Hitchens on Al Jazeera Memo

January 11th, 2006 at 16:58 Björn Hallberg

How bad does it have to get before even Christopher Hitchens wants some sort of reckoning?

Slate - It is high time that this question was ventilated by people other than British editors and journalists who labor under the repressive conditions of the Official Secrets Act. Al Jazeera is not describable, perhaps, as a strictly objective station, but it is the main source of news in the Arab world because it is not the property of any state or party, and it has given live and unedited coverage of things like the elections in Iraq. In 2001, its office in Afghanistan was destroyed by “smart” bombs. In 2003, its correspondent in Baghdad was killed in an American missile strike. If it becomes widely believed that it has been or is being targeted, the consequences in the region will be rather more than Karen Hughes’ “public diplomacy” can handle.

Pretty bad quite frankly. At least amidst his unabashed cheerleading he can recognize tackiness and public relations gaffes when he sees them. Perhaps he isn’t as mentally atrophied (and drunken) as some had believed. Just incredibly apt and quick at creating and finding controversy.

And regarding news in general, where can you find a “strictly objective station.” Well, the simple textbook answer in nowhere of course. There is no such thing as “strict” objectivity. And compared to the US mainstream media which holds Hitchens in such high regard all of a sudden, Al Jazeera does a damn good job. At the end of a slanted, non-objective day, at least they report “the other side” of the story, the one that Hitchen’s darling media wouldn’t even touch, or indeed could even comprehend or perceive because of their “embedded” or ethnocentrist position.

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