Al-Jazeera in Burlington 
By Defenders Council of Vermont

When Al-Jazeera tried to launch a spin-off version, Al-Jazeera International, in the U.S., they ran into opposition in the form of Accuracy in Media. AIM produced a DVD, entitled "Terror Television: The Rise of Al-Jazeera and the Hate America Media", which exposed Al-Jazeera’s anti-American biases and support for terrorism. In September of 2006 AIM commissioned a poll to gage Americans’ view of having Al-Jazeera air in the U.S. The poll results showed that by 2-1, Americans think the U.S. Government should oppose giving the new channel access to the U.S. media market. The AIM Press Release of September 13 2006 points out that:

"Al-Jazeera International, an English-language sister network to the Arabic Al-Jazeera, has been desperately seeking carriage on U.S. cable and satellite systems. It has hired well-known media figures such as David Frost, Dave Marash and Riz Khan, and its expensive new television studios are under construction on K Street N.W. in Washington, D.C."

But the new AIM poll finds that the channel’s launch is opposed by more than one-half (53 percent) of the American people, a figure which dwarfs the number of those (29 percent) supporting it. What’s more, 38 percent of the American people were adamantly against the channel."

In a FOX News televised debate with the then top U.S. journalist at Al-Jazeera English, Dave Marash, AIM’s Cliff Kincaid reported on documented evidence that captured terrorists in Iraq had testified that they were motivated to come to Iraq and kill U.S. Soldiers by the images they saw on Al-Jazeera’s Arabic stations. In addition, he pointed to documentation of close connections between Al-Jazeera and the former regime of Saddam Hussein. Kincaid also points out that Retired Army Intelligence officer and columnist Ralph Peters is blunt, calling their correspondents "Killers with Cameras." He has written that "Al-Jazeera is so consumed by hatred of America and the West that the network would rather see Iraq collapse into a bloodbath than permit the emergence of a democracy sponsored by Washington." Rather than deny these allegations, Marash simply insisted that Al-Jazeera English would be free from influence of the parent company and not have the same biases.

Well, as they say "That was then, This is Now". Recently, Marash has stepped down from the station, citing "reflexive adversarial editorial stance" against Americans at Al-Jazeera English.

Americans are not the only ones with a beef against Al-Jazeera. In a February 2007 Blog, AIM reported that the Iraqi government has issued the following statement: "The Al-Jazeera channel continues in its overtly hostile attitude towards the Iraqi people and continues to contribute to the spread of death and destruction by adopting a line that is frankly hostile to the Iraqi people and government. We condemn this attitude and call on parliament to take a firm position on this channel and resort to all legal means to prevent it continuing its hostile policy."

The result of AIM’s heroic efforts was that no major cable station in America was willing to carry Al-Jazeera English. As Rao Shakuntala points out in an article from Entrepreneur.com entitled "Adding Al Jazeera: how the Qatar-based news channel made its way onto the airwaves of Burlington, Vermont": "Burlington was the first American city to offer cable access to the Qatar-based news channel, joined months later only by Toledo, Ohio. 

While Toledo has a sizable Arabic-speaking population, Burlington is predominantly white, with a tiny Muslim population, a handful of resettled refugee families from Bosnia and Somalia who have little interest in Middle Eastern politics." The article goes on to point out that it was Vermont’s left leaning political climates, which prompted them to lead the charge in this matter.

The move to bring Al-Jazeera to Burlington met with immediate local opposition. According to a local Burlington resident who is now spearheading the opposition, "The prior general manager of BT (Burlington Telecom) brought AJ online unilaterally, without formal approval from the Mayor or City Council Apparently he did brief the council, but told them AJ is just like the BBC and CNN."

Perhaps it was this opposition, coupled with a bleak financial future, which led to a decision by the current general manager to simply drop Al-Jazeera. This was a move that should not have been much of a surprise since they had no contract to begin with. When the local "Peace and Justice" groups got wind of this, they started to scream about violations of free speech. This resulted in a publicly televised event set up to explore the question as to why AJ was being dropped. Of course, no such public inquiries have been made as to why it was picked up in the first place. At this event members of the newly formed Defenders Council of Vermont challenged the notion that the right to free speech included the right to taxpayer subsidized airing of one’s speech. It was suggested that the free speech issue was a Red Herring argument that could lead to an end of the real debate on whether BT’s listeners are well served by carrying Al-Jazeera. 

As it stands now, there will be a public hearing on the matter while a contract is being negotiated. The question stands before us whether the citizens of Burlington want to publicly support a station with ties to a media outlet that has been instrumental in encouraging terrorists to come to Iraq and engage in battle with the men and women of OUR armed forces? Is that how we support the troops?
 

Defenders Council of Vermont. http://www.defenderscouncilvt.com/index.shtml