Collateral Damage

by Bob Boynton
There seems an everlasting stream of instances of collateral damage. In this one we can learn something about the global press covering them.
From Aljazeera [English]
Five girls and a baby have been killed in a US raid on a house in the Iraqi city of Ramadi, the US military has told Al Jazeera.
The US [...]

Death takes priority

by Bob Boynton
November 25 and these were the headlines
Aljazeera [English]: Baghdad hit by wave of attacks
BBC World: Mosques hit amid Baghdad clashes
CNN World: Shiites torch Sunni people, mosques, houses
The headlines and the first paragraph tell the stories of death.
Armed men rampaged through a Sunni enclave in a mainly Shia district of Baghdad on Friday, killing [...]

Aljazeera [Arabic] Loves Elections

by Bob Boynton
Politicians who are rubbed the wrong way do not have much good to say about Aljazeera — either English or Arabic. The most interesting point about those who are rubbed the wrong way is who they are. Mr. Bush wanted to bomb them because of the way they showed deaths during the US [...]

Just “Other News”

by Bob Boynton
3,709 Iraqis died in October 2006. 3,345 Iraqis died in September. October was the record high for a month; the previous record was 3,590 in July.
7,054 people died in a two month span. How can this not be a scream? If not for what you and I and George Bush and Tony Blair [...]

A Proud Moment for Aljazeera [English]

by Bob Boynton
They had only opened for business and they already had an interview with Tony Blair. And this is what he said.
Blair Admits Iraq a Disaster
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, has admitted in an interview with Al Jazeera English that events in Iraq since the US-led invasion have been a “disaster”.
But he insisted [...]

How shall we image Mubarak?

by Bob Boynton
I’m in London. I had a lovely dinner, and I have been watching Roger Federer stomp James Blake — a replay on England TV. TV in England is not much to brag about. But that is not global news; everyone who has been to England in the last decade knows that.
Here is [...]

Aljazeera — The Struggle for Soul #1

by Bob Boynton
These are busy days for Aljazeera [English]. Their new television channel opened up for business. It has been a long time in coming. But they say there are 80 million viewers for the channels that carry them around the world.
These are busy days for me, as well. Today I am off for London [...]

Mr. Blair Made Remarkable

by Bob Boynton
News organizations like pictures, and color photographs are the pride of news websites. What they do not tell you is that the picture they put on the page is one selected from a very large number. Ergo they are very likely to choose a picture that the editor believes illuminates the words they [...]

So, How Much News is New

by Bob Boynton
I follow four websites: Aljazeera [Arabic], Aljazeera [English], BBC World, and CNN World. They present the news rather differently. There are lots of differences, but what I want to look at here is the number of stories they present to their readers and the extent of overlap from one day to the [...]

The UN and Beit Hanoun

On Wednesday there was massive destruction. On Saturday the Security Council of the United Nations was asked to condemn the violence — both Israeli and Palestinian.
Aljazeera [English] made this the lead story for the day. The picture and the headline join both elements of the story: the death and destruction and the US veto. [...]