Fair and Balanced?
Al Jazeera is planning to bring English-language news to an American audience.
by Abigail Lavin
09/20/2006

SINCE IT FIRST BEGAN BROADCASTING 10 years ago, Qatari satellite network Al Jazeera has become the Arab world's media juggernaut, claiming 50 million viewers across 137 countries. A 2005 survey by Brandchannel.com ranked Al Jazeera as the world's fifth most influential brand, just behind Starbucks, and plans are in the works to extend the network's reach even further with the launch of an English-language version, Al Jazeera International. High-profile personalities such as Riz Khan and ABC's David Marash have signed on as the network's news anchors. But AJI representatives have declined to comment on whether the network has secured a cable distribution deal in the United States, and the consensus among outside sources was that they had not. While it has been picked up by Rupert Murdoch's BSkyB channel in Europe, it remains to be seen whether Americans will get the chance to see what English-language news from a Middle Eastern perspective looks like. the rest