Clinton media criticism buoys Al-Jazeera

NEW YORK -- A decade ago the U.S. government attacked Al-Jazeera as a propagator of anti-American propaganda. Now Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton is citing the network for fine news coverage - and tweaking the U.S. media in the process.

The Arab broadcaster says it's ready to take advantage of what it considers a major boost in its acceptance in the United States.

Clinton, on the week many U.S. television outlets were preoccupied by the spectacle of actor Charlie Sheen, suggested during testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that American networks were falling behind in the competition for information.

Al-Jazeera has been a leader in changing people's minds and attitudes, Clinton told lawmakers Wednesday.

"Like it or hate it, it is really effective," Clinton said. "In fact, viewership of Al-Jazeera is going up in the United States because it is real news."

"You may not agree with it, but you feel like you're getting real news around the clock instead of a million commercials and, you know, arguments between talking heads and the kind of stuff that we do on our news that is not providing information to us, let alone foreigners."

Fox News Channel's Michael Clemente said he was "surprised and kind of curious" by Clinton's remarks.

Representatives from CNN, ABC, CBS and NBC news all declined comment Friday on what Clinton said.

But former CNN Washington bureau chief Frank Sesno agreed with her assessment.

"She's right," said Sesno, who is now director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University.

"Cable news has become cable noise. It was intended to be an opportunity to inform people, and instead it has become an opportunity to inflame people."

The cable news shift toward opinion has paid off handsomely for ratings leader Fox News Channel and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC.

CNN has resisted a partisan drift to concentrate more on news and has suffered in the ratings the past couple of years. With budget cuts, the influence of the major broadcast news divisions has been waning.

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41915836/ns/today-entertainment/

And yes. I'm a bit shocked.

And I definitely do get a sense from the website that they are a strong news provider.

it can only be a positive thing for Americans to see news from another perspective.

I get Democracy Now! and GritTV on my Comcast cable from the Bridges channel.

Remember that guy in Buffalo who decapitated his wife? Who owned a cable teevee channel? Well, it's THAT channel.

Thank you, BridgesTV. Not so much for Comcast.

Now, rarely a day goes by that I don't watch the full half-hour or full hour news show.

It's da bomb.:evilgrin: