Al Jazeera to close?

...Or Fox News. While FNC is a commercial news channel, it works as a mouthpiece to placify the U.S. President and Republicans in general, rather than providing a broad news service.

I don't think it's quite fair to compare Fox with RT. Yes, many FNC programs and talent go toe-to-toe with the the POTUS and the RNC view of the world, but there are also enough journalists there to make the distinction cloudy. Roger Ailes was smart enough to assemble an actual news operation in order to legitimize FNC to the point that it would be just above talk radio on TV. Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace, Shepard Smith's show, and Special Report are decent news programs, even if they may lean a little bit to the right compared to competing shows on other networks. And the Fox local affiliates run good, clean news operations that are just as good as their competitors in most markets, and the national news that they pull from the Fox wire services is of quality as well.

RT, meanwhile, is just...odd. It's not like you really even get news about Russia on it. It's more of a stream of consciousness array of questionable talking heads and video and graphics montages that take on a worldview that is distinctly, unabashedly, uniformly critical of the U.S., and to a less extent, the EU. There's hardly any enterprise reporting going on at RT or rolling coverage of live breaking news. Just looking at the structure and format of their programs, I don't think there's any English language channel that is similar.

Fox certainly has its issues and point of view, but there's at least some semblance of a news operation underneath it all. I don't think the same argument can be made of RT.

That may be so, but the majority of the 'real' news programmes are basically filler between the POTUS massaging and keeping the Republican Party on side. Peak viewing is still the same propaganda being pumped out, despite the likes of O'Reilly being fired.

Fox and Friends is on a par with what RT pump out in every bulletin, bashing what they consider is the 'mainstream media' despite being the mouthpiece of the new Washington Trump elite with a tokenistic 90 second 'real' news bulletin by another piece of eye candy.

While you clearly know more about US rolling news output, I personally think the similarities between RT and FNC in regards to subliminal propaganda crossover too much.

As for the local Fox operations, no issue with that. MSNBC is similar with regards to partisan broadcasting, but it doesn't affect the network NBC News output.

I can see where you're coming from. I suppose if you look at it from an editorial standpoint, the argument that both are propaganda can be made. But I still think there's an important distinction to be made because RT is state-run and state-funded. FNC is certainly cozy with the POTUS and the White House, but as far as we know, there is no financial or organizational relationship between the two. The alignment between power and media is very much deliberate in Russia; it's a little more incidental and pretty recent with FNC in the U.S.

http://www.aljazeera.com/video/news/2017/06/uks-corbyn-condemns-demand-shut-al-jazeera-170630092901084.html

Mr Corbyn doesn't want it to close.

I enjoy the Al Jazeera documentaries, and occasionally watch for international news which the BBC and Sky do not cover. Will be very sad to see it closed, they do a very good job. The Guardian have an article.

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/jul/01/demand-al-jazeera-closure-shows-how-much-enemies-fear-it

To those who demand that Al Jazeera be shut down. We too have demands. #DemandPressFreedom #JournalismIsNotACrime pic.twitter.com/9eFFhYhewC

— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) July 3, 2017

This rift in relations with Saudi Arabia & Qatar regarding Al Jazeera really is a joke.

I read a open letter from AJE's on their website on this row recently. There was a demand from Saudi Arabia to close the channel within 10 days. This demand was never going to be workable or realistic while these countries have this row. AJE say the closure demand from SA would not affect it's daily operations of the broadcaster. This would suggest to the rest of us that this response is very prompt & realistic for a channel of this size & scale. AJ as a whole has about 80 news bureau's to run if this demand is imposed on them.

From my impression of AJE so far; it's news output is very credible for a news channel. It doesn't appear to show any signs of bias on it's stories on areas relating to the ME. AJE is not my main source for news however; I watch the BBC more often for 24 hour news. But I am not an outright objector to watching AJE for the occasional news bulletin. If you ask me about AJ Arabic; I wouldn't have a clue what that channel is like seeing it first hand because I have never even watched it to give a proper opinion on it.

A good few of the newsreaders on AJE have worked elsewhere as newsreaders on BBC, ITV & Sky News in London. Watching them on AJE gives me a lot of familiarity with a lot of the faces from their previous jobs in the past.

Also people who posted here about BBC Arabic being "closed". Well fear not. You can live stream it on Youtube you know.

A previous, Saudi-funded, BBC Arabic Television service existed between 1994 and 1996, but was abruptly shut down for being more editorially independent than its backers would have liked. There's a bit of a history (from 1997) here: http://www.preddonlee.com/arabic.html

Yep - and the exodus of well-trained, BBC-experienced, Arabic speaking presenters, reporters, producers and production crew were rather useful to Al Jazeera when they launched their Arabic language channel...

The main reason for the original shutdown was the Saudi backers wanting BBC Arabic to pull a Panorama broadcast involving the Saudi government.

The ident were based on BBC World in 1994:




I remember TVARK had a copy in BBC World Service TV page.