Saturday July 7, 2012

I've Been Thinking:

Al Jazeera promo'ed their scoop for weeks: Yasser Arafat was poisoned by polonium and they have the proof.

The story is totally bogus. The Swiss lab that did the testing has confirmed no such findings.

So why did they do it? Because al Jazeera wanted the Israeli/Palestinian conflict back on the map - but they failed.

No serious media ever believed this so-called scoop - other Arabic stations were totally blase about the story and did not even bother with it. People watching al Jazeera wrote to the web site telling them, in effect, that nobody cares. A few who did care to comment asked Arafat's widow Suha to return all the money. Others said cover the real issues of the Middle East, not ancient history.

The response al Jazeera got was the opposite of what they expected. They had hoped to reshape the media message and move things away from inner Arab fighting and replace it with Israel/Arab and Western/Arab conflicts.

Al Jazeera has no credibility. The Arabic speaking world watches al Jazeera knowing its limitations and is aware of its agenda.

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