The Washington D.C.-based media advocacy group Accuracy in Media (AIM) and Fox News program host Bill O’Reilly have challenged AJE’s efforts to sign distribution deals with large cable companies such as Comcast and Time-Warner (Loeb, 2011 Kincaid, 2011). High-profile pundits and various organizations claim that AJE has no place on American televisions, citing allegations that AJ and AJE are anti-American and supportive of terrorists. Following talks between AJE and Comcast, the country’s largest cable carrier, reports cited an anonymous insider source who claimed that not carrying AJE “is strictly a business decision” (Wilkerson, 2011).Īdditionally, political discourse about AJE, often framed within the question of cable carriage, is increasingly polarized. The cable industry is inclined to suggest the decision is a purely commercial, apolitical one. Cable carriers also see the news market as saturated, questioning the value of adding yet another network to the mix. Despite efforts to position itself as a global media destination, many in the United States continued to associate AJE with Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden, and America’s adversaries in the “war on terror.” Even in the absence of the heavy criticism of AJE by American policymakers and opinion leaders, the majority of Americans do not demonstrate an interest in global news – another hurdle (Khamis, 2007: 48). This led some to speculate that US carriers refuse to include AJE in their offerings “out of fear of alienating themselves from advertisers and angering the Bush administration and other American political leaders.” (Dimaggio 2008: 246). AJE, as a network, was painted as a terrorist-affiliated network by the George W. Significant obstacles stand in the way of American TV market penetration, in which cable is still the dominant means of distribution. By early 2011, AJE was only fully 2 available in cable systems in Washington, DC, Toledo, OH, and Burlington, VT, or roughly 1.7 percent of American households. Yet AJE has struggled to gain access to television audiences in the United States. This reach continues to expand in December 2010, AJE received a downlinking license for carriage in India, the largest English-language TV market in the world. This study considers how Americans received and evaluated AJE in the weeks after the Egyptian protesters deposed the long-time ruler, Hosni Mubarak.Īs of early 2011, AJE reached upwards of 250 million households in more than one hundred countries. With its coverage of Egypt in particular, AJE distinguished itself from competitors to become a central source of information for American observers, media, and interested members of the public. This position as media outlet non grata persisted until the early 2011 uprisings in the Arab world, when AJE’s coverage was acclaimed even by Western media giants (Kristof 2011 Ferguson, 2011). Despite filling a gap in the global market for televised international news, AJE did not receive a welcome reception in the United States. Rather, AJE declared and maintains a “global” identity, contending in its public materials that it covers regions under-reported by western media giants CNN International (CNNI) and the BBC (Painter, 2008). Al Jazeera English (AJE) 1 entered the competitive global news field in late 2006, claiming to give a “voice to the voiceless” as the “world's first English language news channel to have its headquarters in the Middle East.” AJE nonetheless did not position itself as an Arab network merely broadcasting in English – a natural assumption given the prominence of its older, Arabic language sister channel.
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