Al-Jazeera

People love to hate the Qatar based news organization, but remember that al-Jazeera is the most honest and open source for political viewpoints in the Arabic world. People may whine about the Anti-American aspect of its news broadcasts, but in reality it is much more nuanced than the popular viewpoint that al-Jazeera is the enemy of the United States.

Marc Lynch:

The neoconservative Weekly Standard’s call for America to “find a way to overcome the al-Jazeera effect” gets things exactly wrong. The United States needs to find ways to work constructively with the “al-Jazeera effect.” The station is as witheringly critical of Arab regimes as it is opposed to certain pillars of American foreign policy. In its urgent desire to promote democracy and other reforms in the Arab world, al-Jazeera shares important aspirations with America. Though no friend of U.S. foreign policy, it is perhaps the single most powerful ally America can have in pursuit of the broad goal of democratic change in the Middle East. In the words of Egyptian dissident Saad al-Din Ibrahim, al-Jazeera has “done probably for the Arab world more than any organized critical movement could have done, in opening up the public space, in giving Arab citizens a newly found opportunity to assert themselves.

Economist:

Particularly appealing to the Arab public was a programme called “The Opposite Direction”, a 90-minute showdown between guest opponents, where viewers were encouraged to call and join in. A recent trailer for the programme posed typically blunt questions: “Why is it that when an Arab leader dies, people moan and wail as if the nation can't live without him? What have these leaders ever achieved for us? Aren't they symbols of corruption and backwardness and tyranny?”

Al-Jazeera is hardly CNN or NBC news, but its much more accurate, honest, and influential than any of the official state run Arabic news networks (except for possibly al-Arabiya).