Part of our culture still lingers on the days of apple pie and baseball. The newscaster is supposed to be a family friendly fit in your living room. But every morning, “The Today Show,” gives me 15 minutes of the news desk and three hours of talk show.
Yes, they are a ‘news magazine’ and are supposed to be light and bright. But where am I supposed to get the truth amid the fifth cancer segment this week and the latest fall fashions for people over 40?
People want hope. I get it. But can the average Joe on the street tell me the difference between Sunni and Shiite? Kurdistan and Kazakhstan? I know I’m demanding a lot here. I won’t pretend to know half of what’s going on in the world, but I try my best. And so should the American news networks. Is it really too much to ask?
I’ve had it up to the ears in toy recalls and soldier stories. I feel like everyday is the same story with a different face. This probably all seems incredibly insensitive, and I am certainly not saying that the current news highlights aren’t important, just overemphasized.
As a writer for gothamist.com described the BBC, “The newscast is not flashy and filled with cute graphics. You’ll feel much more informed about what is really going on in the U.S. and the world than watching the combined 90 minutes of the offerings from CBS, NBC, and ABC or from watching CNN for twelve hours.” That’s quite a bold statement.
The “Big 3,” as ABC, NBC, and CBS have been dubbed, are facing the flight of viewers to the BBC America network’s newest launch of BBC World News America. The broadcast is tailored to the American viewer whereas the previously aired newscast was simply BBC World. This is of course excluding Fox and CNN, which are fine if you like watching the same celebrity revelation at midday over and over again. I guess it was a slow day.
World News America started broadcasting earlier this month, though if you grab that remote in a UMass dorm room, you won’t find the BBC America channel in our listings. There is the always reliable PBS broadcast of the BBC World News. Or if you are on the go, there is the BBC NewsPod and various other podcasts available by news genre through iTunes.
On that note, I add that the BBC is not the mouthpiece of Al Jazeera.
Most Americans know Al Jazeera as the voice for certain terrorist leaders in hiding. But they are indeed more than that.
The BBC has participated in joint ventures with Arabic news in the past, and perhaps that’s the reason why Al Jazeera gets tossed into the mix. BBC World had a joint Arabic television operation with the Saudis in the mid-90s. It shut down in 1996 because they could not agree on censorship matters. Many of the BBC staffers moved to Al Jazeera when it began airing later that year.
In the Middle East, it is considered the most reliable news source according to a recent poll. The same poll had Fox as the top network in the United States and the BBC for the large majority of Europe and elsewhere. To the Arab people, Al Jazeera is a powerful symbol of free speech that had been something relatively unheard of in many of the participating countries.
Naturally, that caused a lot of stir among the Gulf states. The Algerian government even went so far as to cut the electricity in 1999 to parts of their capital in order to stop the public from viewing one specific program that was to be shown on the day in question. It is the only station independent from political control in the Middle East.
Al Jazeera has a negative connotation here in the U.S. because of the administration’s discontent with the way the broadcast has presented the war in Iraq. The majority of dislike comes from the broadcast of videos of al-Qaida leaders. This has resulted in many accusations against the station, sensationalist being one of the kinder terms in use. The point being however, that the BBC and Al Jazeera operate independently.
If at the end of a long day you are looking for some news to make you feel better about the world then choose one of the mainstream networks. If you want something hard-hitting, albeit slightly more depressing, then the Brits are for you.
BBC won’t be there to hold your hand; they don’t aim to make you feel good about the state of the world. They will give you simply the reliable truth.
Hannah Nelson is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].
