Appar­ent­ly the U.S. is pres­sur­ing “Qatar to sell the Al Jazeera TV network”:www.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/international/middleeast/30jazeera.html The best line in the New York Times article:
bq. Vice Pres­i­dent Dick Cheney, Defense Sec­re­tary Don­ald H. Rums­feld, Sec­re­tary of State Con­doleez­za Rice, for­mer Sec­re­tary of State Col­in L. Pow­ell and oth­er Bush admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials have com­plained heat­ed­ly to Qatari lead­ers that Al Jazeer­a’s broad­casts have been inflam­ma­to­ry, mis­lead­ing and occa­sion­al­ly false, espe­cial­ly on iraq.
So I sup­pose Cheney, Rums­feld, Rice and Pow­ell have nev­er giv­en out mis­lead­ing or occa­sion­al­ly false infor­ma­tion about iraq?
Al Jazeera is watched by 30 mil­lion to 50 mil­lion view­ers. It’s cov­er­age has been inflam­ma­to­ry and I’m not going to defend that, but it’s the most impor­tant media source in the Mid­dle East and should not be shut down by Amer­i­can pres­sure. Qatar is only con­sid­er­ing sell­ing it, but poten­tial buy­ers for the financially-strapped net­work are few. And the Cheney team would­n’t be involved if they weren’t inter­est­ed in mak­ing it’s con­tent more U.S. friendly.