In today's New York Daily News, new Al Jazeera International chief Washington anchor, former ABC Nightline-er Dave Marash, joins the "reality optional" Lou Dobbs/Keith Olbermann school of journalism:
In a decade, Al Jazeera has won a large and influential audience in its region and global recognition by replacing a brain-dead oligarchy of tightly censored, state-controlled Arabic-language news broadcasters with hard-hitting and professional news coverage, and uncensored public discussion of the full palette of political and social ideas.
Al Jazeera International will exhibit those same standards of intellectual integrity and fearless inclusiveness in communicating to an English-speaking audience around the globe a daily video record of our shared reality.
What's new and different about Al Jazeera's product?
First, our points of view. Unlike CNN, which, since Ted Turner founded it, has aspired to a single, objective point of view toward a planet on which nothing is "foreign," or Rupert Murdoch's Fox or Sky News, which are often very homeland-specific, Al Jazeera International will reflect our four autonomous news bases: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia; Doha, Qatar; London and Washington.
Each base, and I as chief Washington anchor, will be expected to reflect "reality" as seen from the point of view, the interests, and cultural and political heritage of its home region.
Leaving aside the weird assertion that FNC is "homeland specific," whatever that means, here's the real takeaway from Marash's piece: when Al Jazeera, the leading television news provider of pure, unadulterated anti-American hatred, co-opts an American journalist willing to put quotation marks around the word "reality," we might be in real trouble.
