
U.S. Orders Al Jazeera to Register as a Foreign Agent - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/business/aj-al-jazeera-fara.html#click=https://t.co/VKTGW2u4S6
======
dx87
Even though the reporting can be very biased, Al Jazeera was one of the only
news channels we watched in the military, along with BBC. I wish we had
similar news agencies in the USA that show actual world news, and aren't just
attractive people sitting around a table, gossiping about
Democrats/Republicans.

~~~
omgwtfbyobbq
The closest I've found is a local public television station that has a block
of PBS Newshour, Newsline, DW News, BBC World News, and France 24. It'd be
nice if they had Al Jazeera, or even a few more broadcasts from other parts of
the world, but I imagine English language broadcasts are rare in certain
places.

~~~
082349872349872
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dsWF2prkR8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dsWF2prkR8)
is a thing. TIL.

further thoughts at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23858477](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23858477)

> "If you agree with it, it's truth. If you don't agree, it's propaganda.
> Pretend that it is all propaganda. See what happens on your analysis
> reports."

~~~
Karawebnetwork
Watching live news with a youtube chat next to it is quite an interesting
experience.

------
colordrops
On a tangential note, it's bizarre how only certain twitter accounts are
marked "state media" and all western media accounts (e.g. BBC) are left alone.

~~~
ciarannolan
Which ones are marked "state media"? AJE is not:
[https://twitter.com/AJEnglish](https://twitter.com/AJEnglish)

~~~
slim
RT and Sputnik news have it. But not "voice of america"
[https://mobile.twitter.com/VOANews/status/129330694903191142...](https://mobile.twitter.com/VOANews/status/1293306949031911426)

~~~
SpicyLemonZest
Really? That's pretty weird on Twitter's part, cause I know Youtube marks VOA
as state media.

~~~
bawolff
I think youtube marks anything government affiliated. It marks CBC as gov
owned and its run at a fair distance from the gov. Maybe twitter is trying to
only mark media that is state mouth pieces, then again VoA is literally
founded for propaganda purposes.

------
satya71
Al Jazeera is my go to channel for on the ground reporting in places where few
dare to go -- Syria, Kashmir, NWFP in Pakistan, ...

------
kingwill101
I'm from the Caribbean and I find I learn a lot more about what's happening in
the world. For years I've watched BBC and CNN international and found them way
too biased to from a properly unbiased view about most stories.

------
QUFB
Another day in the world of tyrannical Gulf Monarchs trying to gain the upper
hand on each other.

~~~
AtlasLion
and the big power using them as chess pieces to keep the petrodollar safe.

------
dirtyid
Part of the Israel/UAE/Qatar drama. USCENTCOM is hosted in Al Udeid Air Base
in Qatar, IIRC it's US largest forward base in the region. I doubt US plans to
move it to UAE. Doesn't seem like smart diplomacy but not unsound gamble for
current admin's ME foreign policy goals. Trumps fishing hard for that Nobel
Peace prize.

------
ejanus
They fish out dirts in others while their home country is never exposed to
their investigative journalism.

~~~
webmaven
_> They fish out dirts in others while their home country is never exposed to
their investigative journalism._

True, and the same can be said of RT, and many others.

This actually seems to be the default configuration for the market in
journalism (whether the funding comes from advertising or the state).
Afflicting the comfortable even-handedly is a privilege very few news
organizations have. There is almost always a hand that feeds them they are
reluctant to bite.

The best we can reasonably hope for (WRT Aljazeera) is a competing org with a
different source of funding.

~~~
kombucha111
Comparing RT and al Jazeera is laughable. RT is hot garbage.

------
cwwc
Full text: The Justice Department ordered a digital news network based in the
United States and owned by Al Jazeera, the media company backed by the royal
family of Qatar, to register as a foreign agent, surprising a high-level
delegation from Doha just as officials from the two nations met to strengthen
diplomatic and economic alliances.

Al Jazeera suggested the move was part of a separate deal, signed on Tuesday
and brokered by the Trump administration, in which the United Arab Emirates, a
Qatari rival, normalized diplomatic relations with Israel. The Emirates
ambassador to the United States said that was not true.

In a letter dated Monday that was obtained by The New York Times, the Justice
Department said that AJ+, a network that primarily produces short videos for
social media in English as well as Arabic, French and Spanish, engages in
“political activities” on behalf of Qatar’s government and should therefore be
subject to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Qatar, the letter said, provides the network’s funding and appoints its board
of directors.

“Journalism designed to influence American perceptions of a domestic policy
issue or a foreign nation’s activities or its leadership qualifies as
‘political activities’ under the statutory definition,” said the letter, which
was signed by Jay I. Bratt, the chief of the Justice Department’s
counterintelligence division, “even,” the letter added, “if it views itself as
‘balanced.’”

------
disown
On whose orders did we do this and why now? Of course... Israel.

For all the talk about foreign meddling, we never hear anything about israel.
You here endless propaganda about russia, china, etc, but never about israel.
I'm sure putin and xi wish they had the influence in the US that israel has.

Has part of a presidential election ever kicked off in moscow or beijing like
trump did with israel? Can you imagine the lunatic hysteria it would have
kicked off in traditional and social media?

Is there any country, other than israel, that you cannot boycott as an
american. You can boycott china. You can boycott russia. Heck you can even
boycott america as an american. But you can't boycott israel.

[https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-
protesters/new-...](https://www.aclu.org/blog/free-speech/rights-
protesters/new-israel-anti-boycott-act-still-unconstitutional)

Trump, Pompeo and his administration openly state that Trump exists to save
Israel.

[https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/pompeo-
suggests...](https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/pompeo-suggests-god-
sent-trump-save-israel-n986136)

Not to save america, but israel. Imagine if they say they exist to save china
or russia. We'd call that treason.

Yes, lets investigate russian and chinese foreign meddling. But lets not stop
there. Lets go deeper. Saudi meddling and all the way up to israeli meddling.

Edit: Insta downvote. Interesting.

~~~
pavlov
Pompeo's support for Israel has a motive that goes beyond the American
mainstream.

He's an Evangelical Christian and believes in an imminent "Rapture" that can
only happen when Biblical prophecies are fulfilled. Among these is the return
of Jews to the Holy Land. [1]

In other words, the Secretary of State is literally trying to bring about the
end of the world.

If this were Iran, people would be talking about a delusional theocracy.

[1]
[https://www.ft.com/content/6959f506-6ee6-4d31-9372-ba34d5291...](https://www.ft.com/content/6959f506-6ee6-4d31-9372-ba34d52912f8)

~~~
cmurf
[https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pompeo-fight-battles-
raptu...](https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pompeo-fight-battles-rapture/)

The juxtaposition of gay marriage ruling and rapture in his speech is, to me,
identical to saying "burn all gays".

The irony is this ideology is about as anti-Christian as it gets. Jesus had
very few nice things to say about wealthy people, and yet Christianity Inc.
loves to sell Americans on the idea of prosperity theology. The book of Job
expressly states it's bullcrap. This is why I consider it a cult, they aren't
that serious about the religious aspects at all, they just like the parts
where some people are rewarded (physically taken to heaven, i.e. the rapture)
and their non-believer enemies are all murdered.

------
ed25519FUUU
Foreign news, even state controlled (RT, for example) is always valuable.
Partly because we know those news outlets are biased and politically
motivated, and adjust our own perception accordingly. Though the glorification
of suicide bombing and the killing of US soldiers on Al Jazeera always left a
very bad taste in my mouth circa 2003-2004.

The problem is that our news outlets are biased and politically motivated as
well, it's just the pressure comes from money and "access". And we don't admit
it to ourselves.

A simple example is a person or company will go to a specific outlet to break
negative news so they can get a head start on the story. For access to the
scoop, the outlet helps write a truthful but "friendly" narrative.

This happens all of the time with large businesses also, and it's evident in
the headlines. Where did you think all of that PR consulting money goes?

~~~
aorth
> glorification of suicide bombing and the killing of US soldiers on Al
> Jazeera always left a very bad taste in my mouth.

Are we talking about the same Al Jazeera? I've never seen such glorification.
I am an American living internationally for a long time now and, where I used
to value BBC World, I have preferred Al Jazeera English for close to ten years
at least.

~~~
BeetleB
I think this was mostly perceived to be on their Arabic station, not the
English one. In those days people I know who watched the Arabic Al-Jazeera
said it was a whole different channel than the English one (in terms of bias,
etc).

(Although I didn't hear anything specifically about support for suicide
bombings).

------
MrPandaRabbit
Personally, Al Jazeera English has been a valuable source of counter
propaganda to the hegemonic western media companies I usually end up getting
my news from (NYT, Guardian, Atlantic, etc. on the liberal end and WaPo, BBC,
etc. on the more neutral/conservative end).

I think it’s fair to say they are more directly aligned with Qatar and don’t
do as good a job criticizing their owners as John Oliver with ATT. But, I
cannot find anyone, not even BBC, that does as good a job at covering
grassroots organization efforts and local stories from South America, Africa,
the middle-east (particularly Palestinian stories), South Asia, and parts of
East Asia.

It has been refreshing to see humanizing perspectives of people who are
usually cast as ‘the other’ or ‘backwards’ implicitly or explicitly in western
media.

I wonder if Australian, European, or Israeli news/media companies ever have to
register as foreign agents.

~~~
bpodgursky
If you think the Atlantic is on the "liberal end" and the WaPo is on the
"neutral/conservative" end of the news spectrum, I think you have a fuzzy
understanding of the political divides in US news sources.

~~~
MrPandaRabbit
True, perhaps I am wrong in my classification. Maybe not fair to say WaPo is
conservative. And The Atlantic does give space to neo-liberal ideas. It’s very
biased by how and which stories have stuck in my mind from these sources.

------
actuator
I think it does make sense. When UAE-Israel peace/recognition deal was
announced, Al Jazeera journalists were the ones who seemed to be complaining
the most on Twitter about it. They have built a good reputation for journalism
and I think they are going to exert that influence for their state, just like
I have seen lately even SCMP do.

Sure, they do cover lots of parts of the world, and do some really good in-
depth reporting but there is a definite bias to their reporting and
selectiveness in what they cover, and if it is a state influenced, good to
call it out.

~~~
noja
Al Jazeera is Qatari. UAE and Qatar don't get along well with one another, so
why wouldn't they complain about it? If it wasn't for the oil I'd expect the
US to be aligned with Qatar.

~~~
actuator
Why would US be aligned with Qatar over UAE? I don't find much difference in
UAE and Qatar. The whole 2022 FIFA world cup being held in Qatar has been a
blot on the sport from possible corruption in bidding to gross worker(human)
right violations in construction.

> why wouldn't they complain about it?

Wouldn't it be nice if journalists try to stay unbiased and do factual
reporting and not be a broadcast arm for their state's interests. If they
can't, it seems appropriate to brand them as a foreign mission.

