If you haven’t been watching Al Jazeera yet and are following the continuing unrest in Egypt, you should give it a try. The network has arguably done the best job at covering all angles of the crisis, and its commanding presence in the Middle East has given it a leg up on other outlets.
Watching it myself, it feels very BBC: news presented in a intellectually stimulating manner, something often missing in American television journalism today.
The network reports that traffic to its English-language site since the start of the crisis has surged by 2,500%, with 60% of that traffic coming from the US. Many are apparently tuning into the live stream.
Why’s this? Simply put, cable companies have practically all but shut out the network since its debut in 2006. Al Jazeera no doubt got a rap for being a outlet for Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda — the terrorist group sent its videos regularly as “exclusives” in the days after 9/11 — but since then the network has done a lot to polish its image as a legitimate news outlet.