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Burlington Debates Dropping Al Jazeera
Burlington, VT - The municipally-owned telecommunications company launched two years ago by Vermont's largest city - Burlington, also known as the "People's Republic" - is struggling with a divisive dispute over whether to continue airing Al Jazeera English, the 24-hour news and public affairs channel headquartered in Qatar.
Al Jazeera English was added to the Burlington Telecom line up in December 2006, shortly after the channel started airing. Since then it has become one of the three largest global English language news sources, reaching an estimated 100 million households worldwide. According to the New York Times, it has distribution deals in markets as far-flung as Portugal, Ukraine and Vietnam.
The Burlington controversy escalated after BT General Manager Chris Burns decided to drop the channel in response to "dozens" of complaints from angry customers. Only a few other US cable systems - in Ohio, Texas, and Washington, DC - currently carry it, although Al Jazeera is available via broadband portals and some public access operations.
About 75 people attended a May 27 meeting at Burlington City Hall of the two citizen committees that monitor BT management. Comments from 28 area residents ran three-to-one in favor of keeping the channel on the air. Burlington's Progressive Mayor Bob Kiss had suggested that a "broader discussion" should take place before a final decision is made.
Those in favor of keeping Al Jazeera cited the fact that the channel is extremely popular in Israel and provides a different perspective on international events. Rep. Bill Aswad, a Burlington Democrat, said the channel gives Burlingtonians the opportunity to learn about Muslims and Islam, and that "if someone doesn't want to learn more they can switch to a different channel." One person even pointed out that the channel is virtually the only news outlet that airs unedited speeches by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
Those opposed argued that Al Jazeera is intolerant and endorses terrorism, and that Burlington should "shun Jew hating." One speaker called its local carriage as an insult to "any patriotic American." In a report on the meeting, WCAX, the state's largest commercial TV station, noted that some people blame the network for the deaths of US soldiers. Several on both sides of the issue threatened to drop their BT subscriptions if the decision went against their position.
Several speakers compared the Middle East-based channel with Fox News, arguing that Fox's content is a greater "threat to liberty." Regardless of how Burlington resolves the issue, a representative of RETN, the local educational channel, said that it will continue to air Al Jazeera broadcasts.
Frustrated with their cable company Adelphia (later purchased by Comcast) and phone company Verizon, Burlington citizens voted for a municipal fiber network in 1997. Two years later, the publicly-owned Burlington Electric Department partnered with Aptus Networks to build a citywide network. Since BT's launch in 2006 it has attracted about 2100 customers and is rapidly expanding its reach. Basic service is available at half the cost of Comcast, and provides 20 channels, Internet service, and two cent per minute local phone calls.
Channels are selected based on what the competition offers, but so far BT has also included any channel that provides free content. That policy brought Al Jazeera's English version to the city, but there is no contract between BT and the channel. Until recently, most of the opposition has come from blogs and people outside of Burlington.
According to the Boston Globe, Al Jazeera's presence on Burlington TV screens became an issue due to the lobbying of the Defenders Council of Vermont. "The group, with 15 to 20 members, formed last year and says its mission is to 'educate the citizens of Vermont about the nature, reality and threat of radical Islam,' and to 'honor the men and women of the armed services and their families,' the Globe reported.
"In a city that gave both ice cream mavens Ben & Jerry their start in capitalism and socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders his start in politics, the debate over Al-Jazeera was bound to be a lively one," the newspaper added.
The City Council has the authority to decide what channels are carried but has avoided becoming involved in content issues. When some subscribers complained about the titles of adult programs being available for anyone to see, BT decided to offer adult content only to those who wanted it, blocking even the channel listing for the rest.
Local roots and accountability to the community set BT apart from private companies. Both must provided funding and space for public access channels, but Burlington Telecom goes farther. When the community asked for additional channels for live coverage of events and a video-on-demand option for local programming, BT worked to provide it.
At the public forum the debate over Al Jazeera was described by some as a free speech issue. Others argued that the US is "at war" and that the channel is "a subtle way of undermining what we take for granted." On its website, Al Jazeera English says that its purpose is to balance "the current typical information flow by reporting from the developing world back to the West and from the southern to the northern hemisphere. The channel gives voice to untold stories, promotes debate, and challenges established perceptions."
Greg Epler-Wood, who chairs both the Citizens Advisory Committee and the Burlington Telecommunications Advisory Committee appointed by the City Council, says another public forum will be held in June before any recommendation is made. Epler-Wood also has invited written comments either via e-mail (greg@burlingtontelecom.net) or care of Burlington Telecom, 200 Church Street, Burlington, VT 05401. In the end, BT and Mayor Kiss will make the call.
© 2008 Maverick Media
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22 Comments so far
Show AllThis sounds vaguely familiar. Germany 1933 perhaps?
As someone who has seen Al Jazera in English,(on the net and it is not in real time) I find this whole article and the flap on which it is reporting quite amusing.
God (or Allah, Vishnu, or Bhudda!) forbid that anywhere in the US any channel carried on any cable system should not be "on message" according to the latest White House party line. We wouldn't want to challenge the notion that in America "seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day". Why, our brave men and women are risking their lives so that we can...well never mind that one for now.
The far more interesting story within this story is that the citizens of Burlington had the gumption to authorize their own alternative cable system and phone service to counteract the corporate dictated programming drivel being dished out by Comcast and the lousy phone service deal offered by Verizon. This is an example worthy of further examination and emulation throughout the US.
Living in Europe I watch Al Jazerra and find it is the least biased of any of the national medias that broadcast internationally. My Arab friends swear that Al Jazerra is a CIA front. I think that gives them credability.
Israel's largest TV networks have dropped CNN in favor of Al Jazeera English. But what do they know...
During the watergate scandel 'Deepthroat' said "follow the money". Today the money trails are hardly hidden - one might say 'follow the challenges to freedom of information'.
Someone opposed to Al Jazera says its presence is "a subtle way of undermining what we TAKE FOR GRANTED." We cannot afford to take anything for granted.
Old Goat ...
'Someone opposed to Al Jazera says its presence is "a subtle way of undermining what we TAKE FOR GRANTED." We cannot afford to take anything for granted.'
Yep
Bu$hco have not been subtle in the way they have taken away so much of what some still, misguidedly, take for granted.
"Those opposed argued that Al Jazeera is intolerant and endorses terrorism, and that Burlington should "shun Jew hating." One speaker called its local carriage as an insult to "any patriotic American.""
Utterly laughable. If a comedian wrote this to satirize the right, it would flop because it would be considered so over-streached an exxageration.
Do the poeple who say this ever actually view the channel?
I regularly go to their webside, and find that Al Jazeera Engkish is rather a stodgy outfit comparable to any of the corporate media or NPR.
You can watch Al Jazeera English at www.aljazeera.net/english if you cannot watch it on cable - it is freely available on the net so it is a myth that it is out of reach for the mainstream American public.
The nonsense about Al Jazeera being a mouthpiece for Jew-haters and radicals out to kill Americans is of course just that - but there is a strong element of irony to it.
The mainstream cable companies can tolerate the presence of FOX News which routinely promotes resentment against liberals, left wingers, democrats, antiwar activists and of course, Arabs.
They can fathom the presence of CNN Headline News' Glenn Beck, who has, among other verbal antics, called for the Middle East to be attacked with nuclear weapons, for Mexicans to be turned to biofuel, and fantasized about murdering prominent liberal filmmaker Michael Moore.
And the presense of Pat Robertson, the fundamentalist cleric who routinely preaches hatred against Muslims and homosexuals, and who has even called for the overthrow and assassination of Venezuela's democratically elected President Hugo Chavez, is taken in the stride.
Even Bill O Reilly, whose O Reilly Factor seldom passes the one half hour mark without degenerating into a rowdy shouting match is tolerated, all in the name of media diversity.
And yet, the presence of Al Jazeera English, a global 24 hour television news network - the first in the Middle East to broadcast in English is treated as a hot potato.
It seems unnecessary to point out that unlike its sister Arabic station, Al Jazeera English has never been involved in any major controversies. Or that some three million hits from North America alone occur each week on the station's section on Youtube, attesting to its popularity among Americans dismayed by the seemingly relentless decline in journalistic standards of the corporate media. Likewise, pointing out the failure of Al Jazeera to buy into the lies of the White House during the run up to the war in Iraq, unlike the corporate media in the US seems to be an exercise in futility. The only thing that matters to Al Jazeera's many detractors and critics is that it is an Arab television station that depicted the human cost of the Iraq war in a manner that did not fit into the heavily whitewashed and conveniently-if-fallaciously sugarcoated coverage of the invasion by the mainstream media.
The difference between Al Jazeera and the mainstream corporate media is that Al Jazeera got the Iraq story right by choosing not to blindly follow the official line, while the corporate media eschewing its committment to tell the truth. Hence the difference between Al Jazeera and the mainstream media is the difference between a channel unafraid to speak the truth to power and the hordes that lied for the sake of convenience.
I hope, if nothing else, for the sake of the truth, if not for the sake of media diversity that Burlington Telecom chooses the truth over the falsehoods of the corporate media.
I read Al Jazeera on line. It's very fair and balanced publication. In fact they bend over backward to be fair and balanced (unlike the Fake News Channel er I mean FOX).
suhail_shafi May 29th, 2008 4:33 pm:
"You can watch Al Jazeera English at www.aljazeera.net/english…"
Well put, suhail. It's comical that, in "the land of the free", they are I believe one of the last western countries not to have Al Jazeera widely available (except of course for online viewers). But I think it may be a cultural thing. From what I gather, Americans prefer their "journalists" to get the story wrong. This only works, of course, if they all get it wrong so that they can read the bleedingly obvious truth in "tell all" books, years after the fact and then act shocked.
-"But, we ALL believed that there were weapons of mass distruction…"
Anybody saying the above wasn't watching Al Jazeera, or one of the other internationally renowned news outlets. Maybe when John Q Public can watch Al Jazeera as well as Fox, it will break the log jam of disinformation afflicting that country.
Just the usual closeminded ignorant segment of the populace that got off of the Mayflower to practice their rigid oppressive religiosity.
The US is a country that does not tolerate dissent very well. If you don't stay within the bounds of what the Democrats and Republicans say, people give you dirty looks. If you tell people what the rest of the world is aware of--that the US is an empire--they get angry and never speak to you again.
Poet:
The far more interesting story within this story is that the citizens of Burlington had the gumption to authorize their own alternative cable system and phone service to counteract the corporate dictated programming drivel being dished out by Comcast and the lousy phone service deal offered by Verizon. This is an example worthy of further examination and emulation throughout the US.
Thanks Poet, now I've got Home on the Range stuck in my head. Over here in Australia we call those sort of weather conditions a drought.
"The Burlington controversy escalated after BT General Manager Chris Burns decided to drop the channel in response to "dozens" of complaints from angry customers."
I would hope that Vermont dropped Burns rather than Al Jazeera. And that the "dozens" who complained were reminded that they could always hit the off button on their remotes.
This is GREAT of Burlington Vt and its residents, with one "little" exception. I don't understand how the "deciders" over whether there will be more discussion, or not, allow NON-Burlington residents to have any say at all on what the city and its residents decide for their own services. At least the educational channel will continue airing Al Jazeera, but I find this to be unacceptable conduct of the city's political or council reps. They should just tell outsiders to MIND THEIR OWN DAMN BUSINESS, plain and simple.
I'm sure the population of the city can certainly handle relatively few scmucks who would wish to butt their damn noses into this any further.
"The Burlington controversy escalated after BT General Manager Chris Burns decided to drop the channel in response to "dozens" of complaints from angry customers."
Do you suppose if a couple dozen of us complained to Comcast we could Fox News dropped?
www.StudentsForTheEarth.org
Funny that some people claim that Al Jazeera is anti-Semitic and anti-American.
My favorite example that those claims are sheer BS uttered by people who've never read or watched Al Jazeera, or by lobby groups with an agenda, is Luis Posada Carilles. Mr Posada Carilles is a Cuban exile with links to American intelligence that span some 40 years or more. Now living in Miami, over the last couple of years he'd been in the news after beeing detained on immigration charges in the US.
If Al Jazeera was so anti-American, you'd figure that they'd take advantage of the opportunity to deal with Mr. Posada Carilles' history of links to US intelligence, or the hypocrisy and legal implications of the US proceeding with immigration charges against him rather than dealing with the terrorist activities he's participated in. Nope.
Al Jazeera called him an "activist".
Great idea, joneden, but I doubt efforts would be so greatly successful. It sure would be some real [relief] to see or have FN [disappeared].
If you want to contact Burlington Telecom to urge them to keep the Al Jazeera channel on board - here are their links -
http://www.burlingtontelecom.net/contactus/
Here is their manager's email -
cburns@burlingtontelecom.com
I contacted them and I hope they make the right decision.
You can also connect with Mayor Kiss -
http://www.ci.burlington.vt.us/mayor/public_comment.php
He is going to be very influntial in this regard. You can send him an email urging the channel to stay on air.
Al jazeera is yet another one of the pro-arab media outlets out there. Which makes it no different then the BBC, DW, or any other major european news service, which I can watch anyday I want on PBS.
Al Jazeera is biased at best, but no more biased then what's already out there. At least they don't try to hide behind an anglo-sounding name.