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Al Jazeera America to Shut Down in April

382 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

ianphughes 11y ago
I was annoyed when this launched because it was no longer easy to get to the English language version of Al Jazeera even if you wanted to, unless you took steps to change your location.
- dhimes 11y ago
  Actually, in the US when they put up the aljazeera/america site they started automatically routing me away from aljazeera/english. I pointed this out via email, and said I preferred the English version (Europe slant vs American) and they put a link at the bottom of the page to allow people to choose the English site. So try them- they are (were? it was a while back) very responsive.
zitterbewegung 11y ago
I remember hearing about this channel being hyped in the media but I never was able to watch it (required more expensive cable plan) and also I never even saw it being referenced online like from youtube or anyone.
gscott 11y ago
This is too bad as I find the news on Al Jazeera to be more balanced then CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Unfortunately it seems people want a spin on news. Al Jazeera is to the tv news as a long form article is to written journalism.
arbitrage 11y ago
And just when it seemed to start gaining traction, too. Pity.
russnewcomer 11y ago
This is unfortunate but expected. Al Jazeera has a severely unfair reputation in America, and most people probably had no idea of the difference between AJ(Qatar) and AJ(America). Hopefully they will continue to have coverage in America, and this doesn't actually mean their total exit of America-based reporting.
- tptacek 11y ago
  I don't think AJ had much of a reputation at all in the US. I wouldn't even know where to find it.
  - dublinben 11y ago
    >“Most Americans associate Al Jazeera with Al Qaeda”[0] [0] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/americans-associate-al-jazeera-al-qaeda-braodcaster-faces-uphill-climb-pin-tv-audience-article-1.1232777 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/americans-associate-al-j...
    - tptacek 11y ago
      Well, if The New York Daily News says so...
  - dhimes 11y ago
    It got pretty famous after 9/11. I even have their app. But I mentioned to some Christian conservative family members that if they really wanted to understand what was happening in the Middle East (this was when the Egyptian general, who was voted out of power, overthrew the elected government and took leadership again) they should try Al Jazeera. Their response suggested that in their circles it was considered a very bad source of information. So at least among some groups it has a strong reputation.
- jandrese 11y ago
  My cable company bundled it away with the expensive foreign language channels, guaranteeing that almost nobody watched it. Add in their retreat from online streaming and it is no mystery why people were not watching.
rogerbinns 11y ago
The article did not mention Al Jazeera deciding to remove their Internet streaming, and requiring that you can only view via your local cable provider. See this page with the big note to US people: http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/201146152255537258.html http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/201146152255537258.html I used to check in on their coverage on the Roku channel, but they made a business decision to prevent that. I can understand their decision to make their success dependent on the existing way of doing content business in the US (cable channels), but the number of cord cutters keeps increasing, the most valuable segment for advertisers (younger folk) are the most likely cord cutters (or cord nevers), and the cable business depends heavily on bundling. For example Disney owns ESPN (most of it), so they can make the cable companies to take a portfolio of channels, or get none of them. Al Jazeera had no such leverage. Their business model was a big gamble, based on the past, and didn't work.
- andrewclunn 11y ago
  This. Moving away from service chord cutters at this point was just odd. Embracing alternative media has done wonders for outlets like Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison).
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison) Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. However, I agree with you that it's not a good comparision. BBC also is state sponsored, but generally considered to be trustworthy. RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Same with the Australian ABC. Pretty much only rusted on supporters of the Liberal and National parties are the only ones who don't support it, and even they watch it over the commerical networks. That said, I really want to see what Netflix can do with the news cycle.
myth_buster 11y ago
I think it would have been a real challenge to get to the mainstream with their logo and their finances [0] with financing from the deep pockets of the Qatar government when the sentiments being purported by Fox, CNN et al were in stark contrast. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/business/media/al-jazeera-network-in-turmoil-is-now-the-news.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/business/media/al-jazeera-...
- jackreichert 11y ago
  Even without that financing, and without the logo, the financing itself is a good reason to not trust them as a source. I'm sure there are other news sources that should be de-legitimized due to their funding, and it would be nice if they too go away. Due to the current nature of how people consume their news it creates echo-chamber bubbles that only reenforce misinformation or misleading perspectives.
  - jonathankoren 11y ago
    It's not the funding. It's the editorial independence that matters. Should we have believed NBC prior to 2013 on national security issues, because they were owned by General Electric, a defense contractor that would make handsome profits in the case of war? Good luck in finding any media outlet that doesn't have financial ties to the subjects of their coverage. You shouldn't dismiss Al Jazeera out of hand. The (sad) fact is, that Al Jazeera is pretty much the least biased on most straight forward of all the media outlets in the Middle East. They actually report dissenting views. No, they're not perfect, but are in a completely different league compared to their regional rivals.
    - gotchange 11y ago
      > They actually report dissenting views. But not critical of the ruling family in Qatar and that actually what counts the most and would demonstrate their journalistic integrity and editorial independence but they're hypocrites and their credibility is suffering as a consequence.
    - 11y ago
curun1r 11y ago
It's a sad commentary on the state of America's appetite for intelligent analysis when serious journalism can't compete with attractive talking heads ignorantly spouting talking points. Obama may have said that the increased political rancor was one of the greatest regrets of his presidency, but I think this points to how little of that was attributable to him. Though I'd be willing to bet that their name was half their problem. With the amount of xenophobia we're seeing these days, a large percentage of the population likely wrote them off based solely on that and was never exposed to their content.
- roymurdock 11y ago
  More of a commentary on the appetite of the average cable consumer. I imagine their online business will see an uptick as they do more streaming content and (hopefully) continue to publish interesting pieces and documentaries, especially on the ME, that are hard to find elsewhere.
  - manachar 11y ago
    I don't think the internet is any better. Sure, it can sustain some pockets of awesome journalism, but sites specializing in clickbait are the most prevalent.
- duaneb 11y ago
  I'm gonna bet that most of their american customers actively consume the website more than their divested assets.
- ConceptJunkie 11y ago
  It's a sad commentary on the state of America's appetite for intelligent analysis when millions of people watch "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" and think they are watching intelligent analysis. While both shows might have some intelligent content, both are primarily entertainment shows. I don't watch any cable news channels myself. I have little appetite for them, and especially for the commercials.
- gozur88 11y ago
falsestprophet 11y ago
It's sad that it won't be easy to find news in the United States that represents the view of the Emir of Qatar.
joshstrange 11y ago
I like AJ news quite a bit, their election night report is often the best IMHO (no real bias) but once they launched you couldn't get english streams of their content and our TV plan didn't include them... Maybe now I will be able to get streams again and start watching it more.
harpysicorn 11y ago
Did Peyton Manning bring them down?
rm_-rf_slash 11y ago
This comes as absolutely no surprise at all. It doesn't matter if you are the most accurate, informed, respectable news source in the world, because almost no Americans know what Al Jazeera is, and the name evokes the image backdrop of a middle eastern city most Americans can't find on a map, discussing topics of primary interest to American Muslims and few else, while the female anchors are veiled. Not to mention it sounds like a group Americans are more familiar with that starts with "Al-". This is almost as bad as the Latin American failure of the Chevy Nova (Spanish: no go). They could and should have named it anything, but they really seemed to think their brand would carry any weight at all. One may say this is proof that Americans don't want truth and reason, just entertainment in their news. We do, but the simple fact is that if you fail to appeal to people's simple desires, fears, and impulses, you will fail entirely.
- andrewclunn 11y ago
  > the most accurate, informed, respectable news source in the world... Let's not oversell it here. They have biases, just different biases. And last I checked, network news providers ratings are on the decline and more and more Americans are getting their news from online outlets (and as many people here have already commented, the cable offerings of Al Jazeera came at the expense of their online offerings).
  - sremani 11y ago
    Al Jazeera was nothing but a Salafist network in Liberal Suite. As much critical they were about imperfections of liberal democracies they were not even half that about Islamic Republics, blasphemy laws in ME or Gender/ LGBT rights in muslim majority nations.
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Having watched it with some regularity, I disagree. Did you watch it? Or do you have some data to back it up? (I have no evidence other than my experience.)
hackuser 11y ago
This is too bad. They were one of two sources of serious news on cable TV [1] and their global breath of coverage, including many important, original stories I didn't see elsewhere, was exceptional. I always held my breath a little, expecting some propaganda because Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, but I never noticed any even in Middle East coverage. That doesn't mean it wasn't there - the point of propaganda is to convince the audience that it's legitimate. [1] IMHO: The other serious news on cable is Bloomberg. Some of their content is obvious shilling or advertorial (bring on the CEO and give them a platform and t-ball questions), much is over-stylized, and their priority obviously is business and not other news. However, at least they address serious topics, and provide sophisticated analysis and valuable knowledge. Fox, CNN, MSNBC are a complete waste of my time - all I learn is various political groups' talking points. BBC's analysis is too superficial and too many stories are not hard news, for my taste. As always, print/text news are by far the best sources.
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  They do a good job of separating the regional channels from the main one. AJ English is quite different from AJ Arabic that at times I feel it's a different channel entirely. However as an Arab Muslim my goto is AJ Arabic as it focuses on the region and I feel covers important events and causes. It's documentaries and investigative pieces are awesome as well.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    > AJ English is quite different from AJ Arabic that at times I feel it's a different channel entirely. I'd be very interested to know about AJ Arabic (and I don't speak Arabic at all). If you don't mind sharing a little more: How does it differ from AJ English? Also, maybe 15 years ago I'd hear how AJ Arabic was the only real journalism in the Arab world and a force for democracy and reform. Was that your experience? Is it still? Finally, how and how much does AJ Arabic serve Qatar's rulers' interests? How much better or worse is it than the other government sponsored competitors (e.g., I seem to remember Saudi Arabia runs one, and of course there is the BBC). The best coverage I've found, in English, of the Middle East is Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, both from Israel. I know people may assume they would follow the Israeli government line but I haven't noticed it in the journalism which reports much that challenges the government, including abuse of Palestinians (maybe in the editorials support the government but I don't read them, and Haaretz is against Netanyahu). They cover important stories I don't see in AJ English and cover other stories better - though I read all three anyway.
lazaroclapp 11y ago
Al Jazeera proper however spins this as increasing their direct (online) presence in the U.S: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/al-jazeera-160113151725873.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/al-jazeera-16011315172... It always did seem weird to me how much Al Jazeera America focused on very local issues, when the entire point of going outside of U.S. media, to me, was to get a more balanced view on global issues (by aggregation, not saying AJ doesn't have its own biases). So maybe, for those of us who get our news online, this might actually be a good news. On the other hand, it makes cable TV news in the U.S. even more homogeneous than it already is...
BummerCloud 11y ago
Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) summarized Al Jazeera's collapse very succinctly: "Al Jazeera America execs chose early on to try to be a voice-less, diluted version of CNN rather than embracing its global identity & brand." https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/687352891372339200 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/687352891372339200
sp332 11y ago
I thought the coverage was pretty crummy, back when it had just launched which was the last time I looked at it. Hopefully we'll get access to Al Jazeera English videos back when AJA goes away! Edit: Why is this off the front page already?
- jgh 11y ago
  Is there any indication we will? I really hope so! I enjoyed the AJE content and thought AJA was pretty terrible. It really sucked that they cut off people in the USA from watching AJE everywhere.
  - Rayearth 11y ago
    Indeed, I was a little surprised that AJA was both a thing at all and also a thing completely different from AJE. I first discovered AJE while living abroad in a place where the only english news channels were CNN, BBC and AJE, and my impression was that AJE was worthy to stand alongside the other two channels.
phillipamann 11y ago
I'm sorry but why do people love a news organization that is funded by Qatar? People claim that they were completely separate but they weren't at all and gripped by controversy that one would expect from an organization based out of Qatar [1]. I think there are better sources for American and global news than what is essentially the media arm for the corrupt and fascist government of Qatar. [1] https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/al-jazeera-discrimination-lawsuit.pdf https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/al-jazeera-...
- surge 11y ago
  Because oddly, in their attempt to build credibility, or maybe because a completely different set of people ran the American branch or the organization, the American version of it was really really good. It spoke out about issues other new orgs ignore, had little in the way of sensationalism and focus on non-sense stories and celebrity scandals. I expected some Islamic propaganda, but it was shockingly progressive in a lot of things it reported on (thinking mainly of its investigative specials). They would talk about the issues with drug prohibition, abuses by police, violations of free speech, one of the only networks that covered privacy issues especially when it comes to the Snowden leaks, NSA, etc and gave it more than the 4th grade reading level version of it and gave time to both arguments, didn't just end the discussion with "because terrorists/pedophiles" like most networks. Jon Oliver regularly used their clips in his show for a reason. They would also mention their campaign to free investigative journalists jailed by the Muslim Brotherhood run government in Egypt.
  - gotchange 11y ago
    > I expected some Islamic propaganda, but it was shockingly progressive The Islamist/conservative propaganda is reserved for the Arabic speaking channels such as their main channel AJN. They usually adopt editorial policies and fit their narrative based on the target market and Qatari foreign government policy goals. So, in the Arabic-speaking market, they push reactionary and backward messages to accommodate their conservative Islamist audience beside helping Qatar achieve goals like the wars in Yemen, Syria or Iraq (Sectarian and Sunni dominant militant propaganda) while for its English-speaking channels like AJE, they adopt softer stance on those issue and cater more for the Western liberal viewer with local relevant stories and progressive takes on current affairs. > They would also mention their campaign to free investigative journalists jailed by the Muslim Brotherhood run government in Egypt. Sisi the military dictator who staged the coup in 2013 not the MB who jailed those 3 journalists and then reluctantly freed them after much fanfare.
bruceb 11y ago
"Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after it bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million." Why did they pay half billion for Current TV? First mistake.
- fixermark 11y ago
  ... like paying scalper's price for a ticket onto the Titanic after it's already hit the iceberg. ;)
- ashark 11y ago
  Maybe that bought them existing distribution deals worth that much (or more)? Can't think of another reason.
  - 6stringmerc 11y ago
    Airlines have done it with routes and gate access in the past, so that does make sense.
- fensterblick 11y ago
  For influence? If you can't outright bribe a politician, you pay well over asking for his company (or house, or anything else). And then you hope he lends you a willing ear when you need a favor.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    Good point, but I wonder how much influence Al really has anymore? What would Qatar want from him, anyway?
ipsin 11y ago
I did not have a chance to see Al Jazeera America, but based on the number of times John Oliver used AJA clips on his show, and based on the topics related to those clips, I strongly suspected I was missing out. I'd like to know when things our going wrong in our society (because that's how you can start to fix them), without the weird pro-Russian slant of a channel like RT.
coupdejarnac 11y ago
Too bad. Al Jazeera America should have renamed themselves for the American market. Not to hide who they are, but to get past any initial negative impression.
- fensterblick 11y ago
  They often called themselves "AJ America" or "AJAM"
ck2 11y ago
Every time there is news somehow connected to Gore, I can't help but think somewhere in a parallel universe, the supreme court stayed out of election politics, didn't hand the election to Bush instead of Gore then 9/11 never happened the following year because he actually paid attention to the memo about "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" - then Iraq was never invaded - then the TSA was never created - Gitmo wasn't created - the NSA didn't abuse its power - then credit default swaps were stopped in their tracks before they destroyed the economy. Imagine how incredibly different the US would be today if that series of events was alternated.
- ConceptJunkie 11y ago
  It would be a lot different, but in that same universe, the entire population of the Earth was killed by a virus spread by unicorn poop, so be glad it didn't happen.
  - ck2 11y ago
    You consider a couple votes by the supreme court changing everything to fairy tales? It really, seriously, could have been in favor of Gore. Not far fetched at all. In fact they could have declined to hear the case entirely, which they probably should have done.
    - stvswn 11y ago
      I know. Really makes you think, right? Think of all the bad things that have happened in the past 16 years. Now imagine they didn't happen. Wow. Just one vote.
- stvswn 11y ago
  They'd have evacuated New Orleans before Katrina hit. They wouldn't have canceled Firefly. Steven Avery wouldn't have been convicted. Imagine.
- finance-geek 11y ago
  I find it really amusing that you noted "then credit default swaps were stopped in their tracks before they destroyed the economy" as one of the critical junctures in the US economy. It was, and most people dont realize that. CDS allowed large parts of the CDOs to become AAA and enabled all manners of craziness in 2002-2007. Sadly, it often gets blamed on Clinton/Gore given the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 signed weeks before their term ended. The reality was all about how it was implemented/regulated/enforced, which was all during Bush's term. You note correctly, things would have been very different under Gore. For one thing, courageous individuals like Brooksley Born would have been allowed into the discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born#Born_and_the_OTC_derivatives_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born#Born_and_the_OT...
flubert 11y ago
The most funny take on Al Jazeera you'll read today: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown_relate_t.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown...
Mizza 11y ago
What does this mean for "AJ+", their SF-based social-tech-media-incubator-youth-mobile-blah thing?
- cphoover 11y ago
  That's what I was curious about too. I'd imagine AJ+ will be closing with them no?
- idrism 11y ago
  I think they're keeping AJ+, for now at least.
- phillipamann 11y ago
  AJ+ is all the worst things about social media. These bite sized share friendly hip news clips about complex issues lacking tons of context. Their Israel coverage is fucking terrible. I have to hand it to them though. They are very clever for coming up with it.
geuis 11y ago
This is a sad end to a line of good news services in the US. My ex gf and I used to be regular viewers of Newsworld International. They showed excellent international news programs and a lot of broadcasts from CBC. We were disappointed when Current took over and watched the switchover as NWI's cast signed off the last time and Current started. Current turned out to be pretty interesting. They were aiming for a younger demographic and were among the first cable networks to really integrate an online presence. It wasn't the same as NWI but had good things going on and we enjoyed watching. When I moved to SF I even worked there for a short period and got to experience the energy of the team at the time. We used to watch Al Jazeera online too. They've always had really good journalism and frequently would have better coverage of American issues than any mainstream news media here. When AJ bought Current, it didn't really make a lot of sense to me as a product. I think AJ wanted to make a move into American cable news, but the department responsible for that wasn't the ones handling their existing online English content. They wanted Current for the cable tv slot, in much the same way Current wanted the slot from NWI. I don't know a lot about the industry, but I think this is something like limited numbers of liquor licenses and taxi medallions in cities. So Al Jazeera shut down the Current office here in SF and opened a news room in DC. They didn't do anything with the online presence Current and AJ already had, and actually made it harder to get the old English content here. Now they're shutting down and so ends a line of good international news in the US.
jordache 11y ago
Good! now I can live stream the international al jazerra broadcast. They shut that down for US after the launch of this american channel
golergka 11y ago
Good riddance. If it was closing because of government intervention, censorship, or anything else like that, I would be fighting it, of course. But since it the main reason for the fact that it's closing is sincere audience disinterest, I'm pretty glad.
VLM 11y ago
As a percentage of the population almost no one watches cable news. Fox's best nights sometimes approach a significant fraction of one percent of the nations population, usually less. And all other channels are far, far lower ratings. Another thing to consider is MSNBC is also nearly unwatched. If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. Given deep enough pockets, AJ could have continued. Narrowcasting is strange, watching channels fight over almost no viewers is like watching academics fight over nothing. Yet supplying the almost no viewers with an internet feed would require quite a few gigs/sec of internet bandwidth. There's quite a wide, unserved gap in the media industry between "a couple people watch me on youtube" and "I have a cable TV channel". There's probably a startup opportunity in there, somehow.
- chipotle_coyote 11y ago
  If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. While I don't think you're intentionally cherry-picking numbers here, I'm fairly sure you're quoting a Mediaite article about AJAM beating MSNBC during the 2PM newscast in mid-2015. Those are not total viewership numbers. If you want to compare cable news networks, it'd be better to compare their primetime viewerships. AJAM had trouble breaking 30K in primetime, according to the NYT, but at least as of August 2015 (the most recent data I can find), MSNBC's primetime total viewership was 639K -- actually beating CNN slightly. As for "almost no one watches cable news," well: yes, but. Given how much of the HN discussion is centering around cord cutting, it's worth considering how many people get their news from the web sites of CNN and friends. In January 2015, for instance, cnn.com had over 64M unique visitors; foxnews.com had about 55M, while nbcnews.com had about 30M -- even though NBC News has far more viewers than CNN (nearly 10M compared to CNN's under 1M). Sources: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for-2-hours-in-the-key-25-54-ratings-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for... http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in-all-primetime-cable-msnbc-last-in-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-america-to-shut-down-in-april.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-... http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-holt-evening-news-ratings-1201677863/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-ho...
transfire 11y ago
Al Jezeera is an excellent news station. Much better than the others for being more fact oriented. Unfortunately its all about ratings today, facts be damned. I think they give up too easily. I bet if they 1) changed the name to something "all American" and 2) made a reality show about what goes on behind the scenes, that might have been a big enough of a "killer app" to propel the network out of the shadows. However I was disappointed that AJ got rid of the Young Turks.
snake_plissken 11y ago
Man this stinks. Al Jazeera America is reliable and has done some solid reporting over the years. It wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade. Next to BloombergTV it's the only news channel worth watching. On a tin-foil hat aside, but the timing on this; coming a few weeks after they ran the story about performance enhancing drug use by some big name athletes...I can't help but think the two are somehow related.
- ptaipale 11y ago
  Having seen and understood just a few fragments of Al Jazeera behaviour in Arabic, I have some difficulty in trusting it in English either. E.g. just today came up this post which points out how Al Jazeera used a picture: https://twitter.com/ranaharbi/status/685357579615232000 https://twitter.com/ranaharbi/status/685357579615232000 They stole a picture taken by photographer Serkan Gülsen in Istanbul in 2007 from his Flickr feed https://www.flickr.com/photos/serkangulsen/771185410/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/serkangulsen/771185410/in/date... and now (January 2016) published it as evidence of suffering in the town of Madaya. It's likely that the suffering in Madaya is more than horrible, but why be so lazy as to forge a picture like this? Are they actually trying to destroy their reputation, or do they just trust that the Arabic audience will not notice? And if it does that in Arabic, do I trust it in English?
nikolay 11y ago
Al Jazeera and their AJ+ are funded by the Qatar monarchy. I closely monitor their "news" on Facebook, the hidden agenda is so obvious! I think they might be closing down because oil price keeps dropping.
- taurath 11y ago
  All media has a hidden agenda - its nice to get a different one sometimes, because when you're only exposed to one all the time you start to forget it has an agenda. There are many things not said and topics not covered in US media, the first and foremost being any direct representations of people suffering from US-led military ventures.
  - nikolay 11y ago
    There's no independent media when it comes to geopolitics, unfortunately. We as hackers should challenge the status quo!
- amalag 11y ago
  Soft Islamism
aaronkrolik 11y ago
>And Al Jazeera America has not been free of controversy in recent months. In November, the news station’s general counsel, David W. Harleston, was suspended following a report in The New York Times that he did not appear to be licensed to practice law. In late December, Al Jazeera aired an hourlong documentary that linked some of the biggest stars in Major League Baseball and the National Football League to performance-enhancing drugs. The most prominent athlete mentioned in the report was the Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who angrily denied the report, calling it “complete garbage” and “totally made up.” Lets not forget that they are being sued for libel http://deadspin.com/ryan-howard-ryan-zimmerman-sue-al-jazeera-america-over-1751240312 http://deadspin.com/ryan-howard-ryan-zimmerman-sue-al-jazeer...
- slg 11y ago
  I surprised their is no discussion of that here. It might not be the most important story Al Jazeera had broken, but it was their biggest pop culture story in a country that often puts a huge pop culture emphasis on their news. The story has been mostly ignored by the mainstream American media and the people accused were more aggressive in their responses than similar athletes have been after similar reports. I can't remember the last time a news organization was immediately sued for libel after these type of accusations. If you are being critical of Al Jazeera, it was a shoddy reporting job and didn't merit being published. If you are being generous, it shows they have almost no impact on American news cycles. Either way, the response wasn't good news for Al Jazeera.
homulilly 11y ago
Does this mean Al Jazeera English will be viewable online again in the US? I never watched AJA because I don't particularly want to watch US-Focused news and I have never had and will never have a cable subscription.
xufi 11y ago
I actually liked AJ to watch besides watching RT a change of the mainstream media news sources, sad to see them go. They were like the BBC but had reporting from more places that even typical alternative news channesl dont spend time on. They also had great documentaries from time to time. Wonder if they'll ever come back perhaps in a different form
unixhero 11y ago
The naming of the channel and hence branding was a real stupid move by them. As if lesser informed members of the public would see past their collectively understood common enemy meme AL-*. It doesn't take a PhD in philosophy to prescient this. Why couldn't they just have chosen something more "user friendly". Hell I even got talked behind my back by HR in a world class consultancy (CAPGEMENI, there I said it) firm for reading Al Jazeera, as if it was something dangerous and that I had dangerous intents (Nothing further happened).
vonnik 11y ago
Al Jazeera in general and its US arm in particular were always more of an instrument of foreign policy for Qatar than a money-making endeavor. I covered the channel as a journalist at a competing news organization, and spoke with dozens of journalists on the inside of AJ. My guess is that Qatar decided they didn't want to waste quite as much money and time trying to sway public opinion in the US. The Arabic version of AJ has always been much more important. Pure speculation, but the cuts may be due to the plunging price of oil, which in turn is affected by the slump of the Chinese economy.
- aikah 11y ago
  Al Jazeera tended to be more or less balanced when it came to western news, however, the propaganda was clear when it came to middle eastern/ Israel issues. It was in my opinion no different from how RT(Russian today) operates. AJ is still quite popular in UK though, unlike the russian channel.
eklavya 11y ago
I am sorry, I have seen two interviews by Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera. The bias was really really obvious. I don't buy the arguments about how good it is by some commenters here.
known 11y ago
Some staffers saw that as a tacit admission that falling oil prices were behind the closure
known 11y ago
Victim of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency
Tepix 11y ago
The Intercept also has a piece on this development with some background information https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/al-jazeera-america-terminates-all-tv-and-digital-operations/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/al-jazeera-america-termi....

382 points by coloneltcb 11y ago

I was annoyed when this launched because it was no longer easy to get to the English language version of Al Jazeera even if you wanted to, unless you took steps to change your location.

dhimes 11y ago
Actually, in the US when they put up the aljazeera/america site they started automatically routing me away from aljazeera/english. I pointed this out via email, and said I preferred the English version (Europe slant vs American) and they put a link at the bottom of the page to allow people to choose the English site. So try them- they are (were? it was a while back) very responsive.

zitterbewegung 11y ago

I remember hearing about this channel being hyped in the media but I never was able to watch it (required more expensive cable plan) and also I never even saw it being referenced online like from youtube or anyone.

gscott 11y ago

This is too bad as I find the news on Al Jazeera to be more balanced then CNN, Fox, or MSNBC. Unfortunately it seems people want a spin on news. Al Jazeera is to the tv news as a long form article is to written journalism.

arbitrage 11y ago

And just when it seemed to start gaining traction, too. Pity.

russnewcomer 11y ago

This is unfortunate but expected. Al Jazeera has a severely unfair reputation in America, and most people probably had no idea of the difference between AJ(Qatar) and AJ(America). Hopefully they will continue to have coverage in America, and this doesn't actually mean their total exit of America-based reporting.

tptacek 11y ago
I don't think AJ had much of a reputation at all in the US. I wouldn't even know where to find it.
- dublinben 11y ago
  >“Most Americans associate Al Jazeera with Al Qaeda”[0] [0] http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/americans-associate-al-jazeera-al-qaeda-braodcaster-faces-uphill-climb-pin-tv-audience-article-1.1232777 http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/americans-associate-al-j...
  - tptacek 11y ago
    Well, if The New York Daily News says so...
- dhimes 11y ago
  It got pretty famous after 9/11. I even have their app. But I mentioned to some Christian conservative family members that if they really wanted to understand what was happening in the Middle East (this was when the Egyptian general, who was voted out of power, overthrew the elected government and took leadership again) they should try Al Jazeera. Their response suggested that in their circles it was considered a very bad source of information. So at least among some groups it has a strong reputation.
jandrese 11y ago
My cable company bundled it away with the expensive foreign language channels, guaranteeing that almost nobody watched it. Add in their retreat from online streaming and it is no mystery why people were not watching.

rogerbinns 11y ago

The article did not mention Al Jazeera deciding to remove their Internet streaming, and requiring that you can only view via your local cable provider. See this page with the big note to US people: http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/201146152255537258.html http://www.aljazeera.com/watch_now/201146152255537258.html I used to check in on their coverage on the Roku channel, but they made a business decision to prevent that. I can understand their decision to make their success dependent on the existing way of doing content business in the US (cable channels), but the number of cord cutters keeps increasing, the most valuable segment for advertisers (younger folk) are the most likely cord cutters (or cord nevers), and the cable business depends heavily on bundling. For example Disney owns ESPN (most of it), so they can make the cable companies to take a portfolio of channels, or get none of them. Al Jazeera had no such leverage. Their business model was a big gamble, based on the past, and didn't work.

andrewclunn 11y ago
This. Moving away from service chord cutters at this point was just odd. Embracing alternative media has done wonders for outlets like Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison).
- hackuser 11y ago
  > Russia Today (Though that's state sponsored so it might not be the best comparison) Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar. However, I agree with you that it's not a good comparision. BBC also is state sponsored, but generally considered to be trustworthy. RT is propaganda run by a government that has propaganda as its modus operendi; I wouldn't trust their weather reports.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Same with the Australian ABC. Pretty much only rusted on supporters of the Liberal and National parties are the only ones who don't support it, and even they watch it over the commerical networks. That said, I really want to see what Netflix can do with the news cycle.

myth_buster 11y ago

I think it would have been a real challenge to get to the mainstream with their logo and their finances [0] with financing from the deep pockets of the Qatar government when the sentiments being purported by Fox, CNN et al were in stark contrast. [0]: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/business/media/al-jazeera-network-in-turmoil-is-now-the-news.html http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/06/business/media/al-jazeera-...

jackreichert 11y ago
Even without that financing, and without the logo, the financing itself is a good reason to not trust them as a source. I'm sure there are other news sources that should be de-legitimized due to their funding, and it would be nice if they too go away. Due to the current nature of how people consume their news it creates echo-chamber bubbles that only reenforce misinformation or misleading perspectives.
- jonathankoren 11y ago
  It's not the funding. It's the editorial independence that matters. Should we have believed NBC prior to 2013 on national security issues, because they were owned by General Electric, a defense contractor that would make handsome profits in the case of war? Good luck in finding any media outlet that doesn't have financial ties to the subjects of their coverage. You shouldn't dismiss Al Jazeera out of hand. The (sad) fact is, that Al Jazeera is pretty much the least biased on most straight forward of all the media outlets in the Middle East. They actually report dissenting views. No, they're not perfect, but are in a completely different league compared to their regional rivals.
  - gotchange 11y ago
    > They actually report dissenting views. But not critical of the ruling family in Qatar and that actually what counts the most and would demonstrate their journalistic integrity and editorial independence but they're hypocrites and their credibility is suffering as a consequence.
  - 11y ago

curun1r 11y ago

It's a sad commentary on the state of America's appetite for intelligent analysis when serious journalism can't compete with attractive talking heads ignorantly spouting talking points. Obama may have said that the increased political rancor was one of the greatest regrets of his presidency, but I think this points to how little of that was attributable to him. Though I'd be willing to bet that their name was half their problem. With the amount of xenophobia we're seeing these days, a large percentage of the population likely wrote them off based solely on that and was never exposed to their content.

roymurdock 11y ago
More of a commentary on the appetite of the average cable consumer. I imagine their online business will see an uptick as they do more streaming content and (hopefully) continue to publish interesting pieces and documentaries, especially on the ME, that are hard to find elsewhere.
- manachar 11y ago
  I don't think the internet is any better. Sure, it can sustain some pockets of awesome journalism, but sites specializing in clickbait are the most prevalent.
duaneb 11y ago
I'm gonna bet that most of their american customers actively consume the website more than their divested assets.
ConceptJunkie 11y ago
It's a sad commentary on the state of America's appetite for intelligent analysis when millions of people watch "The Daily Show" or "The Colbert Report" and think they are watching intelligent analysis. While both shows might have some intelligent content, both are primarily entertainment shows. I don't watch any cable news channels myself. I have little appetite for them, and especially for the commercials.
gozur88 11y ago

falsestprophet 11y ago

It's sad that it won't be easy to find news in the United States that represents the view of the Emir of Qatar.

joshstrange 11y ago

I like AJ news quite a bit, their election night report is often the best IMHO (no real bias) but once they launched you couldn't get english streams of their content and our TV plan didn't include them... Maybe now I will be able to get streams again and start watching it more.

harpysicorn 11y ago

Did Peyton Manning bring them down?

rm_-rf_slash 11y ago

This comes as absolutely no surprise at all. It doesn't matter if you are the most accurate, informed, respectable news source in the world, because almost no Americans know what Al Jazeera is, and the name evokes the image backdrop of a middle eastern city most Americans can't find on a map, discussing topics of primary interest to American Muslims and few else, while the female anchors are veiled. Not to mention it sounds like a group Americans are more familiar with that starts with "Al-". This is almost as bad as the Latin American failure of the Chevy Nova (Spanish: no go). They could and should have named it anything, but they really seemed to think their brand would carry any weight at all. One may say this is proof that Americans don't want truth and reason, just entertainment in their news. We do, but the simple fact is that if you fail to appeal to people's simple desires, fears, and impulses, you will fail entirely.

andrewclunn 11y ago
> the most accurate, informed, respectable news source in the world... Let's not oversell it here. They have biases, just different biases. And last I checked, network news providers ratings are on the decline and more and more Americans are getting their news from online outlets (and as many people here have already commented, the cable offerings of Al Jazeera came at the expense of their online offerings).
- sremani 11y ago
  Al Jazeera was nothing but a Salafist network in Liberal Suite. As much critical they were about imperfections of liberal democracies they were not even half that about Islamic Republics, blasphemy laws in ME or Gender/ LGBT rights in muslim majority nations.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Having watched it with some regularity, I disagree. Did you watch it? Or do you have some data to back it up? (I have no evidence other than my experience.)

hackuser 11y ago

This is too bad. They were one of two sources of serious news on cable TV [1] and their global breath of coverage, including many important, original stories I didn't see elsewhere, was exceptional. I always held my breath a little, expecting some propaganda because Al Jazeera is owned by the government of Qatar, but I never noticed any even in Middle East coverage. That doesn't mean it wasn't there - the point of propaganda is to convince the audience that it's legitimate. [1] IMHO: The other serious news on cable is Bloomberg. Some of their content is obvious shilling or advertorial (bring on the CEO and give them a platform and t-ball questions), much is over-stylized, and their priority obviously is business and not other news. However, at least they address serious topics, and provide sophisticated analysis and valuable knowledge. Fox, CNN, MSNBC are a complete waste of my time - all I learn is various political groups' talking points. BBC's analysis is too superficial and too many stories are not hard news, for my taste. As always, print/text news are by far the best sources.

Cyph0n 11y ago
They do a good job of separating the regional channels from the main one. AJ English is quite different from AJ Arabic that at times I feel it's a different channel entirely. However as an Arab Muslim my goto is AJ Arabic as it focuses on the region and I feel covers important events and causes. It's documentaries and investigative pieces are awesome as well.
- hackuser 11y ago
  > AJ English is quite different from AJ Arabic that at times I feel it's a different channel entirely. I'd be very interested to know about AJ Arabic (and I don't speak Arabic at all). If you don't mind sharing a little more: How does it differ from AJ English? Also, maybe 15 years ago I'd hear how AJ Arabic was the only real journalism in the Arab world and a force for democracy and reform. Was that your experience? Is it still? Finally, how and how much does AJ Arabic serve Qatar's rulers' interests? How much better or worse is it than the other government sponsored competitors (e.g., I seem to remember Saudi Arabia runs one, and of course there is the BBC). The best coverage I've found, in English, of the Middle East is Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, both from Israel. I know people may assume they would follow the Israeli government line but I haven't noticed it in the journalism which reports much that challenges the government, including abuse of Palestinians (maybe in the editorials support the government but I don't read them, and Haaretz is against Netanyahu). They cover important stories I don't see in AJ English and cover other stories better - though I read all three anyway.

lazaroclapp 11y ago

Al Jazeera proper however spins this as increasing their direct (online) presence in the U.S: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/al-jazeera-160113151725873.html http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/01/al-jazeera-16011315172... It always did seem weird to me how much Al Jazeera America focused on very local issues, when the entire point of going outside of U.S. media, to me, was to get a more balanced view on global issues (by aggregation, not saying AJ doesn't have its own biases). So maybe, for those of us who get our news online, this might actually be a good news. On the other hand, it makes cable TV news in the U.S. even more homogeneous than it already is...

BummerCloud 11y ago

Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) summarized Al Jazeera's collapse very succinctly: "Al Jazeera America execs chose early on to try to be a voice-less, diluted version of CNN rather than embracing its global identity & brand." https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/687352891372339200 https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/687352891372339200

sp332 11y ago

I thought the coverage was pretty crummy, back when it had just launched which was the last time I looked at it. Hopefully we'll get access to Al Jazeera English videos back when AJA goes away! Edit: Why is this off the front page already?

jgh 11y ago
Is there any indication we will? I really hope so! I enjoyed the AJE content and thought AJA was pretty terrible. It really sucked that they cut off people in the USA from watching AJE everywhere.
- Rayearth 11y ago
  Indeed, I was a little surprised that AJA was both a thing at all and also a thing completely different from AJE. I first discovered AJE while living abroad in a place where the only english news channels were CNN, BBC and AJE, and my impression was that AJE was worthy to stand alongside the other two channels.

phillipamann 11y ago

I'm sorry but why do people love a news organization that is funded by Qatar? People claim that they were completely separate but they weren't at all and gripped by controversy that one would expect from an organization based out of Qatar [1]. I think there are better sources for American and global news than what is essentially the media arm for the corrupt and fascist government of Qatar. [1] https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/al-jazeera-discrimination-lawsuit.pdf https://pmcdeadline2.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/al-jazeera-...

surge 11y ago
Because oddly, in their attempt to build credibility, or maybe because a completely different set of people ran the American branch or the organization, the American version of it was really really good. It spoke out about issues other new orgs ignore, had little in the way of sensationalism and focus on non-sense stories and celebrity scandals. I expected some Islamic propaganda, but it was shockingly progressive in a lot of things it reported on (thinking mainly of its investigative specials). They would talk about the issues with drug prohibition, abuses by police, violations of free speech, one of the only networks that covered privacy issues especially when it comes to the Snowden leaks, NSA, etc and gave it more than the 4th grade reading level version of it and gave time to both arguments, didn't just end the discussion with "because terrorists/pedophiles" like most networks. Jon Oliver regularly used their clips in his show for a reason. They would also mention their campaign to free investigative journalists jailed by the Muslim Brotherhood run government in Egypt.
- gotchange 11y ago
  > I expected some Islamic propaganda, but it was shockingly progressive The Islamist/conservative propaganda is reserved for the Arabic speaking channels such as their main channel AJN. They usually adopt editorial policies and fit their narrative based on the target market and Qatari foreign government policy goals. So, in the Arabic-speaking market, they push reactionary and backward messages to accommodate their conservative Islamist audience beside helping Qatar achieve goals like the wars in Yemen, Syria or Iraq (Sectarian and Sunni dominant militant propaganda) while for its English-speaking channels like AJE, they adopt softer stance on those issue and cater more for the Western liberal viewer with local relevant stories and progressive takes on current affairs. > They would also mention their campaign to free investigative journalists jailed by the Muslim Brotherhood run government in Egypt. Sisi the military dictator who staged the coup in 2013 not the MB who jailed those 3 journalists and then reluctantly freed them after much fanfare.

bruceb 11y ago

"Al Jazeera America went on the air in August 2013 after it bought Al Gore’s Current TV for $500 million." Why did they pay half billion for Current TV? First mistake.

fixermark 11y ago
... like paying scalper's price for a ticket onto the Titanic after it's already hit the iceberg. ;)
ashark 11y ago
Maybe that bought them existing distribution deals worth that much (or more)? Can't think of another reason.
- 6stringmerc 11y ago
  Airlines have done it with routes and gate access in the past, so that does make sense.
fensterblick 11y ago
For influence? If you can't outright bribe a politician, you pay well over asking for his company (or house, or anything else). And then you hope he lends you a willing ear when you need a favor.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  Good point, but I wonder how much influence Al really has anymore? What would Qatar want from him, anyway?

ipsin 11y ago

I did not have a chance to see Al Jazeera America, but based on the number of times John Oliver used AJA clips on his show, and based on the topics related to those clips, I strongly suspected I was missing out. I'd like to know when things our going wrong in our society (because that's how you can start to fix them), without the weird pro-Russian slant of a channel like RT.

coupdejarnac 11y ago

Too bad. Al Jazeera America should have renamed themselves for the American market. Not to hide who they are, but to get past any initial negative impression.

fensterblick 11y ago
They often called themselves "AJ America" or "AJAM"

ck2 11y ago

Every time there is news somehow connected to Gore, I can't help but think somewhere in a parallel universe, the supreme court stayed out of election politics, didn't hand the election to Bush instead of Gore then 9/11 never happened the following year because he actually paid attention to the memo about "Bin Laden determined to strike in US" - then Iraq was never invaded - then the TSA was never created - Gitmo wasn't created - the NSA didn't abuse its power - then credit default swaps were stopped in their tracks before they destroyed the economy. Imagine how incredibly different the US would be today if that series of events was alternated.

ConceptJunkie 11y ago
It would be a lot different, but in that same universe, the entire population of the Earth was killed by a virus spread by unicorn poop, so be glad it didn't happen.
- ck2 11y ago
  You consider a couple votes by the supreme court changing everything to fairy tales? It really, seriously, could have been in favor of Gore. Not far fetched at all. In fact they could have declined to hear the case entirely, which they probably should have done.
  - stvswn 11y ago
    I know. Really makes you think, right? Think of all the bad things that have happened in the past 16 years. Now imagine they didn't happen. Wow. Just one vote.
stvswn 11y ago
They'd have evacuated New Orleans before Katrina hit. They wouldn't have canceled Firefly. Steven Avery wouldn't have been convicted. Imagine.
finance-geek 11y ago
I find it really amusing that you noted "then credit default swaps were stopped in their tracks before they destroyed the economy" as one of the critical junctures in the US economy. It was, and most people dont realize that. CDS allowed large parts of the CDOs to become AAA and enabled all manners of craziness in 2002-2007. Sadly, it often gets blamed on Clinton/Gore given the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 signed weeks before their term ended. The reality was all about how it was implemented/regulated/enforced, which was all during Bush's term. You note correctly, things would have been very different under Gore. For one thing, courageous individuals like Brooksley Born would have been allowed into the discussion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born#Born_and_the_OTC_derivatives_market https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooksley_Born#Born_and_the_OT...

flubert 11y ago

The most funny take on Al Jazeera you'll read today: http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown_relate_t.html http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2013/09/how_does_the_shutdown...

Mizza 11y ago

What does this mean for "AJ+", their SF-based social-tech-media-incubator-youth-mobile-blah thing?

cphoover 11y ago
That's what I was curious about too. I'd imagine AJ+ will be closing with them no?
idrism 11y ago
I think they're keeping AJ+, for now at least.
phillipamann 11y ago
AJ+ is all the worst things about social media. These bite sized share friendly hip news clips about complex issues lacking tons of context. Their Israel coverage is fucking terrible. I have to hand it to them though. They are very clever for coming up with it.

geuis 11y ago

This is a sad end to a line of good news services in the US. My ex gf and I used to be regular viewers of Newsworld International. They showed excellent international news programs and a lot of broadcasts from CBC. We were disappointed when Current took over and watched the switchover as NWI's cast signed off the last time and Current started. Current turned out to be pretty interesting. They were aiming for a younger demographic and were among the first cable networks to really integrate an online presence. It wasn't the same as NWI but had good things going on and we enjoyed watching. When I moved to SF I even worked there for a short period and got to experience the energy of the team at the time. We used to watch Al Jazeera online too. They've always had really good journalism and frequently would have better coverage of American issues than any mainstream news media here. When AJ bought Current, it didn't really make a lot of sense to me as a product. I think AJ wanted to make a move into American cable news, but the department responsible for that wasn't the ones handling their existing online English content. They wanted Current for the cable tv slot, in much the same way Current wanted the slot from NWI. I don't know a lot about the industry, but I think this is something like limited numbers of liquor licenses and taxi medallions in cities. So Al Jazeera shut down the Current office here in SF and opened a news room in DC. They didn't do anything with the online presence Current and AJ already had, and actually made it harder to get the old English content here. Now they're shutting down and so ends a line of good international news in the US.

jordache 11y ago

Good! now I can live stream the international al jazerra broadcast. They shut that down for US after the launch of this american channel

golergka 11y ago

Good riddance. If it was closing because of government intervention, censorship, or anything else like that, I would be fighting it, of course. But since it the main reason for the fact that it's closing is sincere audience disinterest, I'm pretty glad.

VLM 11y ago

As a percentage of the population almost no one watches cable news. Fox's best nights sometimes approach a significant fraction of one percent of the nations population, usually less. And all other channels are far, far lower ratings. Another thing to consider is MSNBC is also nearly unwatched. If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. Given deep enough pockets, AJ could have continued. Narrowcasting is strange, watching channels fight over almost no viewers is like watching academics fight over nothing. Yet supplying the almost no viewers with an internet feed would require quite a few gigs/sec of internet bandwidth. There's quite a wide, unserved gap in the media industry between "a couple people watch me on youtube" and "I have a cable TV channel". There's probably a startup opportunity in there, somehow.

chipotle_coyote 11y ago
If you thought 28K AJ viewers during daytime was bad, imagine MSNBC at exactly half or 14K viewers. While I don't think you're intentionally cherry-picking numbers here, I'm fairly sure you're quoting a Mediaite article about AJAM beating MSNBC during the 2PM newscast in mid-2015. Those are not total viewership numbers. If you want to compare cable news networks, it'd be better to compare their primetime viewerships. AJAM had trouble breaking 30K in primetime, according to the NYT, but at least as of August 2015 (the most recent data I can find), MSNBC's primetime total viewership was 639K -- actually beating CNN slightly. As for "almost no one watches cable news," well: yes, but. Given how much of the HN discussion is centering around cord cutting, it's worth considering how many people get their news from the web sites of CNN and friends. In January 2015, for instance, cnn.com had over 64M unique visitors; foxnews.com had about 55M, while nbcnews.com had about 30M -- even though NBC News has far more viewers than CNN (nearly 10M compared to CNN's under 1M). Sources: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for-2-hours-in-the-key-25-54-ratings-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/al-jazeera-america-beat-msnbc-for... http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in-all-primetime-cable-msnbc-last-in-demo/ http://www.mediaite.com/tv/august-2015-ratings-fox-news-1-in... http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-america-to-shut-down-in-april.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/14/business/media/al-jazeera-... http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://www.journalism.org/2015/04/29/cable-news-fact-sheet/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-holt-evening-news-ratings-1201677863/ http://variety.com/2016/tv/news/abc-david-muir-nbc-lester-ho...

transfire 11y ago

Al Jezeera is an excellent news station. Much better than the others for being more fact oriented. Unfortunately its all about ratings today, facts be damned. I think they give up too easily. I bet if they 1) changed the name to something "all American" and 2) made a reality show about what goes on behind the scenes, that might have been a big enough of a "killer app" to propel the network out of the shadows. However I was disappointed that AJ got rid of the Young Turks.

snake_plissken 11y ago

Man this stinks. Al Jazeera America is reliable and has done some solid reporting over the years. It wasn't afraid to call a spade a spade. Next to BloombergTV it's the only news channel worth watching. On a tin-foil hat aside, but the timing on this; coming a few weeks after they ran the story about performance enhancing drug use by some big name athletes...I can't help but think the two are somehow related.

ptaipale 11y ago
Having seen and understood just a few fragments of Al Jazeera behaviour in Arabic, I have some difficulty in trusting it in English either. E.g. just today came up this post which points out how Al Jazeera used a picture: https://twitter.com/ranaharbi/status/685357579615232000 https://twitter.com/ranaharbi/status/685357579615232000 They stole a picture taken by photographer Serkan Gülsen in Istanbul in 2007 from his Flickr feed https://www.flickr.com/photos/serkangulsen/771185410/in/dateposted-public/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/serkangulsen/771185410/in/date... and now (January 2016) published it as evidence of suffering in the town of Madaya. It's likely that the suffering in Madaya is more than horrible, but why be so lazy as to forge a picture like this? Are they actually trying to destroy their reputation, or do they just trust that the Arabic audience will not notice? And if it does that in Arabic, do I trust it in English?

nikolay 11y ago

Al Jazeera and their AJ+ are funded by the Qatar monarchy. I closely monitor their "news" on Facebook, the hidden agenda is so obvious! I think they might be closing down because oil price keeps dropping.

taurath 11y ago
All media has a hidden agenda - its nice to get a different one sometimes, because when you're only exposed to one all the time you start to forget it has an agenda. There are many things not said and topics not covered in US media, the first and foremost being any direct representations of people suffering from US-led military ventures.
- nikolay 11y ago
  There's no independent media when it comes to geopolitics, unfortunately. We as hackers should challenge the status quo!
amalag 11y ago
Soft Islamism

aaronkrolik 11y ago

>And Al Jazeera America has not been free of controversy in recent months. In November, the news station’s general counsel, David W. Harleston, was suspended following a report in The New York Times that he did not appear to be licensed to practice law. In late December, Al Jazeera aired an hourlong documentary that linked some of the biggest stars in Major League Baseball and the National Football League to performance-enhancing drugs. The most prominent athlete mentioned in the report was the Denver Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning, who angrily denied the report, calling it “complete garbage” and “totally made up.” Lets not forget that they are being sued for libel http://deadspin.com/ryan-howard-ryan-zimmerman-sue-al-jazeera-america-over-1751240312 http://deadspin.com/ryan-howard-ryan-zimmerman-sue-al-jazeer...

slg 11y ago
I surprised their is no discussion of that here. It might not be the most important story Al Jazeera had broken, but it was their biggest pop culture story in a country that often puts a huge pop culture emphasis on their news. The story has been mostly ignored by the mainstream American media and the people accused were more aggressive in their responses than similar athletes have been after similar reports. I can't remember the last time a news organization was immediately sued for libel after these type of accusations. If you are being critical of Al Jazeera, it was a shoddy reporting job and didn't merit being published. If you are being generous, it shows they have almost no impact on American news cycles. Either way, the response wasn't good news for Al Jazeera.

homulilly 11y ago

Does this mean Al Jazeera English will be viewable online again in the US? I never watched AJA because I don't particularly want to watch US-Focused news and I have never had and will never have a cable subscription.

xufi 11y ago

I actually liked AJ to watch besides watching RT a change of the mainstream media news sources, sad to see them go. They were like the BBC but had reporting from more places that even typical alternative news channesl dont spend time on. They also had great documentaries from time to time. Wonder if they'll ever come back perhaps in a different form

unixhero 11y ago

The naming of the channel and hence branding was a real stupid move by them. As if lesser informed members of the public would see past their collectively understood common enemy meme AL-*. It doesn't take a PhD in philosophy to prescient this. Why couldn't they just have chosen something more "user friendly". Hell I even got talked behind my back by HR in a world class consultancy (CAPGEMENI, there I said it) firm for reading Al Jazeera, as if it was something dangerous and that I had dangerous intents (Nothing further happened).

vonnik 11y ago

Al Jazeera in general and its US arm in particular were always more of an instrument of foreign policy for Qatar than a money-making endeavor. I covered the channel as a journalist at a competing news organization, and spoke with dozens of journalists on the inside of AJ. My guess is that Qatar decided they didn't want to waste quite as much money and time trying to sway public opinion in the US. The Arabic version of AJ has always been much more important. Pure speculation, but the cuts may be due to the plunging price of oil, which in turn is affected by the slump of the Chinese economy.

aikah 11y ago
Al Jazeera tended to be more or less balanced when it came to western news, however, the propaganda was clear when it came to middle eastern/ Israel issues. It was in my opinion no different from how RT(Russian today) operates. AJ is still quite popular in UK though, unlike the russian channel.

eklavya 11y ago

I am sorry, I have seen two interviews by Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera. The bias was really really obvious. I don't buy the arguments about how good it is by some commenters here.

known 11y ago

Some staffers saw that as a tacit admission that falling oil prices were behind the closure

known 11y ago

Victim of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrocurrency

Tepix 11y ago

The Intercept also has a piece on this development with some background information https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/al-jazeera-america-terminates-all-tv-and-digital-operations/ https://theintercept.com/2016/01/13/al-jazeera-america-termi....