 antenna to the DVR (i build a computer with a $120 TV-in card, and had never used until then!) the image was not the best, but for live sports, who cares?! oh and it got worse every time a plane passed above. anyway, the antenna was a very easy solution for the impromptu need for live sports.

Not sure where you're located, but in the US ESPN is a cable/satellite only channel. The only way to get it is with a subscription. For college sports, they're also the biggest player. The "big" matchups of the week (usually the highest ranked or most interesting teams) in each market are usually played on the major networks that you can pick up with an antenna from the local affiliate. But the rest of the games bein…

i see. well, for air channels, they would probably show the Saturday game with the most local teams only. never really followed american football. but for soccer that works fine for most people. And when there are two games with local teams, they show the bigger one and interrupt it to show goals on the other one.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#194

Post by unixhero » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 12:48 AM UTC

The naming of the channel and hence branding was a real stupid move by them. As if lesser informed members of the public would see past their collectively understood common enemy meme AL-*.

It doesn't take a PhD in philosophy to prescient this. Why couldn't they just have chosen something more "user friendly". Hell I even got talked behind my back by HR in a world class consultancy (CAPGEMENI, there I said it) firm for reading Al Jazeera, as if it was something dangerous and that I had dangerous intents (Nothing further happened).

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#195

Post by jessaustin » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 12:57 AM UTC

fensterblick wrote: post #128

bruceb wrote: post #42

"Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after it bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million." Why did they pay half billion for Current TV? First mistake.

For influence? If you can't outright bribe a politician, you pay well over asking for his company (or house, or anything else). And then you hope he lends you a willing ear when you need a favor.

Good point, but I wonder how much influence Al really has anymore? What would Qatar want from him, anyway?

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#196

Post by SilasX » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 1:08 AM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #39

Huggernaut wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nova failing in Latin America is a bit of a myth, though a good apocryphal story to get the point across. http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp

That story always sounded off. I have to admit I mostly listen to European Spanish, but "Nova" doesn't really read like "no va", the intonation is very different.

What if someone said: "In English, 'experts exchange' sounds noticeably different from 'expert sexchange'; therefore, no one would ridicule expertsexchange.com for its similarity to the latter."

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#197

Post by vonnik » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 1:10 AM UTC

Al Jazeera in general and its US arm in particular were always more of an instrument of foreign policy for Qatar than a money-making endeavor. I covered the channel as a journalist at a competing news organization, and spoke with dozens of journalists on the inside of AJ.

My guess is that Qatar decided they didn't want to waste quite as much money and time trying to sway public opinion in the US. The Arabic version of AJ has always been much more important. Pure speculation, but the cuts may be due to the plunging price of oil, which in turn is affected by the slump of the Chinese economy.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#198

Post by melvinmt » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

hackuser wrote: post #20

This is too bad. They were one of two sources of serious news on cable TV [1] and their global breath of coverage, including many important, original stories I didn't see elsewhere, was exceptional. I always held my breath a little, expecting some propaganda because Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, but I never noticed any even in Middle East coverage. That doesn't mean it wasn't there - the point of pr…

AJ+ (their social media offspring) is pretty well disguised. I always like to watch their video news items from their Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish) but it took me a while (months) to figure out that AJ stood for Al Jazeera.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#199

Post by aikah » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 1:17 AM UTC

vonnik wrote: post #197

Al Jazeera in general and its US arm in particular were always more of an instrument of foreign policy for Qatar than a money-making endeavor. I covered the channel as a journalist at a competing news organization, and spoke with dozens of journalists on the inside of AJ. My guess is that Qatar decided they didn't want to waste quite as much money and time trying to sway public opinion in the US. The Arabic version o…

Al Jazeera tended to be more or less balanced when it came to western news, however, the propaganda was clear when it came to middle eastern/ Israel issues. It was in my opinion no different from how RT(Russian today) operates. AJ is still quite popular in UK though, unlike the russian channel.

Re: Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

#200

Post by mirimir » Thu, Jan 14, 2016, 1:19 AM UTC

stvswn wrote: post #182

huac wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's pretty good evidence that lots of American media outlets are government mouthpieces - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent for example

That book argues that mass media are biased because they are beholden to for-profit corporations, advertisers, and large-entity sourcing. I didn't read it, that's just in the outline that's in the link you provided. I think Noam would prefer if they were government mouthpieces instead of corporate mouthpieces, as he's socialist. Regardless, I don't think "Noam Chomsky wrote a book" is an argument with evidence. It's…

US mass media exhibit both government bias and corporate bias. And it can be hard to distinguish them, because US government is also subject to strong corporate bias. That was very much so during the Regan and Bush years. The Democrats are more subtle, and reflect a power base that's far more covert.