It occurred to me that BBC or CNN surely would have jumped at the chance to break the news of an Osama bin Laden video or two, wouldn’t they? He just happened to send them to Al Jazeera instead, the most-watched network in the Middle East. Al Jazeera competes fiercely with premiere networks in all corners of the globe. The deep resources and far reach of Al Jazeera has even been known to lure prominent media figures away from the competition (Sir David Frost’s weekly Frost Over the World jumps to mind). As far as Islamic bias goes, I’ll quickly mention that last week’s special, The Promised Land, offered a thoroughly informative and impartial (as is possible) account of the birth of Israel.
My Al Jazeera rant aside (okay one last spiel: check out Control Room, a documentary on, you guessed it), I don’t think it’s merely because I have satellite TV that the news of late seems busier than usual. Here are three stories that have occupied my mind.
Over the last year, I’ve been casually following news of Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden, but the last few weeks have blown all benchmarks out of the water. This article tells of the local pirate economy that has developed in semi-autonomous Puntland, including white-collar accountants and negotiators, thousands of workers, and an annual ransom-generated revenue that surpassed Puntland’s $20 million budget last year. As I write, over a dozen boats are under pirate control, and a Ukrainian arms shipment apparently destined illegally for South Sudan is docked up with 33 Russian battle tanks on board. Modern-day pirates, I’ll be damned.
Closer to home, I came across this Margaret Atwood article through a friend, and thought I should share it with all of you – Canadians and non-Canadians alike. As you may know, the United States isn’t the only country with an election fast approaching. Canada (and Zambia, for that matter) is also in the heat of campaigning, as Conservative Stephen Harper is standing for re-election and vying for a parliamentary majority. Margaret Atwood passionately reminds us of the value of the arts and creative industries to our country, and the indifference “Mr. Harper” affords them. (If you’ll allow me one more political jab, the Canadian International Development Agency’s International Youth Internship Program, of which I am a part, has suffered relentless cutbacks under Harper’s government; it’s quite plausible that I would've missed the boat if I’d waited another year.)
Lastly, even here in Lusaka, Zambia, the geographic centre of Southern Africa, the intricacies of American news events have reached life-or-death proportions. Everybody is following the US election, and now the financial crisis too. My one anecdote should tie this otherwise meandering blog post together. A couple of days ago, Al Jazeera was discussing Sarah Palin’s recent catastrophic performances on TV, and then showed a clip… of Tina Fey impersonating Palin on Saturday Night Live! The catch? Unless I missed it (I was watching intently), there was no mention that this was in fact a comedian impersonating Palin, and not the vice presidential candidate herself. Excepting a small SNL logo in the top left corner of the screen, Tina Fey appears to have successfully passed herself off as the 44-year-old hockey mom from Alaska, to thousands (millions?) of viewers around the world.
(I just realized this Al Jazeera slip-up doesn’t exactly reinforce my argument about the quality of their news; I don’t hold it against them.)
Gratuitous photo of pretty Lusaka flowers.
1 comment:
I'm also interested in piracy. For anyone else who is too, the documentary can be found here.
Post a Comment