How about comparing it to the BBC, NPR, and PBS?

gruseom · on Feb 2, 2011

I'll take NPR. I've been a dedicated NPR listener for a long time. Even after leaving the US I listened to it online nearly every day. Over the last week, Al Jazeera's (English) coverage has been shockingly better than NPR's. Some of this, of course, is that world events right now happen to be on their turf. But I think most of it is that NPR's reporters and pundits are locked in a narrow and obsolete spectrum of thinking. I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that I'll be continuing to follow AJ, at least intermittently, from now on. I know greater openness when I see it; going back to NPR makes me feel claustrophobic now.

(One underappreciated thing nobody has over NPR News, though, is Robert Siegel. God I love that man's voice, and his English. I'd happily listen to him interview the phone book. The phone book wouldn't say anything, but Siegel's questions would be exquisite.)

Alex3917 · on Feb 2, 2011

NPR does a great job at talking about stuff that's already in the news, but they aren't really a news service.

BBC has reasonably good coverage of American politics, but it's not written for Americans so there's a lot of cognitive overhead. Because of this it doesn't really make sense to read it like a newspaper, though their take on specific issues is often good, albeit brief. Many of their article are barely more than headlines.

And PBS is decent, but it's mainly targeted at people 60+ and retired. Waiting until 7pm for news from last week just isn't viable for people who actually need to know what's going on.

tkahn6 · on Feb 2, 2011

> And PBS is decent, but it's mainly targeted at people 60+ and retired. Waiting until 7pm for news from last week just isn't viable for people who actually need to know what's going on.

I'm sorry that's just ridiculous. Not only do they have a website that's constantly updated, the news they present is timely according to the importance of the event. They usually have a mix of a) news that happened that day, b) follow up stories from events from the past few days or week and c) long term international news (Haitian recovery, Peru's economy, etc.). And then they have ~5-7 minute rundown of the headlines from that day. Recently they've been devoting almost the entire program to Egypt.

I seriously cannot understand HN's infatuation with Al Jazeera English. It's simply a more sophisticated version of CNN or BBC. I guess if you're looking for a 24 hour news, then yeah, go with Al Jazeera English. I've watched it for their live coverage of Egypt, but I can't imagine watching AJE every day.