Thursday, March 10, 2011

(7:54 pm) Wow—this is where things might really get interesting: police 'fire at hundreds' at rally in Saudi Arabia. 

Police have reportedly opened fire at a rally in Saudi Arabia in an apparent effort to stop planned protests there, AP news agency has reported.

A witness in the eastern city of Qatif told AP that gunfire and stun grenades were fired at several hundred protesters marching in the city streets on Thursday.

The witness, speaking on condition of anonymity because he feared government reprisal, said police in the area opened fire. The witness saw at least one protester injured.

Government officials have warned they will take strong action if activists take to the streets after increasing calls for large protests around the country to press for democratic reforms.

This story, from al-Jazeera, is marked as 'last updated' about twenty minutes ago. Nowhere on any major American news sites—CNN, NYTimes, WAPO, etc—is there any mention yet. Let's see how long that takes.

Hillary Clinton was right to call al-Jazeera "real news," as opposed to the cheap punditry offered by talking head no-nothings in the United States. I often watch al-Jazeera's English-language international news channel when I'm abroad and I think it's really good. It's a testament to American provincialism vis-a-vis the rest of the world that, outside of Washington DC, there's hardly anywhere in this country where al-Jazeera is available.



We get literally hundreds of channels on cable. Why not al-Jazeera? And why not some of the other international English-language news stations, for that matter? Yes, Russia Today seems propagandistic at times, but would it kill us to watch it? Or watch China's CCTV? Please don't tell me that these stations are less 'objective' with respect to their assumptions and the categories they work within than CNN, MSNBC, or Fox.

We'll see how the Saudi story develops, but it's a shame that most of us will eventually hear about it (if at all) from a bargain-basement bare-bones news organization focused on providing international information on the cheap.