Burgess COMMENTARY
I cannot pretend to be surprised that AlJazeera is going to put more emphasis on sports ... but I am not sure that the trimming of news staff across the globe amounts to 'slashing'. Maybe I am wrong, but I rather doubt it. AlJazeera has a very strong franchise now in world news, and it would be silly to trash this. The fact that its the AlJazeera English news footprint in the United States is small reflects very badly on the structure of the news media of the United States, and not much on AlJazeera. I see nothing wrong with making the news function efficient, and I would think that this should be an ongoing process, but huge sutbacks amount to an exiot from the space would be very very wrong ... in my view.

The story about the UN story rewrite seems plausible ... but the 'slant' to the news by every media organization on the planet is a reflection of ownership and reporters and editors ensuring they have job secutiry. These do not become 'stories' but the result is quite insidious and frankly disturbing and dangerous.

Up to now most news stories told by AlJazeera where I have personal knowledge and experience stand up as most likely being right ... while almost all the other news flows tend to be awfully superficial if not just plain wrong.

I am not sure where 'news' will be in 10 years time ... but my expectation is that it will be an 'Open News Knwoledge Network' with 'ownership' of news channels very much a thing of the past. This will require a completely different business model, but what exists at the moment is dying. AlJazeera is, in my view, the best news service on the planet, but very costly to operate ... and accoringly not sustainable.
Peter Burgess

Al Jazeera Slashes News Staff Across The Globe, As Focus Shifts To Sports

Bloomberg Businessweek writes about a new course for Al Jazeera, the news and media organization founded by the ruling family of Qatar. BW says that the company has been making substantial cuts in news across the world, including to Al Jazeera English in the U.S., even as its spends millions on on sports television rights.

Al Jazeera has spent nearly half a billion dollars on soccer rights in France so far, plus an undisclosed amount to broadcast in other markets. More deals may be on the way. England’s Premier League, home to popular teams like Manchester United, last week began taking bids for the U.S. rights to broadcast its games, and analysts expect Al Jazeera to bid. “The Qataris believe investing heavily in sports will give them a return on their global image,” says Frank Dunne, the editor of TV Sports Markets.

Elsewhere, The Guardian notes that leaders at the network ordered staffers to change a story about the U.N. General Assembly, in order to make it lead with comments from the Emir of Qatar:

Journalists had produced a package of the UN debate, topped with excerpts of President Obama’s speech, last Tuesday when a last-minute instruction came from Salah Negm, the Qatar-based news director, who ordered the video to be re-edited to lead with the comments from Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani.