Put Al Jazeera on air

Feb 23, 2009 04:30 AM

Canadians have a world of cable and satellite TV information at their fingertips. There's the Canadian Broadcasting Corp., CTV and Global. The American networks including CNN and Fox. The British Broadcasting Corp. Even TV5 from France.
So why not a major news source from the Middle East? Al Jazeera television, funded chiefly by the pro-American Emir of Qatar, is the most respected broadcaster in the Arab world. Its English service, managed by Canadian journalist Tony Burman, is received in 130 million households in 105 countries, including Israel. But not here.
Yet every Canadian has an interest in a region into which we have poured peacekeepers and aid, which millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews revere as the holy land, and which is a perennial political flashpoint. There's an abiding thirst for news and views from there.
Al Jazeera English, with its unique perspective from the developing world, delivers the goods. During the fighting in Gaza, for example, AJE was the only international English service that covered both Gaza and Israel. It routinely airs Israeli views.
For these reasons, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission should approve AJE's current bid to air programs here, as its parent Arabic service does in the U.S.
Five years ago Al Jazeera Arabic, founded in 1996, sought approval to broadcast here. At the time the Canadian Jewish Congress criticized it for airing material that was anti-Semitic, denied the Holocaust, and exalted terrorists. Even so, the CRTC gave it the green light, but with so many conditions that cable companies chose not to air it.
The English service, launched in 2006, has sparked no comparable controversy. So the CRTC has good reason to grant approval on a trial basis, subject to review, but this time without onerous conditions.
AJE's code of ethics promises credible, honest, balanced coverage. Canadians should be able to see and judge for themselves.