The collapse of Al Jazeera America is going to put about 700 journalists out of work, and as you think about this high number keep in mind that when the Qatar-owned news channel was setting up three years ago, it got about 12,000 job applications. Any decent job in journalism is a precious commodity.
Then there was the fact that Al Jazeera already offered the international channel Al Jazeera English, an excellent service launched in 2006 that was available in the U.S. (in Chicago, on Channel 11) until AJA supplanted it. But AJA never measured up. “My wife’s an avid news consumer,” says the former AJA staffer. “She liked Al Jazeera English a lot better than Al Jazeera America. She said that’s because they do stories she never saw anywhere else.” He recalled a report on Bangladesh that no American news shop would ever have bothered to put together.
That’s not what most Americans were saying, but it reflects who cable news was talking to. “President Obama or members of his administration showed up in 66% of Al Jazeera America stories,” reported Pew, exceeding even CNN (59 percent). “Syrian sources were cited in 26% of Al Jazeera America stories and 24% on CNN. On both channels, congressional representatives were sources in 16% of the stories.”
And “despite having access to more than 60 international Al Jazeera network bureaus, about three-quarters (76%) of Al Jazeera America stories originated from Washington, D.C., or New York City”—again higher even than CNN (71 percent). It was a performance that makes me wonder if AJA even trusts the news it gets from Al Jazeera’s international bureaus, a thought that I doubt that the channel intended to put into our heads.
