According to Reuters, Tony Burman isn’t wasting any time getting things done in his new role as managing director of Al Jazeera English. Negotiations are pushing forward with U.S.-based cable companies to bring the Arabic news channel to wider distribution. Al Jazeera is also augmenting its Internet presence, including refining its YouTube channel which brought it 21 million views in its first year of operation.
The story that Tony Burman had recently joined the Arab world’s leading news channel, Al-Jazeera, has provoked numerous commentaries. When asked to comment on his new role for this Star piece, Burman said
“Without sounding like a typically self-righteous Canadian, we tend to view things with a detachment that in journalism is a very valued asset. Canadians are viewed in a very favourable way that I must say I find flattering”.
The darker side of commentary has been very busy as well, including this piece in the National Post which stops a hair short of calling Burman and the CBC anti-Semitic, and this one in which the headline denotes that “the rest of them” should be gotten rid of as well. Probably all to be expected, given the demonization of Al-Jazeera in some media after 9/11.
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Comments below | See also: Executives, The Media Landscape |
| Email this | Posted at 11:05 am (16 May 2008) |
I think you doth protest too much. No brown shirts on order ….. yet.
This piece in the National Post which stops a hair short of calling Burman and the CBC anti-Semitic.
Uh, no. It doesn’t even come close to doing that. What it does do is call or imply that Burman and the CBC are anti-Israeli, anti-American, and anti-Zionist.
None of these is the same as (or “a hair short of”) being antisemitic, except in your spin on it.