WE CAN’T HEAR THEM

Al Jazeera English is a brand new television channel that broadcasts world news from a Muslim and Arab perspective. Its stories could help Americans understand the growing global conflict that seems to bear out Harvard Professor Samuel P. Huntington’s 1993 prediction of a “clash of civilizations.”

But the major cable networks and satellite providers have refused to carry it. So most American viewers can’t get such stories as “Gaddafi: Oil Behind Darfur Crisis” and “Why the West Needs Ahmadinejad.” We may not agree, but it’s useful to know that many millions in the rest of the world are being told that the Libyan president charges that the West is trying to grab Sudan’s oil wealth with its plan to send UN troops to Darfur, and that, whatever we may be told about the Iranian president, he is widely respected and may even be sought as a U.S. ally in dealing with the mess in Iraq.

Many Americans know Al Jazeera as a propaganda mouthpiece that carried video messages from Osama bin Laden and pictures of U.S. prisoners. But, even in its Arabic channel, it has come a long way toward mainstream journalism, albeit as an Arab voice. The AP reported that Al Jazeera showed a videotape of what appeared to be portions of a tangled parachute in the recent fighter plane in Iraq: “The broadcaster said the video included scenes of the dead pilot but that they were too graphic to air.”

The new channel may be locked for most Americans, but there is a way to get it. Al Jazeera bypassed the cable companies to “stream” its service on the Internet. There, British newscasters on elaborate sets offer wide-ranging reports on the world. A Christian Science Monitor reporter, Dante Chinni, monitored the station on his computer for five hours and observed that Al Jazeera sounds its own horn sometimes, boasting of its “fearless journalism” and noting that it has gotten brickbats not only from Donald Rumsfeld (“vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable”) but also from Saddam Hussein (“spreading U.S. propaganda”).

The Monitor reporter found it hard to say whether Al Jazeera is a mouthpiece for anti-American propaganda, but, he said, “One thing is clear: The channel seems likely to offer more indepth coverage of the Middle East than anything else most Americans are likely to see.”

The controllers of what we Americans can see on television should take another look at Al Jazeera and at their own responsibilities.