"Demand Al-Jazeera in the USA" campaign

By Elizabeth Flock



Screen shot of al-Jazeera live in Cairo

Update: 3:11 p.m. The United Nations just told reporters al-Jazeera would restore the internal UN TV system, Washington Post reporter Colum Lynch reports. Al Jazeera had previously provided the UN with a feed to broadcast its program on the internal UN TV system until about a year ago. The feed was then cut off when the U.N. press corps shut down their bureaus in the U.N.'s headquarter building to make way for a major renovation of the landmark building. Al Jazeera's engineers only restored the feed today.

Over the past 11 days, major U.S. cable news networks repeatedly began their breaking news reports with the words "al-Jazeera reports."

The international news network headquartered in Doha, Qatar, and broadcasting to 190 million households around the world, has been the only media outlet with uninterrupted live video of the demonstrations. Al-Jazeera continued broadcasting even after Egyptian authorities stormed their Cairo office and detained several al-Jazeera reporters.

Americans huddled around their computer screens to watch low-resolution video on the al-Jazeera site or saw the video replayed on American networks, because other than a few pockets across the U.S., including Ohio, Vermont, and Washington D.C., American cable carriers don't offer viewers the choice of al-Jazeera. Viewers in the DC area can also view Al Jazeera English content through MHz Networks multicast channels.

Now, al-Jazeera is trying to change that. On Feb. 10, al-Jazeera is encouraging a meet up in 224 communities for viewers to demand the network on U.S. television. "This past month has shown us something that America can no longer ignore: millions of Americans want to watch our channel and better understand our region," Wadah Khanfar, director general of the network, wrote on the site.