Al Jazeera: The English and America Conundrum

I’m currently enthralled by the political scandal engulfing Turkey right now. So far, I’ve managed to follow the story in the pages of The New York Times. This morning, while I’m suffering from cold induced insomnia, I was on Youtube where I subscribe to Al Jazeera English (and Al Jazeera America as a matter of course- AJE’s channel is way better than AJAm’s). I was in luck, the series Inside Story had the political scandal as its topic. Over joyed, I clicked expecting to spend the next twenty six minutes or so learning more about this scandal. But, to my annoyance, the video is not available in my country anymore. 

The first thing I did was unsubscribe from AJE. (Well what do you expect me to do? I can’t watch their videos anymore!).

The second thing I did was go to the Al Jazeera website in hopes that I could watch it from AJE’s site.Unfortunately, that sent me straight to AJAm’s website. And the specific version of Inside Story I’m looking for is AJE’s not AJAm’s. I can only hope that I didn’t look hard enough or when I contact AJAm that they can help. 

In a way, this incident illustrates my problem with Al Jazeera America. 

Don’t get me wrong. I love the channel. It has quickly become on of my favorites (second only to BBC World). But honestly, Al Jazeera English is, to me anyway, much more interesting. While AJAm has superior international reporting compared to most of its competitors (baring BBC World), AJE has, in my opinion, the better international reporting of the two AJs in English. 

But hey, at least Al Jazeera America whoops most of its competition.