Al Jazeera's U.S. Face

When AJE goes on the "air" today after several months of delay, the air will be virtual across North America; the only way to see the channel in the United States will be on a computer as it streams over the Internet.

The reasons for that are not clear. Jenni Moyer, spokeswoman for Comcast, the nation's largest cable company, says: "We were in discussions with them, but a decision has been made not to carry them. Beyond that, we're not commenting."

AJE officials think they understand why the reception has been so chilly: Al Jazeera English can't escape al-Jazeera's long shadow.

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Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has accused al-Jazeera of "vicious lies" and "a pattern of playing propaganda over and over" in its coverage of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And U.S. officials have been upset by footage of American military deaths and al-Jazeera's unstinting coverage of the wars' effect on civilians.

Rumsfeld's criticisms are echoed by conservatives, who view al-Jazeera and its English-language spinoff as anti-American at best and a terrorist house organ at worst.

Cliff Kincaid, who edits the conservative Accuracy in Media Report, points to troubling connections: Al-Jazeera journalist Tayseer Allouni last year was convicted in Spain of collaborating with al-Qaeda; and al-Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj was arrested by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2001 and has been held at Guantanamo Bay. (Al-Jazeera says the two men are innocent.)

"We haven't seen any evidence that tells us that [AJE] will be significantly different than al-Jazeera in Arabic," Kincaid says. "It's sponsored by the same people, paid for by the same people and has the same editorial philosophy."

Kincaid all but says Marash is a dupe: "The emir has plenty of Arab oil dollars to buy anyone he wants. They need Western media faces to give them credibility."

Moderate voices also find things not to like in al-Jazeera. "There are some positives there, but there are plenty of negatives," says Steven Stalinsky, executive director of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a Washington-based group that studies Arabic media and describes itself as nonpartisan. "And the negatives outweigh the positives."

(On its Web site, MEMRI catalogues al-Jazeera's news coverage into several telling categories, such as "Anti-Semitism," "Conspiracy Theories," "Suicide (Martyrdom) Operations," "Holocaust Denial.")

Marash thinks much of the criticism misses the longer view.