Been watching the streaming of the Egyptian events over the past week or so on various media, and I have to say the stream from Al Jazeera English is about the best I've seen: http://english.aljazeera.net/watch_now/
Before the Egypt events, Al Jazeera was very hard to get. It's issue by issue. If the US government wants you to see it, you will. If they don't, you won't, but you can fill in the time reading about internet censorship in China.
I've been reading their website for a few years now. They're a solid news organization. Their coverage of the uprising in Egypt has been excellent.
In my opinion, the quality and depth of their reporting beats anything stateside. I started following them during the Iraq invasion due to the ridiculous media frenzy here. If anyone gets a chance I highly recommend the movie Control Room. It's definitely has a bias buts it is good opposing viewpoint.
Once you find a way to do it, it probably always works. But for the beginner, I only tried sporadically to view their TV, and I always got problems. Some mirror site would be down, or freeze-framing, and when I got anything, it would be innocuous stories about nothing. Now, suddenly it's easy. The non-TV stuff was also usually impossible in the early war years, but in the last couple years (Obama?) has become easy to read. But the slant is usually the same as AP, so why bother (probably because a lot of the articles are from mainstream American or Israeli sources). Anyway, to discuss the future instead of the past--Next time the US fights a war in the Middle East, you'll have problems getting Al-Jazeera. You can't win a war unless you control the media. The propaganda war is part of the game.
the people running that "propoganda war" call it information operations. Those reporting on it and inserting their own bias call it "journalism". And did you just insinuate that the President had a hand in bringing Al-Jazeera mainstream in the US?
As this ceaseless decade-old war wears on, it becomes more routine, and the government slowly relaxes its grip on the propaganda war, but not through Obama's choice. People will remain intimidated for only so long. Eventually, we're all talking about torture and the cost in dollars and lives and the stupidity. The government can't stop the inevitable, but it can slow it down. Even two boxers can go only so many rounds before they ease up. You really think this country can remain in eternal war, don't you? If conscience doesn't stop it, economics will. Our standard of living will slowly go down the drain. China is eager to pick up the slack economically while we borrow from them to waste energy battling a billion Muslims. Notice China doesn't engage in wars? They're just laughing at how easy it is to beat a superpower distracted by police actions against the little guys on camels. They're thinking, this taking over the world stuff is just too easy.
Al-Jazeera is biased, that's what makes them so good. Al-Jazeera is the most popular Middle East news network for a very good reason: they publish everyone's dirty laundry (except Qatar's, of course). That is why all the Middle Eastern despots hate them. Al-Jazeera English is okay, I guess. They have a lot of Middle East analysis (shocking) that you won't find on CNN or even BBC. But they are not the revolutionary news organization in English that they are in Arabic.
