Hillary Clinton's Comments, or Al Jazeera in the Hospital

Recently Hillary Clinton made some comments regarding the arabic news organization Al Jazeera and the increasing acceptance of it in the United States. As she oh-so-Secretary of Stately put it, ""Like it or hate it, it is really effective," Clinton then said. "In fact, viewership of Al Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news...You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information to us, let alone foreigners." In other words, it's better than the current news choices of CNN, MSNBC, and FOX.

And unless you're busy fighting against the secret muslim takeover, you should be open to Al Jazeera as well. 

This isn't my typical subject matter but I had actually been thinking the same thing when I came across Clinton's comments. Last month I was laid up in the hospital for 6 days, and between the 14 TV channels that were offered, about 9 were in English and 3 of those were news. This was during the uncertain period of whether Egypt's President Mubarak would peacefully resign or attempt to violently suppress his people, and Al Jazeera was by far the highest quality news source despite the organization being banned in Egypt. Also, in between Middle East oriented news, they showed things like a documentary about a family of coal miners in West Virginia and the health problems they face from working in the mines. Despite the depressing subject matter, it did raise my spirits to see a little slice of home.

I know a lot of Americans hear "Al Jazeera" and think "Islam propaganda." I understand. I used to feel that way too. In the months and years after September 11, 2001, we quickly learned to associate Al Jazeera with Al Queda, since every new Bin Laden tape or Al Queda announcement seemed to come via Al Jazeera. It was easy but ultimately wrong to connect the two in our minds. It would be akin to associating Youtube with Jared Lee Loughner simply because that's where he chose to share his insane rants.

For the record, in for all those days I was there I did not hear a single comment advocating Islamic-based government or pro-Islam message. So, if you're tired of talking screaming heads spouting their opinions as fact, wall-to-wall Charlie Sheen coverage, and flashy graphics taking priority over reliable content, then don't be afraid of the scary sounding Al Jazeera.

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