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Re:Why can't people in US watch Al Jazeera? by endtime on Sunday January 30, 2011 @02:12AM (#2157598)
I agree with the thrust of your comment in general; however, you're mistaken on one point:

>the staff was almost entirely made up of BBC MiddleEast service people. So while they worked for BBC, they were unbiased; but the moment they started working for AJ, they became biased and completely untrustworthy!!

The BBC is well-known for anti-Israel bias, and there have been investigations to that effect. Here's an article about a long-running legal battle to get the BBC to disclose a report on its ME coverage: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/feb/11/balen-report-bbc...; here's some background info on said report: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report.

Edit: I honestly don't care about my HN karma, but I am curious to know why this was downvoted. I provided relevant information in a civil manner. I'd really feel better if someone could provide an explanation other than that people are using HN downvotes like reddit downvotes now. :/

Re:Why can't people in US watch Al Jazeera? by srean on Sunday January 30, 2011 @03:54AM (#2157714)
I notice that your comment has been downvoted, so lest you think so, it is not me. I followed your links, and what I found is this: A media corporation refuses to disclose a report on an internal investigation on how it conducts its affairs. Yes, it bothers me that a public service body is stonewalling about an internal report. But when I transfer the setup to US say, it is not what I would call, unheard of.

I am certainly willing to concede, that it is not transparent, but isnt calling them to possess a "well-known" anti-Israel bias exaggerated ?

Re:Why can't people in US watch Al Jazeera? by endtime on Sunday January 30, 2011 @04:08AM (#2157732)
Well, I was trying to err on the side of caution with my sources, and I may have overdone it. There are more direct articles but from less reputable sources, like this one [1]. I don't know how to justify that something is well-known; Bing has 12 million hits for "bbc anti-israel" (without quotes), if that helps.

BTW, the BBC is a public organization, not a private corporation. It's estimated that they spent 200,000 pounds to keep the report from being disclosed. I don't know why they'd spend that kind of money to hide a report that didn't reveal bias - though I'm open to alternative explanations.

[1] http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-451138/Report-BBCs-a...