Wednesday, February 02, 2011

Watch Al Jazeera English TV Despite Nearly Nationwide Blackout

Blackout? Censorship? You decide.

The best coverage of the situation in Egypt has been from on-the-ground correspondents from Al Jazeera English in Egypt. For most Americans, however, this coverage is not available because none of the major cable networks have made it widely available (some exceptions include Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C).

Huffington Post had reported on this issue:

Al Jazeera English Blacked Out Across Most Of U.S

Al Jazeera English

First Posted: 01/30/11 05:00 PM Updated: 02/ 1/11 08:39 AM

WASHINGTON - Canadian television viewers looking for the most thorough and in-depth coverage of the uprising in Egypt have the option of tuning into Al Jazeera English, whose on-the-ground coverage of the turmoil is unmatched by any other outlet. American viewers, meanwhile, have little choice but to wait until one of the U.S. cable-company-approved networks broadcasts footage from AJE, which the company makes publicly available. What they can't do is watch the network directly.

Other than in a handful of pockets across the U.S. - including Ohio, Vermont and Washington, D.C. - cable carriers do not give viewers the choice of watching Al Jazeera. That corporate censorship comes as American diplomats harshly criticize the Egyptian government for blocking Internet communication inside the country and as Egypt attempts to block Al Jazeera from broadcasting.

The result of the Al Jazeera English blackout in the United States has been a surge in traffic to the media outlet's website, where footage can be seen streaming live. The last 24 hours have seen a two-and-a-half thousand percent increase in web traffic, Tony Burman, head of North American strategies for Al Jazeera English, told HuffPost. Sixty percent of that traffic, he said, has come from the United States.

Al Jazeera English launched in the fall of 2006, opening a large bureau on K Street in downtown Washington, but has made little progress in persuading cable companies to offer the channel to its customers.

The objections from the cable companies have come for both political and commercial reasons, said Burman, the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. "In 2006, pre-Obama, the experience was a challenging one. Essentially this was a period when a lot of negative stereotypes were associated with Al Jazeera. The effort was a difficult one," he said, citing the Bush administration's public hostility to the network.

Read the whole post.

Because of the amount of traffic going to their site now, it has been hard to access it there. But I have found a good quality broadcast from Live Station - Al Jazeera English. Check it out - it's chaos now that the pro-Mubarak protesters have instigated violence today.


No comments: