The increasing role of Al Jazeera

Excerpts from an article at The Big Think:

Scholars and foreign policy experts have long argued that channels like al Jazeera have fundamentally redefined how Arab audiences view politics by recasting political issues in regional terms and embedding Pan-Muslim and Pan-Arab narratives within its news content...

A large portion of Arab audiences who watched al Jazeera's extensive month-long coverage of Tunisia, and now Egypt, are interpreting these events and outcomes through transnational Muslim and Arab political lenses, rather than as Jordanian, Saudi Arabian, Moroccan, Yemini etc, etc...

Egyptians who view the United States and Israel through a transnational Muslim -- rather than Egyptian -- political lens may perceive a very different set of (self) interests, policy choices, and relations than currently exist. In turn, if a new, more democratic regime emerges in Egypt, it will need to be responsive to public sentiment in order to gain and maintain long-term legitimacy -- which may mean shifting the nature of its relations with the United States and Israel.

And on a related note, ABC News reports that the Mubarak goon squad burned the Al Jazeera office in Cairo:

That authorities have targeted reporters for Al Jazeera English – as well as those for Al Jazeera Arabic -- shows how the younger, more analytical of the two channels has come echo the Arabic channel's ability to get under the skin of autocratic, unpopular regimes...

Al Jazeera English has its detractors, but its coverage of Egypt has been lauded by most independent critics as aggressive, informative and more extensive than its competitors. Its increasing influence has earned the ire less of the United States -- often called its most obvious target, but which this week defended its right to report freely -- than of the governments of the region. Today at least four governments in the Arab world have banned the channel from operating, none more obviously than the Egyptians in the last two weeks...

A reminder that the streaming live coverage is accessible via the internet here.