News Of The World
Yeah, didn't think so.
The cable news networks, after all, are hard to track down here in the U.S.: The former is available to most of us only online, and the latter runs in only a few U.S. markets.
That's a shame, according to Newslab's Deborah Potter, who argues that the networks offer stories and perspectives one can't find in American media.
"Newscasts on Al Jazeera English are dominated by coverage of the Middle East and Muslims. AJE covers stories that others ignore, and gives the stories everyone else covers much more time," she writes. Potter cites packages on Muslim refugees in Bangladesh and women opposing the enforcement of Sharia law in Indonesia as examples.
As for France 24, which seeks to "convey the values of France throughout the world," Potter notes that it offers "more stories from Africa and lots of serious talk about issues like whether Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union." That's not stuff you see much on the U.S. news networks.
Concludes Potter: "Maybe no one much cares that neither Al Jazeera nor France 24 is widely available to a U.S. audience, but they should. It wasn't that long ago that many Americans woke up to the reality that much of the world doesn't like us very much. If we'd been watching the news through their eyes, maybe we wouldn't have been so surprised."