Al Jazeera Plans News Channel in Malaysia

According to Al Jazeera spokesman, Jihad Ballout, $30 million will be spent to launch a regional English-language satellite news channel in Kuala Lumpur by the end of 2005. The new channel will be named Al Jazeera International and its goal will be to counteract the "unbalanced reporting" of Western media networks. The BBC and CNN are mentioned.

The explanation doesn't make a lot of sense. The BBC, CNN, and other elite networks could easily be called biased in their reporting, however, most of the time, the bias is in favor of Islamic and Arab populations, while pretending that terrorism doesn't exist. In fact, the elite media seldom even uses the word "terrorists." The public hears of gunmen, militants, freedom fighters, insurgents, but not very often does the public hear of terrorists.

Frankly, I think Al Jazeera's explanation is disingenuous.